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A recent presentation at AACR found a link between markers of accelerated aging and an increased risk of cancer. Then antivaxxers got a hold of it to blame COVID-19 vaccines not just for cancer, but for "accelerated aging" causing it.

The post There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are causing cancers associated with “accelerated aging” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Natasha Hausdorff is a British barrister (lawyer) specializing in international law, and also the legal director of the UK Lawyers for Israel. She’s also smart as hell, eloquent, and never loses her cool. I see her as the female equivalent of Douglas Murray: what a team they’d make in a debate over the war in Gaza!  Treat yourself to an hour or so of perusing her videos on YouTube, especially when she’s engaged in a debate and gets heckled because she’s pro-Israel and Jewish.

Here is a ten-minute video on Sky News in which Hausdorff discusses why she refused to sign a letter from UK lawyers, academics, and judges (there are now  1101 signers) asking, among other things, for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The moderator, as she should, asks tough questions, but Hausdorff answers them cooly and accurately. The material about aid trucks, as far as I know, is spot on.

Well, here’s a surprise: the Wall Street Journal reporting on a kerfuffle at the New York Times! You may have heard of the kerfuffle, as it involves an NYT article that’s one of the few to give a sympathetic hearing to Israel in its war with Hamas: an article about how Hamas weaponized sexual violence against Israeli women in its October 7 attack. As far as I know, the data in that article have been confirmed, even by the UN itself, which pronounced that Hamas did that in at least three separate locations.

But apparently the report of sexual violence inflicted on Israeli women didn’t go down well with some Times staffers, and someone leaked the contents of the article to the staff before those contents were going to be made into a podcast. The podcast was canceled, and the staff (which of course doesn’t like article sympathetic to Israel) rebelled.  I’m not sure about all the details, for not even the WSJ makes them clear.

Click to read, or, if paywalled, you can find it archived here.

I’ll be short here. First, let’s review the two other instances in which Times machers got fired because of staff revolts (all quotes from the WSJ)

The current dynamics at the Times stretch back to 2020, when a seed of employee activism took root in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. In June of that year, the staff staged a rebellion after the publication of an op-ed piece by Republican senator Tom Cotton, “Send In The Troops,” that suggested the U.S. military should quell riots. Some staffers said it made them feel unsafe.

Within days the Times had parted ways with Editorial Page Editor James Bennet. In a recent account of those events in the Economist, Bennet said Sulzberger supported the decision to publish it, and said he was forced to resign. Sulzberger has said he disputes Bennet’s narrative.

The company said it conducted a review after publishing the op-ed and found “the piece itself and the series of decisions that led to its publication did not hold up to scrutiny,” said a Times spokeswoman.

The “unsafe” complaint, one frequently made as a synonym for offended, makes me laugh. If staffers clearly thought that Cotton’s article made them feel unsafe, they need therapy. And you’ll remember this one:

In 2019, Donald G. McNeil Jr., a star science and health reporter, was investigated internally over allegations he had used racist language during a Times-sponsored trip to Peru for high-school students. Two years later, in a Medium post recalling the events, McNeil said he repeated the N-word while speaking to a student about a classmate’s use of the slur. Then-editor Dean Baquet told the staff that while McNeil “showed extremely poor judgment” he was given a second chance because “it did not appear to me that his intentions were hateful or malicious.” After 150 staffers protested, the Times and McNeil ultimately parted ways.

“Donald was reprimanded in 2019 and his eventual departure involved more than one issue,” said a Times spokeswoman.

That, too, was risible. McNeil did nothing wrong, as his use of the n-word was in a discussion of whether it was used on a previous occasion.

This takes us to the main point: Times staffers are starting, by the account of editors, to let their personal views dominate their reporting. A few quotes:

Employees were making their voice felt at the Times. At the same time, some editors and reporters were growing concerned that some Times journalists were letting their personal views dictate which stories to pursue—or not pursue.

