Hello, Comet

 Comets don't swing by that often. Halley's Comet is once every 75 years or so. But some comets have even longer orbits.

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is heading for its rendezvous with the sun at the end of January through beginning of February. It's small, so we may or may not be able to see it. It's not one of those big, spectacular comets.

It doesn't have a name because the last time this particular celestial visitor dropped in...was 50,000 years ago.

To give some idea, the Neanderthals became "extinct" about 40,000 years ago. In fact, when this comet last graced the sky, modern humans hadn't made it to Europe yet!

That's a pretty long trip.

Goodbye, InSight

 After four years, InSight's mission is over. It ends for the usual reason; the robot is out of power.

The lander spent nearly 1,500 days on Mars, twice as long as the mission parameters. (NASA lowballs mission parameters fairly consistently).

What kills robots on Mars? It's almost always the same thing; an accumulation of dust on solar panels.

We need an alternative way to power things on Mars or any manned mission will spend half its time sweeping panels!

InSight taught us a lot about Martian seismology and how the red planet lives.

Uh, Guys...

 This illustration of a black hole destroying a star. Need I say what it looks like? I think not...

Image from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Breeding colony?

A fossil site in Nevada that contains a lot of ichthyosaur skeletons is now believed to be a breeding colony. At first it was thought to be a tragedy, but the 37 skeletons are over a long period of time.

Like modern marine mammals, ichthyosaurs sought a safe place and company to give birth. (Ichthyosaurs were not dinosaurs, none of whom were live bearers to our knowledge).

How do we know? From a different kind of tragedy. Some of the fossils contained the bones of newborns still in the birth canal...the bodies of ichthyosaurs who died in childbirth.

Compounds not found on Earth...

 ...in a meteor that has been sitting in the Sahara for a while.

A 15 ton meteor.

Named "Nightfall" by locals. I love that detail.

The two compounds, elaliite and elkinstantonite already have synthetic versions.

Unfortunately, Nightfall is missing and was probably broken up and sold in China.

I do wonder how it got that name? I'm guessing it really scared the locals.

Bananas versus...COVID?

 ...and influenza. Turns out there's a protein in bananas that binds to high-mannose glycans. What are those, you might ask?

They're something that's present on the surface of viruses, but not healthy cells. The protein wraps around the virus and keeps it from infecting anyone.

They also confuse your immune system, but researchers now think they have a modified version that would work as a broad spectrum antiviral against all coronaviruses and influenza strains. The research began a while ago in the hunt for a treatment for MERS.

They're also examining it for use against cancer.

Bananas. Who'd have thought it.

The Earth and Moon at the same time.

 Only 24 human beings have seen this view. If all goes well with Artemis I, that number is set to increase.

And...it cropped out the Earth. Typical. But this is a selfie of Artemis with both (click on it). Perspective is making it look like the moon is the big planet!

So far, the mission is going well. The nerve wracking thing will be reentry...

We've Seen This Movie

 Scientists just revived a virus that was frozen for 48,500 years. Yeouch. It's gonna...

...actually, don't worry. All of the viruses they've found frozen are giant viruses, otherwise known as pandoraviruses. Pandoraviruses only infect amoebas, so the chances of them mutating to infect us are really...it's not going to happen.

The worry is that something worse is also lurking, but right now we don't have to worry about a lab leak.

2022 Award Eligibility Post

I keep being told I should do this and as I don't *think* anything else will be coming out this year.

All of these are short fiction and all are eligible for the Nebula Awards and the Hugo Awards. Some are marked with additional eligibility.

"Only the Rain" in Dark Void Magazine Issue 1 Spring 2022. Also eligible: Bram Stoker Award.

"Old McDonald Saves The World" in Save the World: Twenty Sci-Fi Writers Save the Planet, June 22, 2022.

"Song of Starlight" in Analog Science Fiction & Fact July/August 2022.

"Life Is Information" in Daily Science Fiction, September 13, 2022.

"For the Sake of a Dandelion" in For the Good of the Realm: Stories of Power and Defiance, November 14, 2022. Also eligible: World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award.

That's it for 2022 unless somebody surprises me with a December release ;).

Brains Are Weird

 So, we have now discovered this:

One enzyme, and only one, supplies the energy to load neurotransmitters into containers, which is how neurons communicate. The network of neurons is, well, us. These containers store neurotransmitters and release them when they are needed.

Well, it turns out that this enzyme, V-ATPase, turns off 40% of the time. Meaning there's no loading. Does this mean those neurons can't communicate.

One theory is that the pattern of on-off in this enzyme may be another way of encoding information into our brains, one we didn't know about. This is true for all mammalian brains. It could be a problem, but it feels too deliberate to me. I bet we'll find this is key to...something.

(Birds organize their brains very differently).

Brains are weird.

Artemis Blew Off The Elevator Blast Doors

 ...and did other damage to the launch pad. Some people are arguing that NASA is downplaying it as no big deal, but the truth is?

Hardening the launch pad to handle a rocket this size was going to be a tough task and it's possible they let the damage happen so they know what to focus on.

You can't do prototypes without breaking something, and elevator doors are a bit easier to replace than, ya know, the entire rocket. It also blew up several of the pad cameras (which is pretty normal), did minor damage to nitrogen and helium supply lines, and burned paint off the deck.

Launch pad damage was to be expected. There was also some very minor damage to the venerable mobile launcher.

The elevators are the worst problem...NASA says it will take several months to fix (I'm actually figuring replace) the elevators, but they weren't planning on using this pad for a while anyway.

Why Venus Doesn't Have Dinosaurs...

 ...or anything else. The latest theory? Too much vulcanism.

Volcanos help keep Earth a vibrant, living planet. But in the past, Earth has also been the victim of what are called "large igneous provinces," where large numbers of eruptions over a long period of time cause mass extinctions. And we mean hundreds of thousands of years in some cases.

On Venus, it appears that several of these events in quick suggestion triggered the runaway greenhouse effect. 80% of the surface is lava fields.

Why did Earth escape this fate? My personal guess is that being a bit further from Sol, we have less energy and thus the eruptions here aren't quite as powerful.

We're going to study Venus more and see if this is true or not, but 80% seems like pretty damning evidence.

(I'm reminded of the Doctor Who episode "Inferno").

Artemis is at the Moon

 Not on it, but Orion has made its closest approach as part of a flyby. And it sent us this video:

The craft actually crossed into the lunar sphere on Sunday. Note the Earth setting in the background.

Hello, moon.

Artemis is away!

 Delayed just long enough to ensure that I couldn't QUITE stay up to watch it. Going to find the video, of course.

The causes of the delay were a leaking LHO valve (which was fixed by the brave Red Crew) and...

...a dud ethernet switch at range.

Really?

IT people, are you as amused as I am by this?

So, Over Under on Artemis?

 Another attempt will be made to test launch Artemis today. Do we think it will go off?

No shade on NASA if it's another scrub; rockets are complicated and this is a new rocket with inevitable teething problems. I am hoping that it will be a successful launch and will be biting my nails, but I don't see any guarantees.

CAPSTONE is On Location

Despite several issues, the CAPSTONE probe is now in lunar orbit. The 55 pound spacecraft is the first cubesat to enter lunar orbit.

The probe is designed to test the stability of the orbit for the Gateway station that is a key part of Artemis.

It will not be the only cubesat there for a while. Most space launches these days tuck cubesats into every corner to maximize payload.

Artemis I, which is scheduled to launch on Wednesday, will take no less than 10 cubesats with the Orion capsule, one of which is a lunar lander built by Japan, a technology demonstrator for lander technology.

The Inflatable Heat Shield works

 NASA's inflatable heat shield has successfully landed on Earth. The planned use case is landing crewed modules on Mars, where heat shields have to be much bigger...while there's less heat, you need to create a lot more drag to slow down.

It also allows for a heat shield that is larger than the descending craft, or for a heat shield to be attached to something which doesn't normally have one.

(For example, your fictional starship might have inflatable heat shields on escape pods, because you don't know WHAT planet you might be trying to land on...)

Things Which Make Us Special...

 One is being really good at throwing things. We're so good at throwing things cobras had to evolve a ranged defense to get us to stop being annoying.

Other animals don't do so well. I had a horse try to throw something at me once and his range and aim were terrible.

But one other kind of animal on the planet likes to throw stuff:

Octopi.

Specifically, the gloomy octopus, which lives off the Australian cost. They use their water siphon to throw away food waste.

And sometimes they aim at each other. It's definitely deliberate, they change color. And the octopus on the receiving end ducks.

We aren't sure why, but it's some kind of social behavior. It might not even be malicious. as it's usually harmless silt they throw.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03592-w

Philcon Schedule!

