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"Last year, @WashburneAlex made a bombshell prediction supporting the lab leak theory. New documents released yesterday confirm his prediction." - Dr. Jay Bhattacharya January 2024

The post Science Based Satire: BOMBSHELL NEWS!!! The Virus I Told You Not to Worry About and Worked to Infect You With… CAME FROM A LAB!!! first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

From Andrew Sullivan’s new Weekly Dish piece, “Katherine Maher is not a liberal“, criticizing the new CEO of National Public Radio:

The point I have been trying to make for years now is that wokeness is not some racier version of liberalism, merely seeking to be kinder and more inclusive. It is, in fact, directly hostile to liberal values; it subordinates truth to ideology; it judges people not by their ability but by their identity; and it regards ideological diversity as a mere dog-whistle for bigotry. Maher has publicly and repeatedly avowed support for this very illiberalism. If people with these views run liberal institutions, the institutions will not — cannot — remain liberal for very long. And they haven’t. Elite universities are turning into madrassas, and media is turning into propaganda.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft came within 1,500 km (930 miles) of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io in two recent flybys. That’s close enough to reveal new details on the surface of this moon, the most volcanic object in the Solar System. Not only did Juno capture volcanic activity, but scientists were also able to create a visual animation from the data that shows what Io’s 200-km-long lava lake Loki Patera would look like if you could get even closer. There are islands at the center of a magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The lake’s surface is smooth as glass, like obsidian.

“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton during a news conference at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. “There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”

This animation is an artist’s concept of Loki Patera, a lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io, made using data from the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. With multiple islands in its interior, Loki is a depression filled with magma and rimmed with molten lava. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Just imagine if you could stand by the shores of this lake – which would be a stunning view in itself. But then, you could look up and see the giant Jupiter looming in the skies above you.

Juno made the two close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024. Images from Juno’s JunoCam included the first close-up images of the moon’s northern latitudes. Undoubtedly, Io looks like a pizza – which has been the conclusion since our first views of this moon, when Voyager 1 flew through the Jupiter system in March 1979. The mottled and colorful surface comes from the volcanic activity, with hundreds of vents and calderas on the surface that create a variety of features. Volcanic plumes and lava flows across the surface show up in all sorts of colors, from red and yellow to orange and black. Some of the lava “rivers” stretch for hundreds of kilometers.

Io’s sub-Jovian hemisphere is revealed in detail for the first time since Voyager 1 flew through the Jupiter system in March 1979, during the Juno spacecraft’s 58th perijove, or close pass, on February 3, 2024. This image shows Io’s nightside illuminated by sunlight reflected off Jupiter’s cloud tops. Several surface changes are visible include a reshaping of the compound flow field at Kanehekili (center left) and a new lava flow to the east of Kanehekili. This image has a pixel scale of 1.6 km/pixel. Credit : NASA/SwRI/JPL/MSSS/Jason Perry.

Juno scientists were also able to re-create a spectacular feature on Io, a spired mountain that has been nicknamed “The Steeple.” This feature is between 5 and 7 kilometers (3-4.3 miles) in height. It’s hard to comprehend the type of volcanic activity that could have created such a stunning landform.

Created using data collected by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno during flybys in December 2023 and February 2024, this animation is an artist’s concept of a feature on the Jovian moon Io that the mission science team nicknamed “Steeple Mountain.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Speaking of volcanic activity, two recent papers have come to a jaw-dropping conclusion about Io: this moon has been erupting since the dawn of the Solar System.

All the volcanic on Io is activity is driven by tidal heating. Io is in an orbital resonance with two other large moons of Jupiter, Europa and Ganymede.

“Every time Ganymede orbits Jupiter once, Europa orbits twice, and Io orbits four times,” explained the authors of a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, led by Ery Hughes of GNS Science in New Zealand. “This situation causes tidal heating in Io (like how the Moon causes ocean tides on Earth), which causes the volcanism.”

However, scientists haven’t known how long this resonance has been occurring and whether what we observe today is what has always been happening in the Jupiter system. This is because volcanism renews Io’s surface almost constantly, leaving little trace of the past.