One way to counter that trend was with the creation of a new beat for reporter Michael Powell to cover issues around free speech and expression. Powell created the beat in coordination with then-Deputy Managing Editor Carolyn Ryan, who had been tasked with safeguarding independence in the newsroom.

One thing Powell noticed, he said, was that coverage that challenged popular political and cultural beliefs was being neglected. Powell’s work includes a story on MIT’s canceling of a lecture by an academic who had criticized affirmative action, and another examining whether the ACLU is more willing to defend the First Amendment rights of progressives than far-right groups. [That lecturer at MIT was my Chicago colleague Dorian Abbot, who was radicalized by this experience into becoming a hard-core free speecher. The lecture he was scheduled to give had nothing to do with the “sin” for which he was deplatformed, which was to put up a couple of videos questioning DEI.]

“We kind of both had a nagging sense that we needed to write in a much more systematic way about these third-rail issues, of identity, gender, speech,” said Powell of his early conversations with Ryan. “The fact that I had all this territory was not a good sign.”

and this:

The publisher of the Times, 43-year-old A.G. Sulzberger, says readers’ trust is at risk, however. Some journalists, including at the Times, are criticizing journalistic traditions like impartiality, while embracing “a different model of journalism, one guided by personal perspective and animated by personal conviction,” Sulzberger wrote in a 12,000-word essay last year in Columbia Journalism Review.

I’m not keen on that “different model of journalism”, as it’s a direct outgrowth of the woke “lived experience.”  That cannot be allowed to trump “impartiality”.  But it’s because the Times is hiring young reporters who have suckled at the teat of wokeness in college and journalism school. If you don’t think professors propagandize students, even at my own university, you need to do some investigation. But I digress; let’s proceed.

But these tensions have particular resonance at the Times, which has long prided itself as a standard-setter in American journalism. Newsroom leaders, concerned that some Times journalists are compromising their neutrality and applying ideological purity tests to coverage decisions, are seeking to draw a line.

[Executive editor Joe] Kahn noted that the organization has added a lot of digital-savvy workers who are skilled in areas like data analytics, design and product engineering but who weren’t trained in independent journalism. He also suggested that colleges aren’t preparing new hires to be tolerant of dissenting views.

“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,” he said, adding that the onus is on the Times to instill values like independence in its employees.

And this is why FIRE detracts points from a college’s free-speech rating when a large number of students say that they feel inhibited about discussing their views on “hot button” issues with others. (This is why my own school dropped from the top four to #13—a tepid “above average” in just a year or so.) If you think only one kind of opinion is tolerable, then that’s the opinion you’ll keep expressing when you go to work for a place like the NYT.  It works regardless of which side you’re on:

Coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has become particularly fraught at the Times, with some reporters saying the Times’s work is tilting in favor of Israel and others pushing back forcefully, say people familiar with the situation. That has led to dueling charges of bias and journalistic malpractice among reporters and editors, forcing management to referee disputes.

“Just like our readers at the moment, there are really really strong passions about that issue and not that much willingness to really explore the perspectives of people who are on the other side of that divide,” Kahn said, adding that it’s hard work for staffers “to put their commitment to the journalism often ahead of their own personal views.”

The lesson: colleges should encourage students to not only learn about free speech from their first year in school, but also to apply what they’ve learned.

But I was amazed to learn that a paper rife with internal dissent and so flagrant in its reportorial biases is doing well:

The Times is the envy of much of the news-publishing world, with more than 10 million paying subscribers and a growing portfolio of products like cooking and games apps. But while its business hums along, the Times’s culture has been under strain.

In many ways, it is a story familiar to companies big and small across America, as bosses struggle to integrate a new generation of workers with different expectations of how their jobs and personal lives should mesh—and whose evolving social values can sow discord in the workplace.

I subscribe because, overall, I still think it’s the best (or at least the most readable) paper, but I find myself drawing more on the WSJ’s own news (not their reliably right-wing op-eds), or on the Free Press, which publishes stuff that the NYT would see as “heterodox,” and, for honest news about the war between Hamas and Israel, on the Times of Israel, which is a reliable source for what’s going on.

