Via the National Hurricane Center Hurricane Irene is near landfall at North Carolina’s outer banks as a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph. Some regions along the east coast will see moderate wind damage. But for now, Irene’s greatest danger to life and proprtery is flooding. Because the system is so large and has been spinning for so long, the surge will be similar to a much stronger storm, possibly as high as 15 feet in some places, and this will happen during a new moon high tide greatly amplifying the effect. Cheseapeake Bay and the entire mid eastern seaboard could experience massive flooding over the next 24 hours. In addition the western edge of this giant system could inundate the entire DC region. Creeks, drainage ditches, and rivers could overflow into urban and suburban neighborhoods.

Use this Wundermap to keep track of how the winds are behaving around the North Carolina coastline. Within the hurricane warning area in North Carolina, storm surge is expected to be 6-11 feet above ground. This is our storm surge forecast map. To see how high the tides are running, NOAA has an excellent page collecting all of the relevant tide gauges.

Irene’s intensity after passing to the east of the bay depends on how much time, if any, the storm’s eye spends over dry land and the effect of predicted wind shear. Sea surface temperatures are plenty warm enough to sustain a hurricane all the way to New Jersey. As of about 8 AM EDT, the NHC forecasts Irene to strike Long Island, NY, as Category 1 beginning early tomorrow morning. The full brunt of the northeast eye wall may pass over parts of Conneticutt or Rhode Island Sunday afternoon, bringing a record storm surge and potential for widespread wind damage to the upper New England coast.

Technology allowing, I’ll be on Daily Kos radio, with special guest Dr. Jeff Masters from the WeatherUnderground, discussing Irene around 11 AM EDT.

Via the Bad Astronomer we get word a supernova has erupted in the nearby spiral galaxy M101, better know to stargazers as the Pinwheel galaxy. Astrophysicists classify it as a Type 1a supernova, the kind that can occur when a big streamer of hydrogen is deposited on the surface of white dwarf, usually by a helpful companion star that has swelled up into a red-giant as shown above. These things are bright! This is easily seen across 25 million light-years, isn’t that cool? If something like that happened nearby, within a few light-years of earth, we’d literally be in a world of hurt. But it’s still small potatoes compared to a Type II supernova, the physics of those events are even more fascinating, and so incredibly violent.

Stars like our sun shine because of hydrogen fusion deep in the center. The proton-proton fusion cycle will keep medium-sized stars like good old Sol shining for billions of years; really massive stars live only a few million years whereas small red dwarfs can shine for a 100 billion or more! But eventually the hydrogen is all fused, and helium ash dominates the core. For the sun this will result in a short cycle of helium fusion, it will swell into a red-giant and cook earth to a cinder. But the helium runs out fast, and that’s the end of the line for sun-sized stars. The core will shrug off its outer layers in a beautiful display like the Eskimo nebula shown below or the Cat’s Eye nebula linked here.

But stars more massive than our sun have a few tricks left! They’ll burn successively heavier elements, helium nuclei combine to produce carbon and oxygen, which in turn will be fused. The process works its way up the periodic table. The star grows hotter and larger at every stage, the crushing gravity pulling the superheated plasma making up the star’s flesh is balanced by continuous fusion reactions at the core creating enormous temperatures, reaching billions of degrees in some cases, pushing back out.

But the star has a big problem. Light elements fuse and liberate energy, heavy elements like uranium split into lighter ones and also produce energy. So there has to be a break even point in the periodic table and that happens to be iron. When iron fuses, it absorbs energy and that’s a stellar dead-end. When the star starts fusing iron, the core no longer produces heat, it’s actually sucking heat up and compressing dramatically. The core shrinks, incredibly fast. This happens so quickly that the star now has a huge open gap between the outer layers and the tiny, shrunken iron bearing core. That gap won’t stay empty for long. Billions of cubic miles of outer stellar materials now falls, accelerated by intense external pressure above and pulled down by the respectable gravity of that dense metal ball below.

The material crashes violently into the core pushing the mixture to enormous temperatures not seen since the first few minutes after the Big Bang, and it’s still chock full of lighter elements like hydrogen and helium along with heavier stuff, which all fuses like crazy in an atomic orgy. More energy is created in this brief process than our sun will release in its entire life, and that energy has to go somewhere. The star blows to bits in a matter of minutes. It’s during those few moments that elements heavier than iron are produced and shot back into the universe in large quantities. All the gold, silver, lead, and uranium on earth were cooked up by supernova explosions.