Jupiter’s orbital system with the host planet and orbits to scale. Image credit: James Tuttle Keane / Keck Institute for Space Studies

The team of scientists, led by Katherine de Kleer at Caltech and Hughes at GNS Science used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile observe the sulphur gases in Io’s atmosphere. The isotopes of sulfur were used as a tracer of tidal heating on Io because sulfur is released through volcanism, processed in the atmosphere, and recycled into the mantle. Additionally, some of the sulfur is lost to space, and because of Jupiter’s magnetosphere, a bunch of charged particles whirling around Jupiter that hit Io’s atmosphere continuously.

It turns out that the sulfur that is lost to space on Io is a little bit isotopically lighter than the sulfur that is recycled back into Io’s interior. Because of this, over time, the sulfur remaining on Io gets isotopically heavier and heavier. How much heavier depends on how long volcanism has been taking place.

What the teams found is that tidal heating on Io has been occurring for billions of years.

“The isotopic composition of Io’s inventory of volatile chemical elements, including sulfur and chlorine, reflects its outgassing and mass loss history, and thus records information about its evolution,” the team wrote in the paper published in Science. “These results indicate that Io has been volcanically active for most (or all) of its history, with potentially higher outgassing and mass-loss rates at earlier times.”

Juno continues to makes its way through the Jupiter system. And during Juno’s most recent flyby of Io, on April 9, the spacecraft came within about 16,500 kilometers (10,250 miles) of the moon’s surface. It will perform its 61st flyby of Jupiter on May 12.

JunoCam is a public camera, where members of the public can choose targets for imaging, as well as process all the data.  JunoCam’s raw images are available here for the public to peruse and process into image products. Here you can see the most recent images that have been processed.

Papers: Isotopic Evidence of Long-Lived Volcanism on Io
Using Io’s Sulfur Isotope Cycle to Understand the History of Tidal Heating
Further Reading: NASA, GNS Science

The post Juno Reveals a Giant Lava Lake on Io appeared first on Universe Today.

Dan Dennett died yesterday, and I still can’t believe he’s gone, though he’d used up a good portion of his nine lives in a series of cardiac events.  His NYT obituary can be read by clicking the screenshot below, or you can find it archived here.

The subheading seems to me a bit inaccurate. For one thing Dennett certainly did not think religion was an illusion, though he’s quoted saying that below. Perhaps he thought it was a delusion, but he certainly took it seriously as a human behavioral phenomenon, even though he was an atheist. What the subheading means is that he thought the idea of god and its concomitants were an illusion, but that is not all that religion comprises.

More important, Dan certainly did NOT believe that free will was a fantasy: Dan was a compatibilist who didn’t believe in libertarian free will, but wrote two books and several other papers and half of another book defending the idea that free will was not a fantasy, but that we did indeed have it: it was, he said, simply different from what most people thought.

Dan and I disagreed strongly on Dan’s compatibilism (Sam Harris disagreed as well), but free will being a fantasy? Nope.

Finally, yes, Dan concentrated on natural selection as the only process that could produce the appearance of adaptation, but didn’t deny, as I recall, the fact that genetic drift could cause some evolutionary change. (For a rather critical review of his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by my ex-student Allen Orr, go here.) But Dan concentrated on adaptations, including human behaviors, because the appearance of design, for centuries imputed to God, is what really demands explanation.

(*Note the misplacement of “only” in the subheading; it should appear after “explained,” not after “could”. Where are the proofreaders?)

At any rate, here’s an excerpt from the NYT that is more accurate than the subheading:

Daniel C. Dennett, one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers, whose prolific works explored consciousness, free will, religion and evolutionary biology, died on Friday in Portland, Maine. He was 82.

His death, at Maine Medical Center, was caused by complications of interstitial lung disease, his wife, Susan Bell Dennett, said. He lived in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Mr. Dennett combined a wide range of knowledge with an easy, often playful writing style to reach a lay public, avoiding the impenetrable concepts and turgid prose of many other contemporary philosophers. Beyond his more than 20 books and scores of essays, his writings even made their way into the theater and onto the concert stage.