 Here's my schedule for Philcon, which is in the very near future. I'm not vending this year, but will be doing the following programming items:

Friday, 6pm, Reading (Room 923)

Friday, 7pm, You Got Horror in My Sci-Fi (Plaza 3)

Friday, 9pm, Climate Fiction - Hopepunk or Dystopia? (Plaza 3)

Saturday, 11am, Signing. I will have a limited number of books available for sale.

Saturday, 3pm, My First Time (Getting Published) (Plaza 4)

Saturday, 5pm, Queer Protagonists (Plaza 3)

Sunday, 11am, So You Want To Become A Panelist at an SF&F Con (Plaza 3)

Sunday, 12pm, Vintage RPG Discussion (Plaza 5)

Sunday, 1pm, Are Fictional Aliens Too Much Like Us? (Crystal 2)

I'm taking suggestions for what to read.

Fri 6:00 PM    25 Min        Room 923                   205         Readings: Jennifer Povey                          
Fri 7:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 3                    333         You Got Horror In My Sci-Fi!                      
Fri 9:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 3                    261         Climate Fiction—Hopepunk or Dystopia?           
Sat 11:00 AM   50 Min        Autograph Table            215         Autographs: Neil Clarke, Jennifer Povey           
Sat 3:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 4                    281         My First Time (Getting Published)                 
Sat 5:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 3                    256         Queer Protagonists                                
Sun 11:00 AM   50 Min        Plaza 3                    240         So You Want to Become a Panelist at an SF&F Con   
Sun 12:00 PM   50 Min        Plaza 5                    364         Vintage RPG Discussion                            
Sun 1:00 PM    50 Min        Crystal 2                  258         Are Fictional Aliens Too Much Like Us?            

Fri 6:00 PM    25 Min        Room 923                   205         Readings: Jennifer Povey                          
Fri 7:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 3                    333         You Got Horror In My Sci-Fi!                      
Fri 9:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 3                    261         Climate Fiction—Hopepunk or Dystopia?           
Sat 11:00 AM   50 Min        Autograph Table            215         Autographs: Neil Clarke, Jennifer Povey           
Sat 3:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 4                    281         My First Time (Getting Published)                 
Sat 5:00 PM    50 Min        Plaza 3                    256         Queer Protagonists                                
Sun 11:00 AM   50 Min        Plaza 3                    240         So You Want to Become a Panelist at an SF&F Con   
Sun 12:00 PM   50 Min        Plaza 5                    364         Vintage RPG Discussion                            
Sun 1:00 PM    50 Min        Crystal 2                  258         Are Fictional Aliens Too Much Like Us?            

It's Just 90 Light Years Away...

 ...and it's very, very dead. A white dwarf not that far away from us...10.7 billion years old...has "planetary debris" around it.

It was a larger star than the sun, but did not go nova. Instead, it swelled into a red giant and then collapsed into a white dwarf...the eventual fate of our own solar system.

And now the star itself is "polluted" by debris, and it proves that there were rocky worlds in that system.

These planets...and any inhabitants...died before the Earth was formed.

Maybe we have missed our neighbors in time as well as space.

Slime Molds...

 T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is apparently a bit obsessed with them, just saying.

But slime molds have no brain or nervous system...but can solve problems. Slime molds are members of the protist kingdom, which is where we file the extremely weird shit.

A slime mold is one cell but with lots of nuclei. Basically, the nuclei never bother to separate themselves with cell membranes.

P. polycephalum, a common slime mold, can navigate mazes if you bribe it with, of all things, oats. (It doesn't eat the oats, it eats bacteria that lives on oats).

It can solve the traveling salesman problem.

It has memory.

It can fuse with other slime molds to pass on that memory. I.e., communicate.

One researcher tried putting one on a growth medium used for mammal cells and it promptly tried to escape by building a weird three-dimensional structure to pull itself out. The theory is it hated the taste!

No, it can't handle abstract reasoning, but it solves its own problems, the ones it needs to.

And it tells us cognition does not, in fact, need a brain.

There's Gold In Them There...

 ...asteroids.

NASA's Psyche mission missed its launch window this year, but is apparently still going to happen. And the target is 16 Psyche, which is worth more than...

...the entire economy of Earth. No, I'm not kidding. From what we can tell, it just has that much gold in it.

This is why futurists who dream big like asteroid mining. Gold is not just for pretty jewelry, it's vital for electronics.

The issue, of course, is getting all that gold where it will be useful.

However, other materials found in asteroids might be used right where they are found; as a way to not have to bring metal out of a gravity well.

The mission will also test a form of infrared laser communication that will increase the bandwidth we have to communicate with deep space craft.

Are Neanderthals Extinct Because We Were Too...

 ...sexy? Hot?

A new paper theorizes that the reason for Neanderthal extinction is that too many of them were mating with modern humans...and not with each other.

And it also notes that Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has been lost, which might indicate that there was only one successful breeding...between a male Neanderthal and a female modern.

When breeding equine hybrids, the vast majority are mules (male donkey, female horse). Hinnies (male horse, female donkey) are much rarer because it is harder for a stallion to get a jenny pregnant. People tend only to breed hinnies when they really like the cross as it often takes several matings to be successful. And in ligers, the mating is indeed only successful in one direction. (The loss of the Neanderthal Y chromosome is indicative of a feline-type hybrid pattern, which also includes the first generation males being infertile).

Also interesting...the late Neanderthal sequences don't show any modern DNA.

Which might also tie into that if the humans that expanded into Europe were matrilocal. In a matrilocal society, you become a member of your mother's clan or tribe. Neanderthals appear to have been patrilocal in Siberia, but we don't know in Europe. It's also possible that a lot of these matings were trysts rather than longer term relationships, perhaps due to the language barrier. But the theory is that Neanderthal individuals were joining modern groups (I know that's an awkward phrasing, but both species are, in fact, human) and removing themselves from the Neanderthal gene pool.

If the vast majority of hybrids were born to anatomically modern mothers and stayed with those mothers, then our ancestors benefitted from useful Neanderthal genes...but not the reverse.

So, it's possible Neanderthals are extinct because Neanderthal men couldn't resist modern women.

InSight is almost done.

 The InSight lander will run out of power some time in the next few years. The craft's solar panels are now completely clogged with dust (this is why solar power is not honestly great for Mars. Any settlements would be better served with a small nuclear reactor, or somebody will be constantly cleaning panels).

The four year old lander has studied seismic activity on Mars and given us an idea of the red planet's composition and interior.

ForeSight, the model used for testing, will be crated up. Likely its ultimate destination will be a museum.

It's sad, but Mars landers and rovers have a finite life...and the big reason why is that pesky dust.

Again, We're Not All Going To Die...

 Well, eventually, but please ignore the tabloid headlines about a "planet killer" earth crossing asteroid. Does it exist? Yes.

Is it going to hit Earth? Maybe...centuries from now.

Let's worry about climate change...by that point either we'll be extinct or we'll have planetary defenses.

And none of US are going to be alive to worry about it.

(Yes, a 1km wide asteroid hitting the Earth would be very, very bad, although it's still a lot smaller than the one that killed the dinosaurs, which was about 12km wide...)

Something Spooky for Halloween

 Listen to this sound.

Creaks, heavy breathing, mysterious footsteps. It's the stuff of nightmares.

Somebody's definitely in the attic. And I think they're eating up there. I don't want to know what they're eating.

Spoiler space!

It's a sonic representation of the Earth's magnetic field. It's one of the good guys, people. But wow for CREEPY.

Chasing Nightmares Away

 We all get the occasional nightmare. For people with nightmare disorder, however, nightmares become a nightly parade of terror.

Therapy is the answer, typically something called imagery redirection therapy, where you mentally rehearse your nightmares and then change them to something better.

But a new study shows that associating a pleasant sound with something good and then playing it into your ears during REM sleep dramatically reduces nightmares.

Amusingly, they used the piano chord C9. But I suppose you could use any sound you liked. Because ya gotta hack your brain to get rid of nightmares.

No, We Aren't All About To Die From a Solar Storm

 I just found one which said we're "due" for a massive solar storm comparable to the worst one in history, which according to these people, was in AD774-775, based on tree ring data, and doesn't map to solar activity.

Aliens?

And now they're claiming this happens every 1,000 years and another one will hit us soon, and it will start forest fires and basically, yup, we're all going to die.

It's estimated at 10 times higher than the Carrington event. And it would, of course, send us back to the stone age, and we're all going to die.

But a solar storm that doesn't correlate with sun activity? And one of the team says there is a "one percent chance" of seeing this within the next decade.

Except we already had a solar storm about a thousand years after this one. Ya know, the Carrington event. True, it wasn't nearly as powerful, but...

I don't buy it. Of course, I can't read the actual study because it's paywalled. Including any of the caveats.

There was also a pretty bad one that "turned the skies red in the north" in East Asia (auroras coming south).

Then there's the one we just dodged in 2012, that was Carrington strength.