And the core left behind? Depending on the mass of the star and the type of supernova, it will usually end up either as a rapidly spinning neutron star or a black-hole a few dozen miles in diameter containing the mass of millions of earths. There is growing evidence that planets can either form in the debris field around the tiny core, or survive the cataclysmic event itself, somehow. See yesterday’s post on the hypothetical diamond planet for one such candidate. Which incidentally has given rise to fun discussions like this one at TPM’s twitter feed:

Diamond planet threatens Earth market. Africa sends astronaut (call him Omaba) to destroy planet. US drafts Newt to stop him … Newt wins battle, claims planet for US, marries Diamond Planet Queen.

The actual physics of Type II supernovas are way more complicated than my simplistic and, in all likelihood flawed, review above implies. Large stars still vary in mass and composition. They spin at different rates and may have off axis magnetic fields doing crazy things. Some have binary companions. That all adds up to distinct Type II subclasses, each with their own variations on the internal physics and enormous diversity in the exquisite nebula created. They’re each also critical in every way to our own existence. Not only are we composed in part of substance liberated and/or created by the violence, the shock wave spreading through interstellar space from a Type II supernova can help collapse nearby gas clouds and kick off a cycle of new star formation. Something like this may have been a key factor in the initial creation of our entire solar system beginning about five billion years ago.

That’s a hell of a creation story. If only it were widely taught in Sunday school.

Via the National Hurricane Center, Irene is still tracking toward the outer banks of North Carolina and will likely affect eastern parts of the DC metro region, from Norfolk thru Baltimore. Depending on the precise track, the storm may remain over open water allowing it to remain a powerful tropical cyclone all the way to New Jersey.

Going forward, the eye will probably wobble and every little wiggle may produce a flurry of concern or guarded relief. But it looks like Irene will have an impact on the mid and upper US eastern seaboard no matter what deviations appear at this point. Via Dr. Rob Carver at WeatherUnderground:

To find out if you need to evacuate, please contact your local emergency management office. They will have the latest information. FEMA has information on preparing for hurricanes. FEMA also has a blog describing their response to Irene.

Perhaps the greatest threat to life and property will be the flooding from Irene’s storm surge and considerable rainfall. The NHC has created a Storm Surge Risk interactive map. It is strongly recommend all residents anywhere near the track take a moment and assess their individual risk.

Astronomers have found many exotic exo-planet since the first Hot Jupiter was inferred in 1995 roasting in a tight orbit around the very sun-like star 51 Pegasus. Since then speculation and some preliminary indication of water worlds, methane planets, gas dwarfs and super earths has become regular fare. Another possible composition dreamed up by planetary scientists is a carbon world, usually presented as a dismal black and sooty planet like the one below.

But carbon forms another stable structure under enough pressure and scientists have found a planet that just might fit that glittering bill:

In addition, “we are very confident it has a density about 18 times that of water,” said study leader Matthew Bailes, an astronomer at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing in Melbourne, Australia. “This means it can’t be made of gases like hydrogen and helium like most stars but [must be made of] heavier elements like carbon and oxygen, making it most likely crystalline in nature, like a diamond.”

The weird object is 4000 light-years away and estimated five times the size of earth. The density is the real giveaway: this object is 18 times heavier than water.

Moreover, it circles a neutron star. Neutron stars are the corpse of massive stars that blew up, leaving a tiny core of degenerate matter weighing thousands to millions of tons per cubic inch often spinning wildly. It’s far from clear exactly how the world ended up orbiting such an unusual partner. One possibility is the original system was a binary and the companion a red-dwarf star which was denuded of its gaseous envelope in the ancient super nova, leaving behind a core of carbon and oxygen (Not sure exactly how that would work, see comment by Amphiox below). Or the object could have grown out of the heavy element rich nebula formed by a large exploding star similar to the way scientists believe traditional planets form out of the material surrounding young stars.

Whatever it is, or however it came to be, I say we call it Diamondus.

If you watch hurricanes a lot, you might notice they often turn more than initially forecast. Systems moving west curve more north than expected, north moving storms curve more east. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens alot. When the tropical depression that gave birth to Irene first formed, many storm trackers assumed or hoped this system would follow suit and spare the US east coast. For now, that does not appear to be the case. Via Jeff Masters at the WeatherUnderground:

Irene will likely hit Eastern North Carolina, but the storm is going northwards after that, and may deliver an extremely destructive blow to the mid-Atlantic and New England states. I am most concerned about the storm surge danger to North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and the rest of the New England coast. Irene is capable of inundating portions of the coast under 10 – 15 feet of water, to the highest storm surge depths ever recorded. I strongly recommend that all residents of the mid-Atlantic and New England coast familiarize themselves with their storm surge risk. … [See] the NHC’s Interactive Storm Surge Risk Map.