UPDATE: I forgot one argument of which readers reminded me: the “slippery slope argument.”  To wit:

5. Assisted suicide laws could lead to a “slippery slope” condition whereby shady doctors allow people to be medically euthanized for curable conditions, or even to allow relatives to kill their grandmothers.  Yes, this is a danger, though one that can be ameliorated with sufficient stringent vetting laws.  The “kill your grandmother” argument can be prevented completely, and certifying certain doctors and shrinks for their objectivity in vetting would be another good step. But when weighed against the suffering eliminated by assisted dying laws, I think the slippery-slope argument, while surely worth considering, is outweighed.

________________________

Assisted suicide for people who have severe and incurable mental illness has always seemed a no-brainer to me, but I’m surprised at the number of people who push back when I bring this up.  But, if the procedure is implemented properly, the objections to it don’t seem tenable, and in the end seem to resemble arguments against abortion.  That is, the pusher-backers say that people in tough spots shouldn’t have control over their bodies, that the procedure might spread if it’s allowed, and, underneath the objections of many, we find religious feelings—in this case feelings like “God will take you when He’s ready, not when you’re ready.”

Yet it seems to me undeniable that some cases of mental illness, like the main one documented in the Free Press article below, are so severe that they resemble terminal illnesses—illnesses for which enlightened people would favor assisted suicide (I might use the term “euthanasia”) in this post.  If you’re terminally depressed, in horrible mental pain all the time, constantly thinking about suicide, and have tried every possible remedy without any success, then why aren’t you in a position similar to that of a cancer patient who, having tried all remedies, now faces a finite term of horrible pain ending certain death? (I presume you’re aware that even in states not permitting assisted suicide, doctors often mercifully end the lives of such patients by giving them an overdose of morphine.)

The difference with mental illness is that death is not certain and the pain will last a lifetime. Sure, maybe researchers will come up with a cure for an intractable mental illness, but that also holds for terminal physical illnesses. People with bad prognoses often hope that a cure will be discovered before they die.

Now for the state to effect euthanasia, there must of course be restrictions.  Beyond that, anybody has, in my view, the right to kill themselves by other means, like hanging, shooting, or jumping in front of a train. That kind of suicide is illegal, though I think the illegality is nuts. But for the government to help you die, it’s not proper to provide anybody with the means of euthanasia. There are many reasons, but I won’t enumerate them.

Naturally, in places where euthanasia is officially legal (see the map below), there are such restrictions for the physically ill:

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in some countries, under certain circumstances, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, parts of the United States and all six states of Australia. The constitutional courts of Colombia, Germany and Italy legalized assisted suicide, but their governments have not legislated or regulated the practice yet.

In most of those states or countries, to qualify for legal assistance, individuals who seek a physician-assisted suicide must meet certain criteria, including: they are of sound mind, voluntarily and repeatedly expressing their wish to die, and taking the specified, lethal dose by their own hand. The laws vary in scope from place to place. In the United States, PAS [physician-assisted suicide] is limited to those who have a prognosis of six months or less to live. In other countries such as Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, a terminal diagnosis is not a requirement and voluntary euthanasia is additionally allowed.

Below is a map of where assisted suicide is legal throughout the world, and there aren’t many places. The states in the U.S. where it’s legal include Maine, Hawaii, Washington D.C., Washington State, Colorado, New Mexico, New Jersey, Vermont, and Oregon. But in no state is assisted suicide permitted for those with mental illness. For physical illnesses or other conditions that are likely to kill you in a few months, here are the general criteria in the U.S.:

• an adult as defined by the state
• a resident of the state where the law is in effect
• capable of using the prescribed medications without assistance
• able to make your own healthcare decisions and communicate them
• living with a terminal illness that is expected to cause death within 6 months as verified by qualified healthcare professionals

Places where assisted dying is legal (see the key for variations):

Vgonzalez630, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Places that permit euthanasia for those with mental illnesses include only the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and—perhaps after 2027—Canada. I haven’t looked up the criteria for state assistance for euthanasia for the mentally ill in all four countries, but here are the criteria for the Netherlands given in the Free Press article below by writer Rupa Subramanya.