Yes, this is why we need to learn to predict these things (if you turn everything off before the storm hits, it will be fine). But I'm finding this one a little hard to buy. And grumbling about paywalls.

Other ways stars can form

 Stars are born in nebulae, right?

But they can have other origins too. One is apparently when galaxies collide. The collision between IC1623, actually two galaxies, is generating stars at 20 times the rate of the Milky Way.

And the James Webb has let us actually see this. Galaxies spawning stars when they...I mean, it kind of is a form of mating, isn't it.

Sometimes I see stars as alive. Now is one of those times.

Uh Oh, the Thought Police are Coming

 ...Well, not really. Yes, we can now use fMRI to read thoughts without electrodes, but we can't do it from across the room.

And by reading thoughts we mean the semantic meaning of thoughts, not word-for-word translations. The primary use of this technology, ultimately, would be to allow thought control of devices without the need to implant electrodes. This could be anything from a completely paralyzed person controlling their wheelchair (and potentially a speech synthesizer) to "Alexa, play..."

fMRI machines are way too big to do this just yet and the likely first use will be mobility and other devices for the disabled when we do crack it.

And possibly the thought police. Let's hope not, though.

Red Dwarfs and Habitable Planets

 We keep going back and forth about the chances of planets orbiting red dwarfs being habitable.

GJ1252b is evidence for, sadly, at least fewer of them being so. The planet is so close, because this star is so cold, that its atmosphere is being blown off.

No atmosphere = no volatiles = no life. We're more likely to find something in the atmosphere of Jupiter.

Of course, this is just one planet, and we have a lot more research to do. Especially as GJ1252b is, in any case, too close to be habitable based on temperature. It's not even in the habitable zone. But some scientists are, indeed, saying this is a bad sign.

(But what an interesting mining colony...if we could survive the temperatures).

If You Have Clear Skies...

 ...and less light pollution, head outside tonight with a blanket. It's the best night to see the Orionid meteor shower, which is caused by Halley's Comet.

Makes me wish I wasn't living in a city...ah well.

Neanderthal Families

 We don't know a lot about what kind of social groupings Neanderthals lived in...and we don't want to assume that they were like ours. Like any of ours. Neanderthals, like humans, may well have varied.

But the remains of 11 Neanderthals in the Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains proved to be closely related, indicating that they were part of an extended family or clan that lived in that area. They even found a father and daughter (likely indicating that the father lived with or near his mate). The circumstances show that the 11 people were likely killed in some kind of disaster or freak weather. As this is Siberia, a blizzard is a reasonable suspect.

The pattern also showed that at least these Neanderthals were patrilocal, that is women moved in with their husbands in most cases not the other way around.

Of course, this is one group and likely reflects only Siberian Neanderthals. Again, we arrange things differently in many places, so likely they did too.

R.I.P. James McDivitt

There are some astronauts that are household names. Neil Armstrong, of course. Buzz Aldrin. But other names are known only to space geeks.

The Apollo program featured numerous astronauts, including the first American to walk in space, Edward H. White II.

James A. McDivitt was the commander on that mission, Gemini 4.

In 1969, he commanded Apollo 9, which everyone forgets about. It's the mission where they tested the lunar module. People tend to forget about test flights.

Like all of the Apollo astronauts, McDivitt was an air force veteran. He joined the Air Force in 1951 and was accepted for pilot training with zero experience. He flew 145 combat missions in the Korean War then went to the University of Michigan to study aeronautical engineering...and that's where he met Edward White.

NASA was apparently quite willing to send best friends up together. Which makes sense. There wasn't much space in that capsule!

After Apollo 9, McDivitt was promoted to manage the program. He retired in 1972.

White, unfortunately, was killed in the 1967 Apollo 1 preflight fire. McDivitt spent many years as a private consultant.

He passed away yesterday at the age of 93. Apollo is vanishing into history.

Let's remember everyone who played important roles, not just the men who walked on the moon.

Nothing can escape from a black hole...

 ...right?

Well, apparently, black holes can and do burp. Three years ago, a black hole at the center of another galaxy swallowed a star.

Now it's got indigestion and is spewing bits of said star. Which we didn't think could happen, but that's the wonder of science.

We don't know what we don't know.

Something in space just went Kaboom

 Which happens a fair bit. But we just detected a gamma ray burst that can only have been produced by a star 30 to 40 times the mass of the sun going supernova.

Don't worry, it's 2 billion light years away. And was still bright enough to saturate our detectors, because gamma ray bursts are ridiculously bright.

Now it's most likely a black hole...and has been for longer than our species has existed. Humbling, right?

Just Found Out About What the National Academies Are Up To

 They have introduced an award for best science communicator!

This is of interest to anyone writing hard SF, because these are people who can help you with your research. Also, encouraging scientists to communicate their work better is a good thing.

Here are the various winners:

https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2022/10/national-academies-announce-inaugural-recipients-of-eric-and-wendy-schmidt-awards-for-excellence-in-science-communications

All people who's work you should watch out for if you're trying to understand a knotty problem...not to mention the fact that hard SF is itself a form of science communication.

Supernova Early Warning System?

 We have now developed a system to detect when a red supergiant is going to go supernova.

And it's familiar to everyone who knows about tsunamis.

You know. When the ocean goes away, run, because it will come back.

Turns out that right before a star explodes, it dims so drastically from released material that it might actually disappear.

What we don't yet know is how long before it explodes, except that it appears to be less than a year.

But hopefully enough time to point our telescopes in the right direction.

Of course, if you're near the star when this happens, you may want to, well.

Run.

DART mission appears a success

 So, the preliminary results are in and yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have moved an asteroid.

Because it hit harder than planned, it moved the asteroid further than planned. Which is a math issue.

This was a proof of concept. It showed that controlled impactors can indeed potentially deflect an asteroid, and the cost compared to the cost of a major strike is, well, minimal.

Planetary defense is go.

Of course, there's a lot more work to be done, including more precise long term measurements that will help us do that tricky math.

When Writing Your Asteroid Disaster Novel...

 It seems that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs had another effect too. An earthquake.

An earthquake that lasted for weeks.

Maybe even months.

This would have been 50,000 times more powerful than the 2004 Sumatra quake. You know, the 9.1.

So if you are planning on fictionally destroying the Earth with a giant asteroid...don't forget the giant earthquake. Yeouch.

Small wonder most large animals didn't survive.

The crows are outside laughing.

Capstone Back In Action

 The CAPSTONE spacecraft is back under control. Phewf. That would have been a quite expensive piece of hardware to watch spin off into space.

Seems that a software issue was causing a thruster valve to stay partially open. But as it was a software issue, they were able to patch it and regain control.

Imagine being that coder...

A little sad

 The Indian Space Organization has announced that the mission of the Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter is officially over.

The orbiter's design lifespan was six months. It lasted eight years. Stuff that is built to handle being flung off the planet often lasts longer than initially intended.

The craft has now lost power and will eventually crash into Mars.

Originally intended as proof of technology (or perhaps more accurately as India showing they could do it), Mangalyaan did some really good science that often went unnoticed. This is the orbiter that created the atlas of Mars' poles and helped us better understand how dust storms on Mars really work.

It also proved that sometimes cheap and rugged is better than expensive and high tech. Worth remembering that sometimes, you really need the space equivalent of an old Land Rover.

Ah, heat shields...

 One of the biggest issues with coming back to Earth from space is that our atmosphere protects us from impacts quite nicely.

I mean, we still get some, but compare the moon.

Unfortunately, our atmosphere also "protects" us from our own returning spacecraft. Friction as the object enters the atmosphere causes intense heat that can destroy a spacecraft.

The Columbia accident shows us what happens when the technology we use to protect our ships fails.

Next week, NASA will launch a test of a new kind of protective technology. The LOFTID (Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator) mission will test an inflatable heat shield. If it works, then it will significantly reduce the weight of heat shields...and thus the cost of getting the craft off the planet in the first place.

It's primarily intended for Mars, but may also be used for large return payloads to Earth...such as if we start mining platinum or other rare materials from near earth asteroids. The weight of the shield has historically limited what we can return.

Wishing them luck (and wondering how I never heard about this until today).

The Pacific will Cease to Exist...

...but don't worry, not for about 300 million years. We've finally got some good predictions for how continental drift is going to shape up, and in that time the continents will come back together.

And the lead current theory is that the Pacific ocean will close, America slam into Asia and...

...we'll end up with "Amasia." Then eventually things will shift and they will come apart again. Probably in a different way.

Even the map isn't static, and I don't mean small countries in Europe coming together or splitting apart...

Does Life Need Water?

 It's a familiar argument. Does life need to be based off of carbon and use water as a universal solvent?

Maybe. Certainly our kind of life does. But life also needs to not be wet for certain things to happen. So, how does that even work?

Apparently, it works because water isn't always wet. Or rather, the reactions that start to form our kind of life need the water to have an edge. They happen where waves lash against a shore, where a stream goes down a slope.