But Mr. Dennett, who never shirked controversy, often crossed swords with other famed scholars and thinkers.

An outspoken atheist, he at times seemed to denigrate religion. “There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” he said in a 2013 interview with The New York Times.

According to Mr. Dennett, the human mind is no more than a brain operating as a series of algorithmic functions, akin to a computer. To believe otherwise is “profoundly naïve and anti-scientific,” he told The Times.

For Mr. Dennett, random chance played a greater role in decision-making than did motives, passions, reasoning, character or values. Free will is a fantasy, but a necessary one to gain people’s acceptance of rules that govern society, he said.

And on free will:

His first book to attract widespread scholarly notice was “Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology,” published in 1978.

In it, Mr. Dennett asserted that multiple decisions resulted in a moral choice and that these prior, random deliberations contributed more to the way an individual acted than did the ultimate moral decision itself. Or, as he explained:

“I am faced with an important decision to make, and after a certain amount of deliberation, I say to myself: ‘That’s enough. I’ve considered this matter enough and now I’m going to act,’ in the full knowledge that I could have considered further, in the full knowledge that the eventualities may prove that I decided in error, but with the acceptance of responsibility in any case.”

Some leading libertarians criticized Mr. Dennett’s model as undermining the concept of free will: If random decisions determine ultimate choice, they argued, then individuals aren’t liable for their actions.

Mr. Dennett responded that free will — like consciousness — was based on the outdated notion that the mind should be considered separate from the physical brain. Still, he asserted, free will was a necessary illusion to maintain a stable, functioning society.

“We couldn’t live the way we do without it,” he wrote in his 2017 book, “From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds.” “If — because free will is an illusion — no one is ever responsible for what they do, should we abolish yellow and red cards in soccer, the penalty box in ice hockey and all the other penalty systems in sports?”

First of all, the notion of a separation between mind and body is not “outdated”: a huge number of people believe in libertarian free will: that your mind alone can, at any given moment, allow you to make any one of two or more choices. It’s outdated among scientists and philosophers, but not among the general public, as surveys have shown.

Further, “random decisions” aren’t really random to either libertarians or determinists. Even Libet-like experiments show that what you do is to some degree predictable using fMRI, and is probably entirely predictable if we had a complete understanding of the brain. No determinist argues that decisions are “random”, as they’re based on the pattern of your neurons produced by your genes and your environment. And libertarians would argue that decisions aren’t random, for if we were we’d have no ability to predict what anybody we know does. Finanly, determinists don’t claim that individuals aren’t liable for their actions. They are liable, but not in the way that most people think. If somebody murders someone else, we don’t just let him go and say, “well, he wasn’t responsible for the killing.”

Do note that Dennett is credited with believing something that I always maintained: he favored compatibilism, at least in part, because of “belief in belief”: without belief in some kind of free will, he said, society would fall apart (he said that at least twice):

Mr. Dennett responded that free will — like consciousness — was based on the outdated notion that the mind should be considered separate from the physical brain. Still, he asserted, free will was a necessary illusion to maintain a stable, functioning society.

But if religion is also thought necessary by some (not Dennett) as necessary to maintain a stable, society, then why is free will TRULY necessary to maintain a stable, functioning society? Perhaps our feeling of free will is necessary for that, but, like religion, that’s a delusion that we simply can’t avoid feeling. I function very well even though I’m a hard determinist, even though I feel like I have a choice. And, in the last sentence, I don’t think one can characterize Dan’s view of free will as an “illusion”. He argued strenuously for a form of free will that was not an illusion.

But I digress. Dan was an important figure in bringing philosophy and Darwinism to educated readers. How often do philosophers produce bestselling popular works?  Yes, he could be wrong, and the force of his personality led some to adopt what I thought were erroneous ideas (like “we have the kind of free will worth wanting”), but more often his arguments were cogent, important, and vividly expressed.