Dutch law requires those seeking assisted suicide to show they are in great pain, have no alternative, and are acting of their own volition. They also must get sign-off from at least two doctors, including a psychiatrist. The process can take a few years, culminating with a doctor giving the patient a fatal medication or, if done by oneself, a cup filled with poison to drink. When it’s over, a government panel reviews the case to ensure everything was above board.

Click below to read the article. The woman pictured, Zoraya ter Beek, suffered her whole short life from depression, autism, and borderline personality disorder, and said she was in constant pain. Nothing helped, and eventually the doctors and shrinks said there was nothing more that they could do for her. Tired of living, she applied for and qualified for assisted suicide. She is still alive but scheduled to die in May. (That isn’t final, of course, for I’ve read of such patients who change their minds at the last minute, willing to go on but heartened by the fact that at any time they could choose to die.) Her boyfriend loves her, but agrees with her decision.

Here are some of the objections to assisted suicide for mental illness, and my responses (all text is mine).

1.) The patient could get better but, by taking their life, are depriving themselves of a livable and perhaps enjoyable future. Yes, but that’s true of even physical illnesses. Besides, the prognosis must be confirmed by several doctors and examined post facto by the state.  And I would ask those who make this argument, “Who are you to tell someone that they must go on living when they’re in intractable pain?”  For those of us who have been severely depressed, it’s hard to convey to others that this kind of severe and prolonged mental pain is fully capable of making you wish to die.

2.) It’s up to God to determine when you die, not you.  As an atheist, or even as a rationalist, I find this argument bogus. Here it’s similar to the religious argument against abortion, assisted suicide for physical illnesses, or, as Peter Singer discusses, euthanasia for newborn babies who have a condition that will cause them to suffer and, ultimately, kill them with certainty in a short time. Besides, are you going to base medical decisions on assuming that there’s a god for which we have no good empirical evidence? Isn’t medical treatment supposed to be based on empirical criteria?  Do you tell a dying atheist that you can’t increase the morphine drip because God doesn’t want that?

Here’s a quote from the article:

All this pointed to a “dystopian view of the future,” said Theo Boer, the healthcare ethics professor.

“Whether or not you’re religious, killing yourself, taking your own life, saying that I’m done with life before life is done with me, I think that reflects a poverty of spirit,” Boer told me.

. . . . Theo Boer, the bioethicist, acknowledged that none of the suicides in the Bible is condemned, but he added that they are not lionized or commemorated either.

“Suicide in the Bible belongs in the realm of the tragic, and the tragic should not be condemned—nor should it be regulated or celebrated,” he said.

This palaver, including the phrases “Life is done with me” and “poverty of spirit” seems to reflect religious belief, but it’s already clear from opposition to euthanasia in many places (especially the U.S.) that we shouldn’t cut short what is up to God to determine. But if God is omnipotent, wouldn’t He be behind a mentally ill person’s decision to have assisted euthanasia?

3.) It’s contagious.  There are several statistics given in the article about assisted dying increasing over time. Most are for physical conditions, with only one for mental illness (my bolding)

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to make euthanasia legal. Since then, the number of people who increasingly choose to die is startling.

In 2022, the most recent year for which there is data, Dutch officials recorded 8,720 cases of euthanasia, a 13.7 percent increase from 2021, when there were 7,666 cases. To put this in perspective, there were a total of 170,100 deaths in the Netherlands in 2022—meaning euthanasia cases comprised more than 5 percent.