This means something...it would be a lot harder for life to form on an entirely ocean world where there's nothing to break the water up.

(An underground or underice ocean is another matter, as water would be moved against the ice by various processes, so this doesn't mean Europa is out. And there is always not our kind of life).

Capclave Roundup!

Thank you to everyone who bought books!

Panel-wise, we did a panel on Gaming and SFF in which we had a preliminary discussion about, no kidding, board games as a storytelling mechanism. This warrants its own panel! (Mostly we were focused on the traitor mechanic).

I also very much enjoyed moderating the panel on Poverty, Class Divides and Inequality in SF. Which needed at least another hour as we didn't even get to alien class systems, UBI/replicator economies or the difference between absolute and relative poverty. Whewf. There's so much there.

Hurricane Ian did dump some rain on us, but never at a time I needed or wanted to leave the hotel ;).

Looking forward to next year already.

DART hit hard!

 The impact of the DART spaceship was...harder than expected. In fact, we think it knocked a chunk off the asteroid.

This is both good and bad. Good, because it means we can probably use the technique for larger rocks than we thought it would work for.

Bad, because you want to make sure you don't break something up, but still end up with multiple impactors. That's not great...

Still, we are thinking this is looking like a successful test, and hitting too hard is a pure engineering/math problem.

Is Artemis Jinxed?

 Possibly! They moved the Artemis I rocket back into the VAB, a complicated and lengthy process, to avoid Ian.

And now there's been a fire in the VAB. No injuries and the rocket was not damaged, but NASA hasn't worked out what caused it yet.

It could now be December before Artemis goes up...while it in theory could launch next week they want to check some "limited life" items first. All of the launch windows in November are at night and, understandably, they don't want to launch a complicated prototype in the dark...

Worlds with undersurface oceans

 Europa, Enceladus, Earth?

Yes.

Earth has more water buried in the mantle than on the surface. And right now we don't know where that water came from. Was it trapped after a comet hit?

Or does it somehow cycle with our surface oceans?

Either way...knowing would help us work out how Earth became habitable. Does this water play a role in Earth's ability to support life.

CRASH!

The DART spacecraft hit right on target last night. While it will be months if not years before we can properly assess the success of the test, the part we can control went well.

Data will now be gathered to see how much we affected the orbit of the asteroid. But we are one step closer to avoiding the fate of the dinosaurs.

(I think the crows are laughing at me in dinosaur).

(I, meanwhile, was busy talking about my work to college students...yay!)

DART experiment is tonight!

 The DART spacecraft is scheduled to collide with asteroid Didymos at 7:14pm EDT (2314 GMT) tonight.

I'm going to be quite occupied at the time, but will be checking on the results as soon as we have them. Yes, there is a camera chasing it.

Succeed or fail, this test is a key element of developing a planetary defense system. We are going to learn something important tonight.

I hope the proof of concept works. A controlled impactor is probably the best way we currently have to deflect a dangerous asteroid from, say, turning Los Angeles into a crater.

Updates on Artemis

 The fueling test went well, but they haven't cleared for another launch attempt. The next window is September 27, but in addition to the fueling, tropical weather might push back the next attempt...and it takes three days to get the rocket under shelter.

Three days.

That's how huge this thing is. I want to see a technology that means we don't need this skyscraper sized rockets anymore, don't you?

Gotta Love "Impossible" Binary Systems

 This one is a binary of a sun-like star and...a black hole. The distance is about that between Mars and the Sun. (The star is orbiting the black hole, which is obviously the more massive object).

Had they formed together, the black hole would have eaten the smaller star during its red giant phase.

So, now we have to work out how the heck this happened. Was there a third star that did get eaten? Did the black hole capture the other star?

So much fun for people who enjoy math.

Mining the Moon

It's actually started. The Chinese have successfully done a sample return of a lunar mineral which contains helium-3.

If we develop the technology, this could be used to create a fusion reaction that doesn't produce any radioactivity.

If. It's hard to use and we're probably not going to get it done before 2050, but we may be about to see a new moon race...and this one won't be quite as symbolic.

Or the Chinese claims could be, to use an old phrase, cold fusion. 

Diamonds from SPACE

 It was found in Northwest Africa, and it's a "bended" diamond that was partially converted from lonsdaleite, which can only produced at high temperature and moderate pressure...and as the pressure decreased some of it turned to a diamond. A hexagonal diamond.

That's even harder than regular diamonds.

That or it's going to wake up and turn into a Crystal Gem.

If we can duplicate this it might have some uses. But creating it appears to have required a collision between a dwarf planet and a "sizeable" asteroid so this might be hard.

Life on Mars...Redux?

 Welp. Perseverance has found some very interesting samples. These are going to be returned to Earth by a future mission, and in the mean time have been cached.

Some of them contain carbon-rich compounds, although this doesn't necessarily mean life (there are other ways these compounds could exist). But it's going to take a lot of analysis to determine that for sure...

...some of which will require bringing them back to Earth. Which of course opens the can of whether we should bring carbon-rich material from another planet to Earth. Maybe we should study it in a space station where we can toss it out an airlock if we have to.

I mean, we've all seen that movie.

Why does Saturn have rings?

 First of all, Saturn's rings are relatively young. In cosmological terms they're "new." They're only about 100 million years old.

And we have no idea how they formed. Saturn also has a ridiculous obliquity.

So, what happened? A clue is Titan, which has been rapidly migrating outward.

Saturn probably had another giant moon. Something happened to destabilize its orbit, it grazed the atmosphere and dragged material out (causing the rings) and then shot out...somewhere.

We'll probably never find it.

So, what caused that? Right now, we don't know. Something must have had an interesting gravitational effect on Saturn's system at some point.

It probably had stars in it.

Joking.

Mostly.

DART Test is on September 26

 On September 26 we are going to deliberately ram an asteroid with a spaceship. It's a test of concept for our future planetary defense system.

We'll get a ringside view courtesy of an Italian cubesat that is basically the cameraman to watch the test.

In addition to testing the system, we will do some science...we'll learn more about binary asteroids. The test is Monday evening...I'll be busy, but hopefully will find out how it went soon enough.

Earth is Probably Not the Most Habitable Planet.

 It may be the most habitable planet for us because we evolved here. But scientists have done some math and shown that if Jupiter's orbit became a bit more eccentric, so would ours.

And counterintuitively, that would make Earth more habitable. Or would it? I'm actually not convinced, as their argument is that it would make cold parts of the planet warmer.

We're already seeing that's not a great thing. They are forgetting that the arctic holds a lot of biodiversity and our best fisheries.

Despite that, Earth is still probably not the most habitable planet in the universe. There are almost certainly exoplanets out there with gentler weather and seasons, or less radiation.

Here's the thing, though? I theorize that if you make a planet too habitable...too nice...it won't evolve intelligent natives. Intelligence is a form of extreme adaptability. If your planet doesn't change, you don't need it and won't develop it because it "costs" a lot in terms of energy.

What do people here think?

Life is Information up at Daily Science Fiction

 Hoping this won't be my last piece for them (They are now on hiatus and may or may not return). It's a little flash piece about, well...the nature of life and sentience.

https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/biotech/jennifer-r-povey/life-is-information

Enjoy!

We haven't learned from Boaty McBoatface

 In fact, somebody didn't learn from grade school. Ice Giant Missions, an unofficial twitter account, asked people to make suggestions for what to name a probe sent to Uranus.

Really.

They.

Actually did that.

Yes, there were some good suggestions, including Tempest (to keep the Shakespeare theme going) and my favorite, "Bode," after Johann Elert Bode, who named the planet. Tempest appears to be "winning."

But yes there was Rocket McRocketface. There was somebody who went out of their way to make the initials spell K.L.I.N.G.O.N.

And the inevitable butt jokes. Pepper after a song by the Butthole Surfers, Acronyms for RIM and DILATE. Pegasus. Operation Butt Plug.

Think before you tweet people.

Unless, of course, this was their intended result.

Did Neanderthals Think Like Us?

Possibly...and possibly not.

We've now found evidence of higher growth of neurons in the frontal neocortex in modern humans compared to Neanderthals. This is caused by one amino acid change, one silly little mutation.

This does imply that we may in fact be smarter than Neanderthals (although they were plenty smart and clearly sentient and conscious).

It's long been theorized that a cognitive edge is what allowed us to outcompete them, although there are other strong theories (I personally like the one that Neanderthal cold adaptation meant they required a lot more calories than we do, resulting in a lower carrying capacity for territory. They were fine until we went and invented clothes).

The frontal neocortex is where we keep our executive function, which manages things like task switching.

If Neanderthals had weaker executive function than we do, then they would have difficulty with emotional regulation, planning, and seeing the bigger picture. Which would explain why we "won".