And Dan was a nice guy, one who befriended me when I was just a stripling. One thing missing from the NYT piece—and something I hope they’ll add—are quotations from Dennett’s friends and colleagues. Where, for instance, is an assessment by Richard Dawkins? I expect that will appear on Richard’s Substack site, but we needed some quotes for the NYT obit. Here’s Richard’s tweet about Dan’s death:

Dan Dennett was a great philosopher, skilled with words, images, thought experiments & intuition pumps. But unlike many clever philosophers (to borrow from PB Medawar) he had something important to be clever ABOUT, namely science. Much more yet, he was a dear friend. So very sad.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 19, 2024

You can find other obituaries at the Torygraph, at Ars Technica, and at the Daily Nous, which is short but has a recent video interview, which I put below. And I’d recommend reading his recent autobiography, I’ve Been Thinking.

 

There will be more obituaries to come.

What's the Word: Anhedonia; News Items: New Scams, Reconductoring, ISS Space Junk, Zombie Cicadas, Death by Wellness; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mail: AI Drug Development Correction; Science or Fiction

Inspired by what human liver enzymes can do, chemists have developed a new set of copper-catalyzed organic synthesis reactions for building and modifying pharmaceuticals and other molecules. The new reactions are expected to be widely used in drug discovery and optimization, as well as in other chemistry-based industries.

Here from the WaPo we hear about a special area (not really an island) near Shanghai where stray cats are sequestered. If you see the video below, you’ll see they’re better off there–people come to feed them amd adopt them–than roaming the streets. Click to read (archived free here, or go to a shorter article here).

An excerpt:

The happiest place on Earth for cats might just be here, on Cat Island, a feline playground just a few miles from Shanghai Disneyland. While humans whoop and whirl at the latter, the 400-plus kitties who call Cat Island home rest in the shade of specially constructed grass-covered play tunnels or loll about in pagodas. They cross a wooden bridge to stalk through pear orchards, the intrepid among them even venturing into the horse stable.

The pampered residents here were once strays in downtown Shanghai, a city of 25 million people and somewhere between 400,000 and 1.5 million stray cats. But efforts are underway to stem the exploding feral population in the metropolis and find homes for at least some of the newly neutered cats

Cat Island’s entire population is up for adoption. Many at “cat cafes” in the city do a similar thing: Provide a space where people can befriend and potentially take home a neutered, if shy, kitty.

There’s no equivalent of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in China. Instead, it’s left to grass-roots organizations like these to step in to save cats — from the streets, or from people who think they’re better off culled.

“Cat adoption has become quite popular in recent years, especially among the younger generation,” said Erica Guo, owner of all-rescue cat cafe More Meow Garden.

. . . and you can adopt the island’s cats, as (according to the article) cats are becoming more and more popular as pets in China:

At the end of 2022, a few months after Shanghai’s longest lockdown ended, a government-affiliated nonprofit foundation opened the 130-acre Shanghai Pet Base facility, which encompasses Cat Island.

It is concentrating on trapping and neutering strays, then returning them to the communities where they were found. When that’s not possible, they’re rehomed to Cat Island.

“This is what we are able to do, here and now,” said Zha Zhenliang, the foundation official responsible for Cat Island and the Pet Base. “We hope every [apartment] compound can have their own ‘cat island’ of a safe place for the cats to be,” and their feeders can operate openly, he said. Feeding strays can be a controversial activity, resulting in conflict between cat lovers and neighbors who just want them culled.

To adopt a Cat Island cat, people must first trek to the remote, grassy site outside Shanghai — a semirural location chosen to avoid angering neighbors — then complete a pet-care course and have their home inspected by video call for suitability. The precautions mean adoption numbers are barely denting the problem: In 18 months, only 130 cats have moved to new homes.

Here’s a 4½-minute video showing what the “island” is like. The cats seem pretty well taken care of.

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From Bored Panda we find a selection of fifty cat memes. Click below to read; I’ve selected a few for your delectation:

From catsweek From catsweek From catsweek From catsweek From catsweek From catsweek

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Here’s a heartening tale from MPR News of a lost cat found after going missing for more than a month. Click below to read or click the link in the first sentence:

The story:

“Lost trucker cat. Help me get home, call my team. Leave tuna for me,” reads a poster with a white and gray cat posted around St. Cloud.