Of particular interest will be the effect of high winds should Irene roll over Manhattan or other large cities. The juxtaposition of tall buildings, narrow streets, and whipping wind could result in regions of difficult to predict dampening and amplification working chaotically on acres of siding, glass windows and concrete statues and other structures hundreds of feet off the ground. The streets of the Big Apple could become zones of jagged flying debris, an urban artillery range with glass and metal shrapnel ripping in all directions, punctuated by boulder-sized chunks of concrete raining down. Even a relatively modest Category 1 storm would be a potential killer for anyone who pokes their head outside. In addition the subways could flood, some taking days or weeks to repair, inconvenient for commuters, fatal for uncounted thousands of homeless underground dwellers.

A Russian Soyuz U failed earlier today losing three tons of supplies for the International Space Station. But no lives were lost or even at risk:

The unmanned spacecraft, called the Progress, lifted off from the Baikanur Russian Space Center in Kazakhstan on top of a Soyuz rocket. A little more than five minutes later, the rocket’s third-stage engine shut down sooner than it should have, before the Progress had enough velocity to reach orbit.

Had the Progress capsule been manned, odds are very good the crew could have been recovered unharmed after an exciting suborbital abort and parachute assisted landing. One of the huge advantages of traditional booster rockets over the shuttle lays in successful abort. In the rocket configuration, the capsule is at the tippy-top, designed to withstand enormous stress in the direction of motion, and it features a handy heat shield between crew and fuel. Even in the event the rocket explodes on the pad, the escape tower can blow the capsule clear and give the occupants a fighting chance of walking away. But the accident raises questions about the reliability of the aging ex-Soviet design and augers well for newspace companies like SpaceX.

The Falcon 9 is already in developmental testing for cargo and the Dragon capsule was successfully returned from low earth orbit last December (Video here). This rocket and its growing list of competitors could be operational sooner if the schedule was accelerated. It might take a dozen or two cargo launches to tweak and certify the manned capability. If those launches happen over two years instead of five, we have a manned rocket way cheaper than the Russian R-7 family made right here in the US. And to repeat, the biggest change in the works isn’t how much NASA pays private contractors, it’s how those contractors are paid. Newspace flat-fee vs. traditional aerospace cost-plus.

There’s a lot of smart people inside and outside NASA who would like to support our domestic commercial space industry. Unfortunately, there’s an equally powerful group hell-bent on preserving the status quo benefitting traditional aerospace companies and key political districts. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA 46) sits on the House Science Committee and released a statement (No link available yet)which includes:

“I hope this is a minor problem with a quick and simple fix,” said Rohrabacher. “But this episode underscores America’s need for reliable launch systems of its own to carry cargo and crew into space. The only way to achieve this goal is to place more emphasis on commercial cargo and crew systems currently being developed by American companies. … “We need to get on with the task of building affordable launch systems to meet our nation’s needs for access to low Earth orbit, instead of promoting grandiose concepts which keep us vulnerable in the short and medium terms. The most responsible course of action for the United States is to dramatically accelerate the commercial crew systems already under development.

Rohrabacher goes on to “challenge” NASA Director Charles Bolden to make it happen. A little political grandstanding there, as Bolden serves at the pleasure of the WH which has already been promoting newspace. Even as some of Rohrabacher’s GOP peers, many of whom enjoy NASA dollars in their home states and districts, accuse Obama and newspace of wanting to kill the US space program. It’s a weird issue that defies the usual left-right axis. The best way to understand it isn’t political, it’s the Joe Pesci method from the movie Casino; the dollars, always the fucking dollars.

It was a rhetorical title/question when I wrote it last week, but now we have a temporary answer. The results of the latest Gallup poll of Republicans and Republican leaning voters showing Rick Perry opening up a commanding 12 point lead over Mittens will be sliced and diced all day by the usual suspects. The controversial Texas Governor earned 29% as opposed to Romney’s 17% score. Growing crosstabs and history show Perry with the big mo. Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann round out the top four with 13% and 10% respectively.

Most of that pseudo-analysis and spin doctoring will be between the front runners. Is Perry stealing from Bachmann (Probably), does Paul have a chance (Nope), will Sarah Palin jump in (Hilarious!)? Momentum is fickle, flavor of the day, yada-yada-yada. True, the idea Rick Perry could actually have a shot at being president is surreal. But I’m interested here on the bottom rungs of Gallup’s snapshot.

The only avowed science candidate, Jon Huntsman, finished at 1%. After admitting the same discipline that gave us electricity, penicillin, and moon rocks might have a point about evolution and climate change, Huntsman earned a paltry one point. No upward movement whatsoever for affirming the obvious value of science, in fact he went down a point from July. Huntsman finished three points behind serial political grifter Newt Freakin Gingrich.