(Oh, and there's also a semi-joke circulating that autistic people think like Neanderthals and that's why we don't get on with anyone else).

But without a Neanderthal to talk to we can't be sure whether we were and are "smarter" than them. I still like clothes.

Diamonds are...

 ...as cheap as dirt.

This could become reality because somebody turned cheap plastic into diamonds.

They were very small diamonds, but they were nonetheless diamonds.

In addition to helping us understand how diamonds form on gas giants, this opens the door to turning, say, your discarded plastic water bottle into actual...actual...diamonds. It's done using lasers, and it makes diamonds that are normally made by, well, blowing things up. Or rather by highly contained explosions. On Earth, nanodiamonds are only formed by things like meteor strikes.

The nanodiamonds could be used:

* As antimicrobial agents.

* In vaccines and drug delivery systems, especially for cancer treatment.

* In tests for viral infections...this is already being done with HIV.

* In skin care.

* For after treatment of root canals and other really invasive dental stuff.

* To measure changes in weak magnetic fields.

* Other high performance sensor applications

* In optical computing

* In room-temperature quantum computing.

* In imaging systems.

If we really can make them out of plastic waste then we just discovered something really important.

It's the Diamond Age, folks. Maybe. Assuming it pans out outside the lab.

New Old Mammal

 We've pushed back the origins of mammals by about 20 million years. The new oldest mammal is Brasilodon quadrangularis, which was about 8 inches long and kind of like a shrew.

It probably spent much of its life burrowing.

Betelgeuse in the News Again

 So, it turns out that the red giant Betelgeuse was still in main sequence only two thousand years ago. Well, plus the light years it is away.

We know this from observations made by Chinese and Roman astronomers in about 100 B.C. In fact, the Chinese court astronomer at the time, Sima Qian, used Betelgeuse as an example of a yellow star. An example. This means that he considered it to be the best yellow star out there.

In about 1AD, Hyginus also described the star as yellow-orange, about the color of Saturn.

We also know that it was red by the 16th century, and perhaps we'll find observations that pinpoint when the change became visible.

(My initial reaction was "Did it change at about ya know...a certain time...and was Betelgeuse the Star of Bethlehem, but it looks like the Roman observations make it too late")

I'm actually wondering if it didn't turn visibly red until the 16th century. Surely a known yellow star turning red would have been marked down as an omen by somebody. Even if it wasn't in Europe, the Chinese, Arabs or even the Maya would have made note of it. Just a thought.

Weather Forecasting Is About to Get Better

Physicists have come up with a cost-effective way to predict coherent structures in a fluid. Earth's atmosphere behaves like a fluid and coherent structures are otherwise known as patterns of turbulence.

They might eventually be able to use this to dramatically improve weather forecasts, predict tornados with some actual accuracy, give better information about hurricane season and, of course, potentially make your next flight a little smoother. 

Take Two to the Moon

 Well, the vicinity of the moon anyway. The Artemis I launch has been rescheduled for Saturday. Don't hold your breath, it's a test launch and thus has a higher chance than normal of being scrubbed again.

The launch window is 2:17pm to 4:17pm ET with 60% favorable weather conditions.

NASA TV will start live coverage of preparations at 5:45am ET. I'm not getting up that early, but I will definitely be watching the launch if it happens.

We are going back to the moon. Decades late, but we are.

Alien tech in the ocean?

 Dr. Avi Loeb thinks so. He's planning to retrieve fragments of what might be an interstellar meteor from the ocean floor in the South Pacific. Said meteor may be an interstellar object.

He thinks it's a probe.

It's a little bit bold. On the other hand, if it did come from interstellar space, retrieving it and studying it will be worth it any way.

(This is the same interstellar object that was hard to prove because half the data was classified).

JWST Provides More Questions

 As I hoped, the JWST is starting to show us what we didn't know.

And one of the things has to do with the universe's earliest galaxies. According to Hubble, these were small, slightly chaotic and misshapen.

JWST is showing us large, well-organized galaxies, demonstrating that Hubble's results were limitations in the instrumentation.

What does this mean? One possibility is that the universe is older than we thought and these galaxies aren't that early.

Another possibility is that we're overestimating the age of these galaxies because dust and debris is messing with the red shift values we use to calculate them. This seems to be the most likely, but a more exciting explanation may yet exist.

We've Seen This Movie

 Chinese scientists have created the first mammal with a different number of chromosomes. And apparently some of their earlier attempts had "weird behaviors."

Fortunately, they're mice.

But then they bred them. With normal mice.

Guys, this is how we get Pinky and the Brain.

Then again, I might welcome our new rodent overloads.

(They're sub-fertile, at least).

A true water world may exist

 Monobiome worlds are an annoying staple of science fiction. Tatooine is not entirely infeasible (Look at Mars). Hoth might also be possible. But when that's all your characters visit...

And it seems that we may have found a world entirely covered with water.

TOI-1452b orbits one of two stars in a binary system about 100 light years away, and is slightly larger than Earth. It's in the Goldilocks zone.

And it's considerably less massive than it should be, which has led researchers to think it may be entirely covered by...water. Enceladus is also a water world, but being much further out, the ocean is frozen.

On TOI-1452b it would be liquid. Water may make up as much as 30% of its mass. James Webb may be able to test the hypothesis.

So, an entirely ocean covered planet. With two suns. Who might make that their home? There are plotbunnies resident for sure.

7 million years...

 That's how long we've been...walking on two legs. Sahelanthropus, the oldest known hominid, appears to have walked on two legs when not climbing in trees. They were about the same size as a chimpanzee, but had a more human-like face (did we lose our muzzle because it made it harder to see our feet when navigating difficult terrain?). They had chimp-like arms, with powerful forearm muscles.

We now think that a primarily bipedal gait is the thing which separates hominids from apes. But at the same time they could still climb trees, something adult humans find challenging.

(Young children, as we all know, have retained the ability and desire to climb trees. No doubt this helped keep them safe from predators during our lower tech history).

Planetary Defense is...

 ...close to go. No, we don't mean protection from little green men.

We mean protecting ourselves from ending up like the dinosaurs.

On Monday, September 26, a test will be performed in which NASA will attempt to use a robot spacecraft to deflect an asteroid by ramming it. The asteroid concerned poses no threat to Earth and is far enough away that there's no risk of us making the situation worse.

This is essentially a proof of concept...does it work and are we getting the math right...that will start the preparation for deflecting an actual threat.

I have my fingers crossed.

In Space Nobody Can Hear...

 ...well, actually, some parts of space do have enough matter for sound to propagate.

Which is how we have this. A sonification of the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster.

It sounds like whalesong.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/23/nasa-black-hole-sound/

Yes, this is heavily processed. But...definitely whalesong!

(My dad would start up about the music of the spheres being real, see, at this point).

Technological Mammals

 I just found this Wired article and have to take issue with it.

It's an analysis of the chances of a replacement species evolving if humanity becomes extinct. They argue the chances are low.

They also state multiple times that it requires the evolution of mammals!

Guys...guys...stop being so parochial. Of the second tier species that would be most likely to take our place, well, here's the list:

Chimps/other great apes (yes, mammals)

Elephants (also mammals)

Cetaceans (also mammals)

Corvids. HOLD UP. Not mammals! They'd probably be insulted.

In order of likelihood for who would take over, though?

We can pretty much dismiss cetaceans for technological civilization. It's hard to use advanced tools when aquatic and by the time they had come back out of the sea... Also no manipulative appendages.

Elephants have the problem of being so large and their manipulative appendages are pretty weak sauce. They're possible.

Chimps? They have all the physical advantages we do, but I'm placing them second because there aren't that many great apes.

The most likely species to develop a technological civilization out of our ruins?

It's the crows.

They are everywhere and are capable of making tools, have the knowledge of trade, can even handle concepts like water displacement. They hold funerals. They visit their parents.

It's the crows, people.

Dear Wired author, stop. Think. And set aside your mammal prejudice.

So, what should we grow on Mars?

 We've got those pesky perchlorates, salty soil, and no helpful microbes. What will grow?

The first crops on Mars would be soil creators. And the key crop is...alfalfa.

Alfalfa is a fodder crop typically grown to feed livestock. What you do is grow alfalfa, then plow it back in and grow turnips, radishes and lettuces. It will grow in  simulated Martian regolith as long as we flush out the perchlorates (we need something which eats perchlorates, dang it).

Water on Mars will need to be desalinated.

Alfalfa could also be used to feed livestock, but only two major livestock species are feasible due to their size: Rabbits and guinea pigs. Sorry, Martian colonists, if you want meat you'll have to eat Thumper.

Other food crops could be grown hydroponically if we can get the water desalinated.

Would People Please Stop Copying Hollywood Movies?

 Apparently, trying to tunnel into a bank vault is not a good idea. This group of Italian clowns failed to appropriately shore up their vault tunnel.