At 2 a.m. on Jan. 17, “Tom the lost trucker cat” jumped out of his owner’s semi truck at the Pilot/Flying J truck stop off exit 171.

“He took a few steps, turned back and gave me one last look,” Owner Angel Anthony Garcia said. Tom was gone.

Garcia and his wife, Tom’s other owner Marie Sanchez, searched for him as long as they could without success. Garcia had to deliver a truck full of apples to Virginia and the deadline was approaching.

They made the difficult decision to leave and hoped that someone would find him. Garcia posted about him in a local Facebook page.

Oh, man, I wouldn’t have abandoned that cat. But here’s the poster, labeled as a “courtesy photo”; I like the “please feed” bit:

But he was found!

Jan Peterson was scrolling Facebook and saw Garcia’s post about Tom. She reached out to Garcia and Sanchez and told them she wanted to help. This isn’t her first time looking for a lost pet, she has helped many families through Facebook find lost animals.

She contacted her community and set up a Facebook group for Tom asking for tips. She put up signs, posted on social media and wished for the best.

Forty days had passed with no sign of Tom. At 4 a.m. on Tuesday, Peterson’s husband woke her up.

“I think somebody found Tom!” he said.

She ran out of bed to find the Facebook post and there he was. A sweet, slightly dirty, gray and white cat.

When Garcia and Sanchez got the call he was okay, they were speechless.

“It was devastating to me because he is the light of my life,” Sanchez said. “Knowing he survived, knowing that he was found, oh my gosh, I can’t even tell you, I am so overwhelmed with joy. I can’t wait to get to him.”

Tom was found by Jeremiah Moe at a metalworking shop in Sauk Rapids, 9 miles from where he went missing.

Here’s the FB post asking if this was the right cat. He looks as if he had a rough time:

The end of the tail. But if the owners truly love Tom, why haven’t they gotten him yet?

Peterson retrieved him and brought him to Rice Vet Clinic where Dr. Kayla Schmitz took over. He had lost about half his weight, was dehydrated and a little roughed up. He was given fluids and cleaned. After being missing for more than a month, he showed little impact of the Minnesota climate.

On his journey it is likely he ran into wildlife, including predators, and the Mississippi River. While we may never know what Tom did for all those days, it is clear he was determined to survive.

Now he is staying with a foster home until his owners can come retrieve him. Funds are tight for Garcia and Sanchez. They are trying to get a truck load they can drive that will run through Minnesota so they can get Tom, but they haven’t heard about any opportunities yet. They said they will get to him as soon as they are able to.

“Get to him as soon as they are able to”? Is that love?

A bit more:

Peterson credits the community in his rescuing.

“It was the whole community … they really went out of their way to watch for him at night. They would check and say, ‘I went here today, I didn’t see him, but I look for him every night before I go to bed.’ It was that kind of dedication.”

Sanchez said Tom never would have been found without the residents of St. Cloud.

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Lagniappe: A music-loving moggie perched on the piano, soothed by a lullaby.

h/t: Barry, Ginger K.

Today we have some noshing birds by reader Thomas Stringfellow. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

The photos were taken in July 2011 below the dam at Lake Barkley in Kentucky, and feature our old friend the Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax mycticorax) having lunch at the all-you-can-eat buffet. This is a remarkable place for many species of birds, and photographing them is made easier because they are largely habituated to humans.

The order obviously tells a story; I especially like the drink at the end to help wash down the fish.

Camera details: Nikon D3 camera shot in aperture priority mode, Nikkor 400 mm f/2.8 telephoto lens with a Nikon 1.4x teleconverter.

It was 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first successful self-propelled flight. Launching themselves to history, they set the foundations for transatlantic flights, supersonic flight and perhaps even the exploration of the Solar System. Now we are on the precipice of travel among the stars but among the many ideas and theories, what is the ultimate and most effective way to explore our nearest stellar neighbours? After all, there are 10,000 stars within a region of 110 light years from Earth so there are plenty to choose from. 

