May 15, 20241 yr comment_2949211 Astronomers find evidence that, at first glance, seems consistent with Dyson spheres -- but also with unusual but natural debris disks. Sufficiently unusual to warrant further study, though. All 7 candidate stars are red dwarfs, which may also be significant and not in a good way. Read the article, decide for yourself. Astronomers are on the hunt for Dyson spheres (msn.com) (Other pop-sci articles have been more clickbaity in their headlines, shame on them.) Dean Shomshak
May 15, 20241 yr comment_2949232 It would take a lot less matter to build a Dyson sphere around a red dwarf than a larger star, also red dwarfs last a lot longer
May 15, 20241 yr comment_2949275 10 hours ago, dmjalund said: It would take a lot less matter to build a Dyson sphere around a red dwarf than a larger star, also red dwarfs last a lot longer Red dwarf stars tend to be pretty active with solar flares so they will need more shielding if they are in the habit zone
May 22, 20241 yr comment_2949796 Boeing capsule launch postponed indefinitely due to chronic helium leak. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-first-crew-launch-of-boeings-starliner-capsule-is-on-hold-indefinitely/
June 5, 20241 yr comment_2950926 The door seems to have stayed on Boeing's Starliner during the launch today.
August 9, 2024Aug 9 comment_2956688 A couple of useful items were in the July 2024 issue of Physics Today, which I get through a society membership. Physics Today is likely to be a challenging read for most people, but it's not a full-on technical journal; upper-division college physics majors, and those in allied sciences, can read some of the articles. That said, my BS was a double major (astronomy, and physics, which were separate albeit overlapping degree programs) and my graduate degrees are in astronomy, and the articles from some branches of physics (like material sciences, nonlinear optics, and biophysics) pretty much leave me behind. If you can find it in a library (colleges with physics departments often get it), see if you can get to it. It's a monthly. I get it in dead-tree form. Last month there was a ten-page article on martian atmosphere by Erdal Yigit. A few bits I had not known before, about how different the soil is between Earth and Mars. On Earth, a global average of the soil is 45% mineral matter, 50% is air and water, and the rest is organic matter. On Mars, it's 98% mineral and 2% air and water; as far as we have been able to detect, biological material is absent in the martian soil. And we know from the ALH84001 episode that even if we were to bring back a soil sample from Mars (which would be hard, expensive, and has the explicit dangers of cross-contamination), there are microscopic structures in martian rocks that look to be of biological origin but after intense examination are not. The idea of human exploration of Mars is discussed in a general way, mentioning but trying to avoid exaggerating or minimizing the difficulties. Simply getting there "involve[s] surviving nine months of space travel with limited room and resources in a rather unhealthy environment for the human body and mind." It mentions the alternative of setting up a base camp and training station on the Moon, which is what NASA's Artemis program is attempting. Then there is the problem that the surface conditions of Mars are extraordinarily hostile. The thin atmosphere means that the harmful parts of the solar spectrum (e.g., the hard UV) reaches the surface unattenuated. The lack of a magnetic field means the high-energy charged particles of the solar wind and other sources of cosmic rays reach the surface in full force. The dust storms are seasonal and last for months; the temperatures are extremely low; the atmosphere is tenuous but the surface winds are high speed. "It is a technological mystery whether human suits and settlements can ever be designed to provide continuous protection from these conditions." Some even further-out ideas are mentioned briefly. The author mentions terraforming, and the situation that this beyond currently foreseeable technology. He also mentions something I had not previously heard of: "An alternative approach would be to adapt the human genome so that it can survive in the Martian environment," which has biochemical challenges of its own, and that is leaving aside "a subject of intense ethical discussion." Finally, there's also a two-page discussion about dangers from infalling meteors/asteroids/etc. at the back of the issue which would be interest to a lot of people.
