What is going on with TRAPPIST-1b?

 It's...complicated.

We thought it had an atmosphere, but observations by the JWST showed it didn't.

But we also now know that stellar contamination makes observations of close in exoplanets hard. Is it an atmosphere? Or is it a starspot?

What this means is that when looking for life signs from a distance, you also have to model the star. Which means you can't do it in five minutes...you might have to take a couple of years to do it. Bear that in mind when sending out your fictional exploration ships?

Are Mammals Middle Aged?

 Earth could become uninhabitable to mammals, specifically, in about...250 million years. That's about the same amount of time they've been around.

Why?

The cycle of continent formation will bring the continents back together into an equatorial supercontinent, nicknamed Pangea Ultima.

This will result in extremely hot temperatures in the center of the supercontinent. Mammals might survive along the coast.

Then there will be 2.5% more energy from the sun. We're talking average monthly temperatures of 140 degrees Fahrenheit here.

Reptiles or dinosaurs/birds might become more dominant again, but small mammals might survive until the continents split again...and then re-evolve. Maybe.

But there's one group of mammals that might not have problems.

Cetaceans might survive, even thrive. Their return to the water is generally believed to be permanent, but who knows?

As for humanity? If we're still around then, then we might have to move into the water ourselves.

The capsule is open

 Turns out the sample container contains black dust. And probably some more stuff, but we won't know until next month. Right now we're just checking that there's something in there. And there is!

The moon is harsh

Unfortunately, it appears that Chandrayaan-3 did not survive the lunar night. It went into dormancy and attempts to regain contact have failed.

This was not surprising; the lander was meant to have a 14-day mission duration and anything they got after the night was a bonus. It's still a bit disappointing, though. We could have got even more good science done.

Even without this, though, the mission has already been declared a success. 

We have...

 ...asteroid bits. The Osiris-Rex capsule touched down successfully in Utah (the main spacecraft will now do a gravity assist maneuver and zoom off on another mission).

Now we have 250 grams of asteroid bits to study and the knowledge that we can do this again with other samples.

While Osiris doesn't have another sample capsule, its next destination is Apophis, which it will study close up. Yeah, that's the one that's going to kill us all according to the tabloids (spoiler, it's not).

Osiris-Rex touching down

 The mission will drop its cargo of asteroid samples in Utah on Sunday morning. The sample will be carefully stored to prevent it from being contaminated by Earth's environment; it's carbon rich and may contain water.

This is some of the oldest material in the solar system. What will it tell us about our origins?

Pink Diamonds

 Yes, diamonds can be pink...but the coloration is extremely rare in natural diamonds.

We now know what caused them. The vast majority of these diamonds come from one place, Argyle in Western Australia. Pink diamonds are created deep in the earth's crust because they require heavy tectonic pressure.

In other words, there are probably a lot where we can't get to them. But in Argyle, the crust got stretched, magma was pushed up to the surface, and it deposited the colorful stones. Which tells us where to look for more.

(Or, honestly, we could just make them, but some people, that isn't good enough).

A half million year old log cabin?

Or at least a wooden shelter. It was found above the Kalambo Falls in wet soil, on the border between Zambia and Tanzania.

Given the location it's also possible it was actually a fishing dock. Either way, it was made by putting logs together in a fairly sophisticated way. Wood seldom survives, and this shows that people were building wooden shelters or platforms...long before we thought.

If Your GPS Isn't Working Today...

 ...it's the sun's fault. We've been hit by a G2 geomagnetic storm, which can interfere briefly with radio communications.

Not a big deal, but it could make your GPS less accurate. Or if you still have a landline...I called my dad and we had static on the cordless phone!

Again, not a big deal (this is only the second highest rating of geomagnetic storm) but now you know what might be messing with your phone...

No, Bennu Is Not Going To Kill Us All

 No, NASA has not confirmed that asteroid Bennu will hit us on September 24, 2182.

Bennu has a 1 in 1,750 chance of hitting the Earth by the year 2300 and a one in 2,700 chance of specifically hitting on that date (although it is the most likely).

Bennu is 500 meters across. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 6 miles across. So, while Bennu hitting would be bad, it wouldn't kill us all.

What it would do is create a four mile wide crater, knock down buildings tens of miles away and shatter windows 100 miles away. So if it were to hit, say, Los Angeles, we'd have a real life disaster movie.

We're also developing planetary defense systems and if Bennu does start to get too close we should be able to, shall we say, convince it to go somewhere else. If not, we'd likely get enough warning to evacuate the impact site, or coastal areas that might be tsunami'd by a water impact.

(And in any case, 2182 is a while in the future).