It’s not just the stars that entice us to explore beyond our Solar System. Ever since the first exoplanet discovery in 1992 we have been discovering more and more alien worlds around distant stars. The tally has now reached over 5,500 confirmed exoplanets and they too demand our attention as we reach out among the stars. There have been many ideas and technologies proposed over the past few years but to date, even Proxima Centauri (the nearest star system to our own) remains out of reach. 

In his thesis recently published, lead author Johannes Lebert from the Technische Universität München (TUM) attempts to develop a strategy, based on existing interstellar probe concepts and knowledge of nearby star systems. Lebert was driven by the exoplanet discoveries that continue at pace and the development and interest, both commercially and technically in interstellar probes. Not only does he explore the technologies but he also looks at the returns too. 

Artist’s illustration of HD 104067 b, which is the outermost exoplanet in the HD 104067 system, and responsible for potentially causing massive tidal energy on the innermost exoplanet candidate, TOI-6713.01. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In the strategy developed in the thesis he looks at the two main objectives which are duration of the mission and the returns. By returns he refers to the sum of all rewards provided by the stars explored during the mission and of course be largely scientific.  He considers a multi vehicle approach using several probes which do not return to Earth and are capable of exploring different stars thereby maximising the mission returns. Finally he explores the routing of such a mission to ensure maximum mission returns. Succinctly he calls this his ‘Bi-objective multi- vehicle open routing problem with profits.’

The thesis concludes with several recommendation. First that the use of efficient routing around the stars, a more limited number of probes can be used, limiting reducing fuel costs. This should be balanced by the mission returns which increase faster should more probes be used to explore the same number of stars simultaneously. This does however increase mission costs due to increase fuel costs. Whichever strategy is used, small-scale remotely operated or autonomous craft are far more suited to the need. 

Lebert goes on to explain that higher probe numbers also brings the benefit that probes can be tailored to suit the star systems they are destined to explore. Unlike a smaller number of probes that will have to cater for a greater range of systems.  There is a concept known as the ‘derived scaling law’ which articulates that higher probe numbers do inherit a risk of less efficient deployment.

It’s an interesting read that reminds us that, whilst we are developing the probes, and there are quite a number on the drawing board; Breakthrough Starshot, Interstellar Express, Interstellar Probe, Innovative Interstellar Explorer, Tau Mission to name a few, we do need to consider just how we plan, manage and deploy to maximise the scientific gain. 

Source : Optimal Strategies for the Exploration of Near-by Stars

The post What’s the Most Effective Way to Explore our Nearest Stars? appeared first on Universe Today.

20 April is weed's unofficial holiday. In honour of the special day, we collected our answers to all your cannabis questions. This is the science of 420

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Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journals, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and New York Times bestselling author. Her books include: Area 51, Operation Paperclip, The Pentagon’s Brain, Phenomena, First Platoon, and Surprise, Kill, Vanish. Her book Nuclear War: A Scenario, has been optioned to be made into a dramatic film.

Shermer and Jacobsen discuss:

• So much has been written on this subject…what is new? (Richard Rhodes’s nuclear tetraology (The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun, Arsenals of Folly, Twilight of the Bombs, Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control, Fred Kaplan’s The Bomb, Martin Sherwin’s Gambling with Armageddon, Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine, Carl Sagan’s and Richard Turco’s A Path Where No Man Thought)
• How much more is classified that we still do not know?
• Why we have a nuclear triad (land missiles, submarine missiles, bombers)
• Competition among military forces and increasing budgets for more weapons
• How many types of nuclear weapons are there now, and how many total?
• Why humans engage in aggression, violence and war
• The Prisoner’s dilemma, Hobbesian trap, Security Dilemma, the “other guy” problem
• Balance of Terror, Mutual Assured Destruction, Logic of Deterrence
• Close calls: Cuban Missile Crisis, Nuclear sub/Vasily Arkipov (1962), Damascus Titan missile explosion (1980), Able Archer 83 war exercise in Europe, Stanislav Petrov, etc.
• Surviving a nuclear explosion/war
• What happens in a nuclear bomb explosion
• Short terms and long term consequences of a nuclear exchange
• Nuclear Winter
• Nuclear protests & films (On the Beach, Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, War Games, The Day After)
• Getting to Nuclear Zero: Stockpile reduction, No First Use, No Launch on Warning, shift taboo from not using them to not owning them,
• Reagan and Gorbachev and arms reductions
• North Korea, China/Taiwan
• Göbekli Tepe and post-apocalyptic world.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Can tidal forces cause an exoplanet’s surface to radiate heat? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of international researchers used data collected from ground-based instruments to confirm the existence of a second exoplanet residing within the exoplanetary system, HD 104067, along with using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission to identify an additional exoplanet candidate, as well. What’s unique about this exoplanet candidate, which orbits innermost compared to the other two, is that the tidal forces exhibited from the outer two exoplanets are potentially causing the candidates’ surface to radiate with its surface temperature reaching as high as 2,300 degrees Celsius (4,200 degrees Fahrenheit), which the researchers refer to as a “perfect tidal storm”.

Here, Universe Today discusses this fantastic research with Dr. Stephen Kane, who is a Professor of Planetary Astrophysics at UC Riverside and lead author of the study, regarding the motivation behind the study, significant results, the significance of the “tidal storm” aspects, follow-up research, and implications for this system on studying other exoplanetary systems. So, what was the motivation behind this study?

“The star (HD 104067) was a star known to harbor a giant planet in a 55-day orbit, and I have a long history of obsessing over known systems,” Dr. Kane tells Universe Today. “When TESS detected a possible transiting Earth-size planet in a 2.2-day orbit (TOI-6713.01), I decided to examine the system further. We gathered all RV data and found that there is ANOTHER (Uranus mass) planet in a 13-day orbit. So, it started with the TESS data, then the system just kept getting more interesting the more we studied it.”

Dr. Kane’s history of exoplanetary research encompasses a myriad of solar system architectures, specifically those containing highly eccentric exoplanets, but also includes follow-up work after exoplanets are confirmed within a system. Most recently, he was the second author on a study discussing a revised system architecture in the HD 134606 system, along with discovering two new Super-Earths within that system, as well.

For this most recent study, Dr. Kane and his colleagues used data from the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) and High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) ground-based instruments and the aforementioned TESS mission to ascertain the characteristics and parameters of both the parent star, HD 105067, and the corresponding exoplanets orbiting it. But, aside from discovering additional exoplanets within the system, as Dr. Kane mentions, what are the most significant results from this study?

Dr. Kane tells Universe Today, “The most amazing outcome of our work was that the dynamics of the system causes the 2.2-day period to experience enormous tidal effects, similar to those experienced by Io. In this case though, TOI-6713.01 experiences 10 million times more tidal energy than Io, resulting in a 2600K [2,300 degrees Celsius (4,200 degrees Fahrenheit)] surface temperature. This means the planet literally glows at optical wavelengths.”

Jupiter’s moon, Io, is the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system, which is produced from tidal heating caused by Jupiter’s massive gravity throughout Io’s slightly eccentric (elongated) orbit lasting 1.77 days. This means that Io gets closer to Jupiter during certain points and farther away from Jupiter at other points causing Io to compress and expand, respectively. Over millions of years, this constant friction within Io’s interior has led to the heating of its core, resulting in the hundreds of volcanoes that comprise Io’s surface and no visible impact craters, as well. As Dr. Kane mentions, this new exoplanet candidate “experiences 10 million times more tidal energy than Io”, which could raise additional questions regarding its own volcanic activity or other geologic processes. Therefore, what is the significance of the “tidal storm” aspects of TOI-6713.01?

Dr. Kane tells Universe Today, “The reason TOI-6713.01 experiences such strong tidal forces is because of the eccentricity of the outer two giant planets, forcing TOI-6713.01 into an eccentric orbit also. Thus, I referred to the planet as being caught in a perfect tidal storm.”