It collapsed on them. Three of the four escaped, but one poor schmuck had to be dug out by firefighters, which took six hours. He's apparently going to survive to face charges.

They are not saying that was what was going on, but it appears that's what was going on. "We don't know for sure that they're thieves."

In other words, shore up your vault tunnel.

Or just don't try to do movie stunts. Sigh.

Is the SLS Ready to Go?

 Maybe! NASA hopes to launch one before the end of August. It's 320 feet long, significantly more powerful than the Saturn V, and five years behind schedule.

Let's hope it doesn't experience a "catastrophic failure." Which is engineer speak for blowing up...and rockets on their maiden flights do have that habit.

The current launch window is on August 29, but of course weather, technical issues, range safety concerns, etc, could delay it.

But if all goes well you will be able to watch it live on NASA TV at 8:33am EST on August 29.

Schrodinger's Galaxy?

 No, it's not a galaxy that may or may not exist.

It's a galaxy that may or may not be a very long way away (which also means a long time ago).

The culprit is CEERS-1749. We may be seeing it as it was around 220 million years after the big bang, based off of red shift.

Except it may be in a cluster with two galaxies that are about 12.5 billion years ago...much, much younger. Meaning the red shift is some kind of illusion, likely caused by a lot of dust or being what we call "redshift quiescent" - that is that star formation ceased early in development.

The universe keeps getting weirder.

Mammoth steaks?

 Personally, no. But there's talk about bringing back mammoths (which, by the way I don't actually agree with).

And, of course, talk about eating them.

I have a line I draw, and that is that if it passes the mirror test or demonstrates abstract thought, no. Cows, while fairly smart, do not have this capability. Neither do horses, although I prefer not to eat horse as it feels like I'm breaking an agreement with the ones I ride.

Elephants, however, do. If mammoths are as smart as elephants...then no, I won't eat them.

(By the way, the tl;dr on why I don't like it is because we need elephant mothers to birth elephants, not mammoths, and any mammoths we make will be culturally...elephants...there will be differences. Mules are culturally horses, but still show cognitive differences. But...we can't actually bring back mammoths because we can't restore their culture).

We've seen this movie...

 Scientists have inserted human genes into yeast. Ack! Yeast monster!

Actually, yeast cells operate remarkably like human cells, which is probably part of why food fermented with yeast is so important to us.

In this case, it's human muscle genes.

This is something that's being worked on, and it allows us to analyze a single process. The most recent one involves a mechanism that is involved in some cancers, so we could use it to study tumor processes safely.

But I can't help but think of the sourdough starter familiar from Kingfisher's A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.

Top Scientist Pranks the World

 A French scientist released a close up of a slice of chorizo and claimed it was a JWST image of Proxima Centauri. It was, of course, a prank. He posted it to see who would notice and to make a point about not believing anything you see in the galaxy.

I didn't see it at the time, but I would like to think I would have noticed. Mmm...chorizo.

Why are some meteors green?

 A green meteor burned up in the sky over New Zealand. This might sound weird, but it's actually fairly common.

If a meteor is traveling fast enough, it can get so hot that the iron and nickel in it glow green. And if you are close to the poles, green meteor tails can also be caused by the same magnetic phenomenon that creates auroras.

Which is why New Zealand gets more of them.

No aliens. Sadly.

So many pretty pictures...

 

Image from NASA.

That is the Cartwheel Galaxy. It is 500 million light years away.

It's a composite from the JWST's two infrared cameras. The red light is from MIRI and the blue from NIRCam. (Most of these kinds of astronomical images are false color).

Those thin spokes are dust. Lots and lots of dust. This galaxy formed in a merger, so...

The data associated with this image will tell us more about how stars form.

Why is the Earth in Such a Hurry?

 June 29th was the shortest day since we invented atomic clocks in the 1960s. In general, the Earth is slowing down, so why did this happen?

The answer appears to be related to the Chandler wobble, which is the typical small irregular movement of the geographical poles. From 2017 to 2020 it stopped, for reasons that presumably have to do with shifts deep in the Earth's core.

If it speeds up further we may have to institute a negative leap second to keep civic time with solar time. Let's hope not...because I can hear every IT professional groaning from here.

No, a Chinese Rocket is Probably Not Going to Fall On Your Head

Yes, China needs to do something about massive 5B boosters falling back to Earth in an uncontrolled manner.

No, it's unlikely it will land on your head.

There is a fairly high chance, though, that it will land somewhere in the U.S. The debris will reenter the atmosphere on...well, some time on Saturday, or maybe Sunday. That's the real issue. We don't know.

It could also land in Africa, India, Brazil...

But the risk of it landing on your head is far, far lower than the risk of being struck by lightning. Please ignore the Daily Mail.

(Actually, always ignore the Daily Mail. Except to mock them).

Underground, Overground, Wombling free...

 ...the Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.

If you aren't familiar with those lyrics, then you're probably not a Gen-X Brit. First aired in 1973, The Wombles was a stop motion cartoon based off of a series of books by Elizabeth Beresford. It ran for only two seasons (but 60 episodes because they were short)...but was re-run many times.

The cartoon featured a group of pointy-nosed, fluffy (vaguely hedgehog-like) creatures who lived beneath Wimbledon Common by collecting and recycling litter. It had a not at all subtle "Reuse and recycle" message, a catchy theme song, and a narrator.

The Wombles didn't even have voice actors. All of the characters were voiced by one man. Sadly, the show is not currently available to watch legally and appears to be out of print in DVD. Britbox, come on, you're falling down on the job. A couple of additional episodes were made in 2016 with actual voice actors, but it doesn't appear to have gone anywhere.

So, why am I dredging up this nostalgia-fest?

The one man who did all the voices for The Wombles was Bernard Cribbins. He started his career on the stage at the age of 14.

He ended it in the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary special where he was seen reprising Wilfred Mott in a wheelchair.

He was also well known for narration work in the long running series Jackanory (in which the wombles were first introduced) and played a role in several of the Carry On movies. He was even in a couple of episodes of The Avengers and played bit parts in the 1967 Bond parody Casino Royale. He was in one of the forgotten Doctor Who Dalek TV movies.

Bernard Cribbins did the 60th anniversary in a wheelchair and died today at the age of 93. I do believe that was a fine note to go out on for an actor who is not nearly as well known as he deserved.

Making good use of the things that we find

Things that the everyday folks leave behind

We Just Found Where To Put Our Moon Colonies

 There are apparently pits and caves on the moon where the temperature stays at about 63 degrees. You know, comfortable for humans.

And some of them may have caves that could also be a stable temperature. This also indicates that it would be easy to build habitats with similar characteristics.

One of the issues with the moon is wild temperature swings. These pits and caves fix that.

It's Not Aliens...Right?

 Right.

A meteorite found in Diablo Canyon in 1891 has been analyzed and turned out to contain an interlocking form of graphite and diamond, never seen before, that forms a layered pattern with stacking faults.

And if we can duplicate this in the lab we can create a material that's light as a feather, strong as a diamond, transparent, highly conductive, and has adjustable electronic properties.

That's so useful one has to wonder about the origin of this meteorite.

It's probably not aliens. It may well only have formed when the meteorite hit.

But this could be used for targeted medicines, tiny tiny electronics with fast charging speeds and bendier screens.

Want a smart tattoo?

RIP David Warner

 We just lost an icon. I think that's the best word, because let's just list some of David Warner's performances:

Alpha in Men In Black: The Series

Spicer Lovejoy in Titanic

Lord Agon in Beastmaster III

Archmage in the Gargoyles series

Ra's Al Ghul in the 1990s animated Batman series

Chancelor Gorkon in Star Trek VI

St. John Talbot in Star Trek V

The Evil Genius in Time Bandits

Ed Gillinger/Sark/Master Control Progam in TRON

Duke Richard of Lionsgate in The Legend of Prince Valiant

Jack the Ripper in Time After Time

He also played at least three kings of England (George III, Edward II and Henry VI) and showed up at least once in so many places: The Omen, Remington Steele, Perry Mason, Twin Peaks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Lost World, Tales From The Crypt, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Star Trek: TNG, Murder, She Wrote, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Babylon 5, the Beastmaster movies, Freakazoid!, the 1990s Spider-Man animated series, Winnie the Pooh, Total Recall 2070, The Outer Limits, the 1990s Superman animated series (as Ra's, so it was presumably a crossover), Star Wars, Baldur's Gate, Batman Beyond, Buzz Lightyear, Planet of the Apes, Scooby Doo, the Hogfather movie, Doctor Who, Midsomer Murders, Penny Dreadful, Mary Poppins, Teen Titans...

He mostly played villains and I think we will all remember how much scenery he consumed. I certainly won't forget his performance as Gorkon.

David Warner died this week at the age of 80.

I think we just found the Vortex

 

No, this isn't the new Doctor Who title sequence even if it does have a blue box in the center...uh oh.