No, NASA Did Not Release A UFO Report

 NASA published a report they commissioned on studying unidentified anomalous phenomena. The report acknowledges that sometimes people, including trained pilots, see things that can't be specifically identified.

It was put together by a panel representing NASA, the FAA, several universities, and aerospace technology companies. The conclusion: It's worth putting some time and effort into studying these anomalies, understanding them, and analyzing them.

Nowhere does it say "We found aliens." The point is to see what we really have...acknowledging that it could be aliens, but most of the time it isn't.

What Do Multiple Sclerosis, Celiac Disease, and Type I Diabetes Have in Common?

 A: They're all considered autoimmune diseases.

Second A: There's no cure.

Celiac disease can be managed by sticking to a very strict diet that generally precludes eating out or at parties. People with Type I diabetes have to use expensive insulin all the time.

What if we could cure all of these diseases?

A new technology may actually give us the answer. It's called an inverse vaccine. Instead of training your immune system to react to something, an inverse vaccine trains it to stop reacting.

Phase I safety trials have been carried out for celiac disease and are underway for multiple sclerosis.

The technology could also be used to treat Hashimoto's disease and other autoimmune thyroid conditions, pernicious anemia, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and a wide variety of other currently incurable diseases.

It might not be a cure (it might be that people will need to receive "booster" shots to maintain things), but it's certainly better.

I know people with celiac disease and their lives would be changed by this. Let's make it happen!

This Time It Could Be Aliens!

 The James Webb Telescope is doing some fantastic science. For right now, let's focus on K2-18b. This is an exoplanet that is almost nine times the size of Earth (larger planets are, obviously, easier to observe).

K2-18b orbits in the habitable zone of a red dwarf. It would not be particularly great for humans, given the much higher gravity and radiation.

But.

In 2019, Hubble detected water vapor on K2-18b. This made it a good target for the much more advanced JWST.

Which found methane, carbon dioxide and...dimethyl sulfide. We know of only one process that can produce this molecule.

Life.

K2-18b is believed to be a Hycean world, with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a mostly ocean surface.

We need to do follow-up observations to fully confirm (or debunk) the findings.

But there might just be aliens.

Oxygen on Mars

Looks like we can potentially make oxygen on Mars. A NASA experiment successfully produced enough to sustain a small dog for 10 hours. That's not a lot, but this was a preliminary experiment to prove the concept, so I'd say it did pretty well.

Any humans sent to Mars will need to stay there a while to justify the trip and they may not be able to take enough plants with them. So, making oxygen from the rock is vital for their survival.

Watching the sky from the moon

 I'm a huge fan, conceptually, of building a giant telescope on the moon. There's now a new paper that introduces the hypertelescope concept...which is a basic optical telescope built in a crater. This would be a huge visual light observatory protected from light pollution and atmospheric distortion.

I still prefer the idea of a radiotelescope, though.

At this point, though, we almost certainly will build some kind of observatory on the moon.

Birds are Dinosaurs...

...but we might have to rethink a little bit how they got there. Fujianvenator prodigiosus is one of the earliest bird-like dinosaurs.

And it was a flightless running bird. Long legs, small wings...showing that it had already evolved flight and then given up the habit. Although I actually have a different theory, which paleontologists agree might be possible.

This may be the oldest of the waders...and maybe it did fly, just not very well. Where it was found there were a variety of swamp creatures.

I'm going with wader.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weird-dinosaur-prompts-rethink-of-bird-evolution/

We are math

 The maximum rate of mutations an organism can tolerate follows a self-repeating fractal pattern.

And nature achieves it in some cases. It appears that nature knows math. Or rather, math is the ultimate tool to understand nature.

Shame I'm not very good at it. I'll be over here with my words.

Black Hole Indigestion

 Apparently, black holes that eat stars have a habit of burping up bits of them years later. In at least 50% of cases, black holes produce radio emissions several years after eating a star.

This shouldn't be possible, but it is. Presumably it's coming from the accretion disk not the hole itself, but black holes getting indigestion is a phenomenon to send your starship to...especially as you would know it was going to happen in advance.

Measuring Asteroids

 Apparently we'll use anything but actual...measurements.

From my news page, some asteroid sizes:

An airplane (that's a rather wide range)

A six-floor building

A bus

A house (also a rather wide range)

And the winner: 81 bulldogs. French or English?

Chandrayaan-3 Finds Sulfur

 The Chandrayaan-3 lander has found sulfur (and a host of other elements including oxygen) at the moon's south pole.

Sulfur was in the Apollo samples, but the south pole is likely a better target for manned missions than the equatorial sites Apollo favored. The element is useful for battery recharging and construction work...as well as telling us things about the moon's history.