The HD 104067 system with its two outer giant exoplanets forcing the innermost TOI-6713.01 into a “perfect tidal storm” is slightly reminiscent of Jupiter’s first three Galilean moons, Io, Europa, and Ganymede, regarding their gravitational effects on each other throughout their orbits. There are some differences, however, since Jupiter’s massive gravity is the primary force driving Io’s volcanic activity, and all three moons are in what’s known as orbital resonance, which means the orbits are ratioed with each other. For example, for every four orbits of Io there are two orbits of Europa and one orbit of Ganymede, making their orbital resonance 4:2:1, which results in each moon causing regular gravitational influences on each other. Therefore, with the tidal storm aspect on TOI-6713.01 being caused by the eccentricities of the two outer giants, how does this compare to the relationship between Io, Europa, and Ganymede?

Dr. Kane tells Universe Today, “The Laplace resonance of the Galilean moons creates a particularly powerful configuration, whereby regular alignments of the inner three moons regularly force Io into an eccentric orbit. The HD 104067 system is not in resonance but is still able to produce a power configuration by virtue of the b and c planets being so massive and is therefore more of a “brute force” effect of forcing the inner transiting planet into an eccentric orbit.”

As noted, TOI-6713.01 was discovered using the radial velocity method, also known as Doppler spectroscopy, meaning astronomers measured the miniscule changes in the movement of the parent star as it’s slightly tugged by the planet during the latter’s orbit. These slight changes cause the parent star to wobble as the two bodies tug on each other, and astronomers use a spectrograph to detect changes in these wobbles as the star moves “closer” and “farther away” from us to find exoplanets. This method has proven to be very effective in finding exoplanets, as it accounts for almost 20 percent of the total confirmed exoplanets to date, and the first exoplanet orbiting a star like our own was discovered using this method, as well. However, despite the effectiveness of radial velocity, the study notes how TOI-6713.01 “has yet to be confirmed”, so what additional observations are required to confirm its existence?

Dr. Kanes tells Universe Today, “Because the planet is so small, it’s difficult to detect it from the radial velocity data. However, the transits look clean, and we have ruled out stellar contamination. Additional transits will help, but we’re quite confident in the existence of the planet at this point.”

This study comes as the total number of exoplanetary systems is almost 4,200 with the number of confirmed exoplanets exceeding 5,600 and more than 10,100 exoplanet candidates waiting to hopefully be confirmed, as well. These system architectures have been found to vary widely from our own solar system, which is comprised of the terrestrial (rocky) planets closer to the Sun and the gas giants orbiting much farther out. Examples include hot Jupiters that orbit dangerously close to their parent star, some in only a few days, and other systems boasting seven Earth-sized exoplanets, some of which orbit within the habitable zone. Therefore, what can this unique solar system architecture teach us about exoplanetary systems, overall, and what other exoplanetary systems mirror it?

Dr. Kane tells Universe Today, “This system is a great example of extreme environments that planets can find themselves in. There have been several cases of terrestrial planets that are close to their star and heated by the energy from the star, but very few cases where the tidal energy is melting the planet from within.”

The potential discovery of an exoplanet orbiting in a “perfect tidal storm” further demonstrates the myriad of characteristics that exoplanets and exoplanetary systems exhibit while contrasting with both our own solar system and what astronomers have learned about them until now. If confirmed, TOI-6713.01 will continue to mold our understanding regarding the formation and evolution of exoplanets and exoplanetary systems throughout not only our Milky Way Galaxy, but throughout the cosmos, as well.

“The universe is an amazing place!” Dr. Kane tells Universe Today. “The fun thing about this particular project is that it all started with ‘Hmm … this might be interesting’ then turned into something far more fascinating than I could have imagined! Just goes to show, never miss the chance to follow your curiosity.”

How will this tidal storm exoplanet teach us about other exoplanets and exoplanetary systems in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Radiating Exoplanet Discovered in “Perfect Tidal Storm” appeared first on Universe Today.

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