We're...doomed.

Does Reality Exist?

Remember the old saw about if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there, did it happen? (Bad example, because the trees are there, the various forest critters are there, a forest by definition can't be empty, but it's the one everyone likes).

Physicists in China have come up with a quantum parlor trick called the Mermin-Peres game that demonstrates that if you use a specific set of measurements, you will always win.

Measuring reality appears to create it.

Philosophically, this implies that the universe can't exist without observers and from what we know, observers have to be alive.

So, what was alive right after the Big Bang? Or are we...or some other sapient species...creating the universe by observing it even though we can't exist without the universe? Eek, quantum headaches.

(You could also use this as a reasonable argument for the existence of God...or at least of some kind of Prime Mover. But I don't think the system requires God).

Are You an Engineer?

 If so, NASA needs your help. They are tossing out a challenge to crowdsource the design of a starshade.

So, what this would do is block glare from stars, allowing a ground-based telescope to search for exoplanets. You know, one we have already built. This would be cheaper than another space telescope by a lot.

Details about the contest are here.

Solar Flare Time

 We're about to get hit by a fairly big one. It's not going to cause any damage.

However, if you are going anywhere unfamiliar today, you may want to get directions first. Today's storm is expected to cause some disruption to GPS systems, meaning your phone might not know where you are for a bit.

Be careful out there.

(And learn to read a map, dangit! I don't just say that because I'm a dinosaur!)

It's Not an Accident that Aspirin Kills Pain

 So, salicylic acid, which is the plant-based equivalent to aspirin, is produced by most plants. And now we know why.

Plants produce more salicylic acid when they are under environmental stress.

And we're starting to think plants may in fact feel pain.

So, plants evolved a natural chemical to regulate reactive oxygen species (things like sunburn) and now we copy it to treat our own stress-related aches and pains.

Is it aliens?

 No, it's a magnetar, but it's fascinating. It's a fast radio burst...that's about 1,000 times longer/slower than average with a clear pattern.

The signal itself had a heartbeat inside it. It's from a long way away. And it's peculiarly consistent.

What is it? A magnetar or pulsar that is, for whatever reason, rotating much more slowly than average. One day we'll understand how these things work. One day...

Childhood and Smarts

 Is intelligence a factor of absolute brain size? The crows say "Nope." How about brain/body ratio? Not really.

Turns out that what you need to be smart is...

...to take longer over developing your brain.

Intelligence is directly related to childhood. To an extended period of development dominated by play. It's true of the crows. It's true of parrots.

And the human brain takes over two decades to fully develop.

We still don't know everything, but if you're going to create an intelligent species, then it might be a reasonable assumption that it will have a long childhood.

Don't Worry, We're Not All Going To Die

 Scientists have now done the math as to how much a passing star would need to perturb the solar system to destroy it.

0.1 percent if it nudged Neptune. Said star would have to pass within 23 billion miles of us (Proxima Centauri is 24.8 trillion miles away). And it would start a slow process that might take, uh...billions of years.

So, no, we're not all going to die and those disaster movies don't really work.

(Although there's still a plot bunny here...)

I Know It's Everywhere...

 

...but I can't stop staring at it.

The six pointed things are stars.

Every other dot or streak in that image is a galaxy. Don't try to rub the smudge near the center from your screen.

That smudge is caused by gravitational lensing. We are literally looking at gravitational lensing, which was theoretical not all that long ago.

The image is a test image. Remember the first Hubble Deep Field image? This is the same part of the sky, which is intentional.

It's 4.6 billion years old. This is fossil light. This is the universe as it was. Makes me wonder how many civilizations rose and fell before we even left our oceans.

Note that this image is all in the infrared, hence why everything is red and orange. It's been digitally processed to fall within the human visual range.

More images will be released in an hour or so. This is it.

The JWST is ready to do science.

Japan, You Are Either Awesome or Overcomplicating Things

 A Japanese team has designed "artificial gravity living facilities" that would spin on other planets to equal Earth gravity.

I get why they would want to do this, because we evolved for 1G and our bones don't like not having the resistance.

But here are the very real issues:

1. The one for the moon would spin every 20 seconds. Even with no outside cues, can we be sure this won't create vertigo? Maybe even knowing it would make you throw up!

2. How do you get in and out.

Oh, and they are also pipe dreaming about...an...interplanetary space train that will generate its own gravity. They want to put bullet trains in space, because of course they want to put bullet trains in space.

This sounds more like the plot for an anime than real scientific research, but it would be kind of neat if they can pull it off.

Ball pit asteroid?

 It appears that the surface of Bennu, the asteroid we got a sample from two years ago, more resembles a ball pit than anything solid.

In fact, NASA said that if OSIRIS-REx had tried to stay on the asteroid it would have sunk in.

There's a massive plot bunny there. Somebody tries to land on the wrong kind of asteroid, gets stuck, and has to be rescued.

More Pretty Pictures!

 Could I get any more excited about the JWST?

Probably, but not much at this point. This beautiful fine guidance sensor test image is on SciTechDaily.

The things with the pointy ends are stars. The other things in the image? Those are galaxies. Space is awfully big.

We can't be alone. We can't.

Pretty Pictures

 A little stressed today, so I'm just going to redirect everyone to these pretty pictures.

These are the finalists for Astronomy Photographer of the Year.

I'm particularly fond of the Iceland one. The comet is also really cool. Oh, and one of them has the Clifton Suspension Bridge!

No, Tabloids, We're Not All Going To Die

This time it's The Sun saying that the Mars sample return mission will unleash an alien virus and, of course, we're all going to die.

So, here's a few reasons to relax:

1. All samples will be studied in a full biosafe facility. They can't be sterilized before returning them because that would destroy the stuff we're looking for.

2. It's highly unlikely anything in the samples will be alive anyway, due to the heavy radiation. Any remaining life on Mars is going to be pretty deep underground.

3. Anything that evolved on Mars, even if it had a common ancestor with Earth life, is going to be far enough away from us that it is highly unlikely it will be pathogenic.

So, no, not much chance of a Space Plague <tm>, as much as SF authors love them.

Capstone is On Its Way

 The Capstone satellite, which will map out orbits for Lunar Gateway, has broken Earth orbit and is heading for the moon.

Oh, and even more fun, they still have some fuel in the tank of the orbital transfer vehicle that put it on its course. They now have to decide what to do with it, because we can't waste rocket fuel, right? ;).

Mr. Nobody's Rocket

 Many years ago I worked as a part time admin assistant at the National Institutes of Health. I was working lab-adjacent (never actually went into the lab because, ya know, bio-control).

One day I discovered a mouse in my office. This mouse was clearly a lab mouse, of a strain used primarily for gene knockout research.

"Who lost a mouse?"

Not a single scientist on that floor was willing to admit to having lost a mouse. And we never did recapture Mr. Nobody's Mouse. It eventually disappeared. (Threats to bring in a cat were made).

Mr. Nobody's Mouse is probably still a story there. It's certainly one of mine.

Now we have Mr. Nobody's Rocket. Because the rocket that slammed into the moon?

Nobody wants to admit to having launched it.

It made a double crater too, which is really weird.

Maybe it's aliens?

More likely it's somebody's spy satellite launch gone very, very wrong.

Did Man's Best Friend Befriend Us Twice?

Genetic studies hint that we may in fact have domesticated dogs not once, but twice. Overall, dogs are more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia, but African and near east dogs...have up to half of their ancestry from a different wolf population.

It's possible this is from inbreeding, but it's also possible, even probable that dogs, with their natural social structure so close to ours, were in fact domesticated twice.

One of Our Probes Just Upgraded...

 .from Windows 98. Or at least from software based off of it.

Don't look so shocked. The space shuttle used floppy disks.

Science fiction writers would do well to remember that spacecraft last a while and their software is likely to be, not state of the art, but slightly outdated. Especially robots.

Growing Plants in Total Darkness?

 It's now possible...due to a form of artificial photosynthesis. Plants are grown on a substrate of acetate that supports their physiology. It's generated through an electrocatalytic process.

They've so far managed to grow algae (at faster rates than natural photosynthesis), cowpeas, tomatoes, tobacco, rice, canola, and green peas.

This just made moon colonies much more feasible as you won't need to use grow lamps to keep plants alive through the 14 day night. It could also be used on Mars, on space colonies. On Ganymede, Expanse readers ;).

It also may make the science fiction trope of people on space colonies eating algae more likely...there's all kinds of ways to make it palatable. Algae could also be grown to scrub carbon dioxide as part of the life support system.

It could also be used to feed farmed fish to provide protein for our colonists. Of course, we would have to either modify the algae not to be toxic (many green algae have chemical defenses) or carefully choose strains.

And on Earth, this could be used to grow crops indoors or to increase yields.