Mittens suffered too, mostly from Perry’s divine entry splash, and we can infer from today’s results that Romney’s tacit acceptance of biology and physics didn’t help in any measurable way. On the other hand, implying a magic invisible sky wizard — who incidentally hates what anyone says about any other magic invisible sky wizards and holds an awfully expedient preference for hard-right ideology — personally chose a candidate to lead us into the End Days did help.

When the history of this era is written, people — or their AI-organic sci-fi descendents — may look back and conclude this is the point where a big chunk of America lost its collective mind.

Hurricane Irene remains a Category 3 storm and is forecast to briefly achieve Cat 4 status over the next day or two. The latest 5 AM EDT update from the National Weather service agrees closely with the image above: Irene is on track to buzz essentially the entire mid and upper US east coast and could make two landfalls, one near North Carolina’s outerbanks and the second near Long Island, New York. Typically, the maximum winds and storm surge of a hurricane traveling north will fall to the east of the eye and max rainfall to the west. A shift of just 50 miles spells the difference between a multibillion dollar disaster and less than a billion.

Via the WeatherUnderground early this morning:

The different forecast models are still in fairly good agreement about Irene’s track through the Bahamas and along the east coast of the US. The 00Z GFS run is in close agreement with the 12Z ECMWF run, but the 00Z ECMWF run is continuing the ECMWF’s trend of shifting the track westward with each run. NHC forecasters have been placing emphasis on the ECMWF’s forecast track when making their forecasts for IRene, so it is possible that the NHC track will shift westwards at the 5AM update.

Residents in mobile homes, low laying areas, near waterways and the coast, along with those dependent on reliable power for medical or other reasons, should now make preparations to leave the immediate vicinity of the storm’s path. Any residents choosing to remain should know where local storm shelters are located and be prepared for at least several days without power, water, Internet, and phone.

Update 9 AM EDT: A reader at Daily Kos writes in comments:

A Cat 2 actually hitting NYC would be awful. The winds between the buildings would be even faster, and there would be tons of things flying through the air that could kill people. You’d really not want to have anybody at all on the streets, which is practically unimaginable for New York. Windows in NY are not storm-proof, so there would likely be great breakage (yet another danger for those on the ground). The bottom line is that New Yorkers are not hurricane-experienced and would be very surprised at just what a sustained 100+ mph wind can do.

I don’t know another word to describe it. Using fundamentalist religious hype centered on a divine being who commanded generosity and charity to mislead sincere believers and rip them and everyone else off of their last damn nickel, so the evildoers can feed more tax cuts and government subsidies to a tiny sliver of already filthy rich assholes. It’s just stomach churning sickening:

An emerging Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus, is becoming more of a presence in American politics. The leaders are considered apostles and prophets, gifted by God for this role.

And you better believe our good fundie buddy Rick Perry is right in the thick of this ugly shit.

Well, nearby is relative, this object is nine light-years away, that’s over 50 trillion miles for us earthlings! But cool is correct no matter what part of the universe you live in. This brown dwarf is a balmy 25 C, about 80 F.

“The brown dwarfs we were turning up before this discovery were more like the temperature of your oven,” said Davy Kirkpatrick, a WISE science team member at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. “With the discovery of Y dwarfs, we’ve moved out of the kitchen and into the cooler parts of the house.”

Brown dwarfs are objects that didn’t make it to starhood, they lack enough mass to sustain hydrogen fusion in their center (The closest thing to a brown dwarf in our solar system is Jupiter). Astronomers classify brown dwarfs by letter, starting with class L for the hottest and Y for the coolest. Dim and distant, they’re very hard to see. They could be more common than stars, meaning our corner of the Milky Way galaxy could be swimming in them for all we know and our nearest interstellar neighbor could be a brown dwarf instead of the Centauri system 4.3 light-years away..

This is a gas ball, at some point under those dense clouds the temperature exceeds 25 C by a comfortable margin (It’s probably hot enough to melt iron within just a few hundred miles below the cloud tops). It’s a good bet some of these objects have moons — or would they be classified as planets? Either way, those smaller objects could experience tidal flexing like the Galileon moons of Jupiter. Io, the inner most moon of Jupiter, is the most volcanic body known in the solar system, Europa and Ganymede are both covered with fresh ice suggesting a surface that is regularly sculpted anew by cyro-geology, possibly driven by geothermal vents far below in a vast underground ocean.

That could be a very alien environment, but its possible specialized bacteria or their ET equivalents could cluster around the hypothetical heat sources, it’s even possible more sophisticated communities could develop around those simple organisms similar to the enigmatic ecosystems around earth’s black smokers and cold seeps. But protected by thick ice, circling a cool brown dwarf light years away, it will be a long, long time before we ever find that out, if we ever do. Europa on the other hand …