September 20, 2024Sep 20 comment_2959772 https://aasnova.org/2024/09/13/hunting-for-a-target-on-the-fly/ Nice little narrative about the hunt for the target of the New Horizons mission in which Arrokoth was found. https://aasnova.org/2024/09/03/can-we-please-have-the-black-hole-origin-story/ "Can we please have the black hole origin story?" Doing analysis of explosions (immediate impact of black hole formation) in remote galaxies and trying to get at what formation scenario is at work in these events. Edited September 20, 2024Sep 20 by Cancer
September 25, 2024Sep 25 comment_2960093 My newsfeed has had several stories about asteroid 2024 PT5, discovered in August, which is about to do a loop-de-loop around the Earth as a temporary "mini moon" before moving away from the Earth again in its orbit around the sun. This seems to be one of the better stories in that it includes an animation of the asteroid's path. They say it's about 10 meters, or 33 feet, across, but the article fails to give a measurement in giraffes. I consider this a shocking failure of pop-science journalism. All about Earth's temporary second moon as 2024 PT5 asteroid gets snared by our planet's gravity (msn.com) Dean Shomshak
October 2, 2024Oct 2 comment_2960591 Barnard's Star has a planet Barnard's Star is the closest single-star system to us, but otherwise the system isn't especially interesting. Nevertheless, it's clear there's planets all over this frickin' part of the Galaxy.
October 3, 2024Oct 3 comment_2960633 I like how the article specifies that Barnard's Star is both "about six light-years" from the Sun, and six light-years from Earth. In case somebody doesn't know the Earth and Sun are right next to each other, I guess. If I ever revive my Star HERO campaign, I'll have to add a note about Barnard's Star b to the description of Barnardia Colony. This is one of the largest manufacturing centers in human space, a collection of moon bases and space facilities around superjovian planet. Its most important products are strange matter, muonic matter, and magnetic monopoles, produced in banks of gigantic particle accelerators. Once you have the industrial infrastructure for that, building anything else is easy. Here's the flag/spacesuit patch for Barnardia. The ring is meant to represent a synchrotron, though that's probably not how the magnets are arranged around real particle accelerators. Eh, maybe it's a design we haven't invented yet. Dean Shomshak
October 4, 2024Oct 4 comment_2960679 Pop sci reporting on exoplanets doesn't always draw a clear line between reliable observation, reasonable inference, and wild-ass guess. Still, these are some pretty wild planets -- though Star HERO characters could not land on most of them. 32 alien planets that really exist (msn.com) Dean Shomshak
October 15, 2024Oct 15 comment_2961357 NASA's latest planetary probe launches. On to Europa! https://www.npr.org/2024/10/14/nx-s1-5140540/nasa-launches-its-probe-to-europa-an-icy-moon-of-jupiter Dean Shomshak
October 16, 2024Oct 16 comment_2961425 Oh, btw: the science series NOVA is running another limited series, "Solar System." Episodes "Storm Worlds" and "Strange Worlds" have already aired, and next is "Volcano Worlds." If you miss any, just Google "PBS NOVA," and you can watch them from the PBS website. Dean Shomshak
October 22, 2024Oct 22 comment_2961792 Something new in the heavens: The first confirmed brown dwarf, Gliese 229B, has been found actually to be two brown dwarfs, closely orbiting each other. Really close: Only 16 times the Earth-Moon distance. Here's a link to the Discover magazine article; you can follow a link at the end to the abstraqct of the article in Nature about the discovery. ‘Poster Child' Brown Dwarf Is Actually Twins Orbiting Each Other (msn.com) Dean Shomshak
October 22, 2024Oct 22 comment_2961814 9 hours ago, DShomshak said: Something new in the heavens: The first confirmed brown dwarf, Gliese 229B, has been found actually to be two brown dwarfs, closely orbiting each other. Really close: Only 16 times the Earth-Moon distance. Here's a link to the Discover magazine article; you can follow a link at the end to the abstraqct of the article in Nature about the discovery. ‘Poster Child' Brown Dwarf Is Actually Twins Orbiting Each Other (msn.com) Dean Shomshak "I was cleaning Gliese 229B's room when I found this. Turns out our poster child is leading a double life!"
November 5, 2024Nov 5 comment_2963084 It may not be The Brick Moon, but we now have a wooden satellite. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/05/worlds-first-wooden-satellite-launched-into-space
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