(Of course, what's the over under on marijuana growing fine this way too? Ahem)

Socialization May Make Us Smarter

 Our brains literally change when we engage in activities together. They synchronize.

And the more they synchronize, the better the group gets along and the better people are. For example, in a classroom, students who's brains sync up are more engaged and do better.

Which may be how brainstorming sessions allow us to come up with ideas we wouldn't on our own. We're literally wired, as social animals, to work together.

All the Little Planets in a Row

Tommorw comes a rare alignment. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will be lining up. In that order, so closest to furthest.

You'll need to get up early if you want to see it, though. 45 minutes before sunrise, on the eastern horizon. And Mercury's small, so get your telescope.

(I have too much light pollution here even if it finally stops being cloudy).

Finally, science!

 On July 12, the first dataset will be released from the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA is putting together a test set that will highlight the telescope's capabilities; kind of a media kit for the telescope. The goal is to show researchers who might want to buy time on the telescope what it can do.

The first real science schedule hasn't been released (there may still be wrangling going on). But we absolutely have a space telescope and I can't wait to see what questions it asks.

Is the Abominable Snowman...a Polar Bear?

 There's actually a theory that the famous "Yeti" is a species of white bear.

And there's a group of polar bears that don't need sea ice. These two things might not be connected, but the Greenland population, who live at the mouth of a glacier and hunt from ice calved from it...are also quite happy to cross mountains to look for food. They're a small population, but...

Could something similar to polar bears have retreated to the Himalayas when the Ice Age ended? That's the theory. More likely, if they exist, they weren't polar bears but something more like the hybrids that exist when polars and grizzlies overlap range.

But the fact that polar bears can and do climb mountains makes one wonder...

Still Not Aliens

 The weird but lovely blue spiral over New Zealand? Not aliens. In fact, it was a cool effect that rocket launches sometimes generate if the sun hits the water and carbon dioxide from their exhaust *just* right.

Check it out here, it's actually quite awesome. And now if you see it you'll be looking to see which rocket it came from.

Not aliens. Sadly.

Treasure ship, ahoy!

 In a reminder to listen to local people, we've confirmed the location (although not exactly) of the so called Beeswax Shipwreck off the coast of Oregon.

The natives were selling the beeswax that washed ashore (honeybees had yet to be introduced to the U.S.) and when asked said it came from a shipwreck. (And was fair salvage).

We now know that the ship concerned was the Santo Cristo de Burgos and we have some of its hull timbers, but even with modern remote sensing gear we're having issues locating the wreck itself in difficult dive conditions.

But hey, maybe somebody's great great saw something and it got passed down...

Talk to people, ya know. It can give information!

No, the Chinese Haven't Found Aliens...Probably

The Chinese are now claiming that their big telescope has found possible aliens. FAST is a good telescope...the world's largest filled-aperture telescope, 500 meters in diameter.

But the researchers themselves indicate at the more likely scenario...the one which has unfolded every time we have "found alien signals" before: Terrestrial interference.

I believe last time it was a microwave...

The initial report has already mysteriously disappeared. If they did find something, it's narrow band radio signals, which we wouldn't be able to translate. We would know we were not alone...and about where they were X years ago, thanks to light speed.

But nothing more than that.

Although that would be enough to make people think.

It's most likely a microwave.

Sorry, Vegans, Plants Make Decisions Now

 ...and about something very important.

It appears plants have a metabolic channel that actually chooses whether to keep CO2 and use it or release it back into the atmosphere.

So, now maybe we can talk to the plants and ask them to store more CO2. I'm not entirely joking here; breeding or genetically modifying plants to store more CO2 for a bit could actually be a piece of the climate change puzzle. And it would be to the benefit of the plants too.

(By the way? They domesticated us)

Sometimes I Wish...

 ...I was rich enough to spontaneously travel to the other side of the world. Because fortunate people in Africa are going to get to see Europa's shadow.

Yes.

Europa's.

Europa will be occulting a 10th magnitude star in the constellation Pisces early morning on June 19 (local time).

And if you do happen to be in southern Africa and willing to get up early, the Paris Observatory wants you to time the transit and send them their data, which will help ESA astronomers with their math. (europaocc2022.imccce(at)obspm.fr).

Species is So Arbitrary

 "A species is a discrete population that can't mate out..."

Yeah, right. Dogs, wolves and coyotes get it on cheerfully. I probably have somewhere between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA.

And polar bears and brown bears have continued to mate despite becoming quite different species with different lifestyles.

Interestingly, polar bears have a lot more brown bear DNA than the reverse. Maybe this means through some kind of gene dominance that brown bear/polar bear hybrids (I refuse to call them "pizzlies") end up looking more like polar bears.

Just like I don't look at all like a Neanderthal.

Incomplete species splitting is apparently a thing. And it might help the polar bears survive climate change...albeit possibly as a slightly different kind of bear.

Just like the extinct Neanderthals are right here.

Convergent Evolution...

 ...is awesome.

What's more closely related to an elephant shrew...the shrew or the elephant? It's the elephant.

The largest living land mammal and the smallest are now classed in the same branch of evolution, Afrotheria. And to think that we started calling them elephant shrews because they have itty bitty trunklets.

Convergent evolution just likes to lead us astray.

And will it lead to things actually looking similar if we ever make it to another Earthlike planet? Maybe Spock isn't so unrealistic after all...

How much do horses understand?

Traditionally, there has been an assumption that horses, unlike dogs, aren't great with verbal/spoken language. They don't have a brain wired to understand it and are relatively non-vocal themselves.

A new study is making me question that. They studied what we call "baby talk" which is officially "Pet Directed Speech" and discover that it catches and holds the attention of horses as well as it does primates and dogs.

When you use PDS on your horse they actually hear you. When you don't? They ignore you. One test they used was having the experimenter point at some carrots. When they used PDS the horse was more likely to go get the carrots.

My theory is that we use this around horses regularly and they actually realize we are talking to them. When we use a normal tone of voice, they recognize that as "oh, the humans are waffling on again."

These studies help us communicate and work better with our horses, so they really do matter.

Uh Oh, Here Comes...

 ...another plotbunny. There's a planet 50 light years away, 55 Cancri e, that is on fire. Permanently on fire. It's larger than Earth, orbits a perfectly good star, and the day side is almost certainly oceans of lava. Probably tidally locked. Has a year that is a matter of days.

If it's tidally locked then one side will be a lava hell and the other cooler...but thanks to an atmosphere, not that cold.

If it does rotate, then each dawn would bring melting of the surface and rock vapor creating an atmosphere, and then rains of lava with the dusk.

I don't know how to use this in a story, but somebody needs to use it in a story.

The planet also names itself. Obviously it's Inferno. Or maybe Dante.

Step aside, Pando...

Until, well, right now, we thought Pando was the largest living organism on Earth. Pando is a clonal colony of quaking aspen and is 80,000 years old. Which also makes it the oldest living organism on Earth.

Turns out we're wrong. And if you are guessing "it's in the sea" you would be right!

The largest known living organism on Earth is now (and I'm stressing known, because, well) a clonal colony of sea grass off of Australia's west coast. the colony, which is a hybrid of two seagrass species, covers 77 square miles. That's three times the size of Manhattan.

Clonal colonies are wild. This is like one of those old science fiction novels where an entire planet is covered by one.

At a guess, the colony is 4,500 years old. The plant is a sterile hybrid.

In contrast, poor Pando only covers 43 hectares.

There is no nickname for the seagrass yet, but I am betting there will be one. I think it deserves a name, don't you?

Balticon Reactions!

 First of all, I'm not going to talk about the bad stuff. Those who are on my Facebook know what happened.

Instead I'm going to focus on something else.

We need to find a way to do more hybrid conventions. I was able to, in the same day, get vegan lunch at a Hare Krishna festival, hang out in the bar with my friends...and do a panel with a multinational group of people including an amazing man from Nigeria. (Nigerian SF is a thing, people, and it's a thing we need more of). This was a panel on Class Structures in SF & Fantasy and we had a panel who came from places with different class structures.

I got literally the best of both worlds.

Hybrid cons require more volunteer time, they are more expensive, and there is always the risk of technical or technical related issues (The first five minutes of the Doctor Who panel were not streamed out from the hotel because the tech assigned to the room got stuck in a massive traffic jam and was late. Not his fault).

But as we do more of this we'll work out how to do it better.

Those who couldn't afford to travel to Balticon were still able to get a good chunk of the programming; we weren't able to record and stream everything because it costs in volunteers and equipment. Those who could actually got a better experience. (One person talked about how amazing it was to attend a virtual panel in their pajamas while munching breakfast in their hotel room).

Maybe one day I'll be invited to do panels...at a convention in Nigeria. I still have some issues with virtual conventions (associations with lockdown).

But the world is opening up in ways that we would have tried eventually, but were pushed to by recent events.

Let's do more of this, people. The possibilities are just so awesome.