“This upward trend, in both the absolute and relative numbers, has been visible for a number of years,” the country’s Regional Euthanasia Review Committee’s 2022 Annual Report states. What’s more, the number of euthanized people between the ages of 18 and 40 jumped from 77 in 2021 to 86 in 2022. And the number of people with psychiatric disorders who choose euthanasia is rising: In 2011, there were just 13 cases; in 2013, there were 42; and by 2021, there were 115. 

This trend is not limited to the Netherlands. From 2018 to 2021, countries where euthanasia or assisted suicide is most popular saw sizable increases in the number of people signing up to die: In the United States, where ten states and the District of Columbia have physician-assisted suicide, there was a 53 percent jump; in Canada, 125 percent.

But why wouldn’t you expect the numbers to rise as people become aware that they have this alternative? It’s not written about very often, so you have to see articles like this to find out about it.  But even so, this is a question of ethics, not of statistics.  If the regulations are sufficiently rational and stringent that they prohibit spur-of-the-moment suicides or mental conditions for which every possible cure hasn’t been tried, why should we care about the increase? And wouldn’t you want the ability to die a peaceful and painless death if you had a condition that could be terminated in a peaceful way, at a time and place of your choosing, and when you are surrounded by loved ones? (This is, as I’ve learned, the way it usually occurs.)

4.) It hurts those who are left behind.  I’ve heard this argument used often against those who discuss self-inflicted suicide. “If you kill yourself, think of all the people who will miss you and be in pain.” But this seems eminently selfish to me.  Everybody who dies before their friends, relatives, and loved ones (and that means all of us) faces that as a certainty.  If someone’s in intractable physical pain and dying of cancer, would you tell them to hang on for your sake? Of course not! The same holds for incurable mental illnesses. It’s selfish and boorish to ask someone to stay alive for the sake of your—or other people’s—feelings.

For #5, see the update at top. 

For some people, suicide is simply a no-go zone, which is why suicide hotlines exist to talk those who wish to die out of that wish. But that’s different, for someone who calls a hotline has a good chance that they’re simply emitting a cry for help, and want to be talked out of it. (However, some do kill themselves.) That’s why I think those hotlines are great things. But assisted dying with stringent criteria needed to qualify, and the use of drugs that assure a painless death, are not equivalent to a suicide hotline.

I’m sure that ethical philosophers have discussed this issue before, and feel free to cite articles below if you know of them (I don’t).  These are of course tentative ideas that I’ve thought about for a long time (note: I’m NOT a candidate!), and were given shape by the article above, but I’m willing to listen to other points of view. If you have them, or if you agree with what I’ve said, weigh in below. But do read the Free Press piece.

Trying to limit pediatric COVID was literally the pandemic's worst sin for pro-infection doctors, warranting severe punishment. This is how desperately they wanted them infected.

The post Dr. Vinay Prasad: It’s “Good” That Parents Who Want To Vaccinate Their Kids Against COVID Get Reported To Child Protective Services first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

An international research team led by the University of Vienna has made a major breakthrough. In a study recently published in Nature Astronomy, they describe how they conducted the first direct measurements of stellar wind in three Sun-like star systems. Using X-ray emission data obtained by the ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror-Newton (XMM-Newton) of these stars’ “astrospheres,” they measured the mass loss rate of these stars via stellar winds. The study of how stars and planets co-evolve could assist in the search for life while also helping astronomers predict the future evolution of our Solar System.

The research was led by Kristina G. Kislyakova, a Senior Scientist with the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna, the deputy head of the Star and Planet Formation group, and the lead coordinator of the ERASMUS+ program. She was joined by other astrophysicists from the University of Vienna, the Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LAMOS) at the Sorbonne University, the University of Leicester, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL).

Astrospheres are the analogs of our Solar System’s heliosphere, the outermost atmospheric layer of our Sun, composed of hot plasma pushed by solar winds into the interstellar medium (ISM). These winds drive many processes that cause planetary atmospheres to be lost to space (aka. atmospheric mass loss). Assuming a planet’s atmosphere is regularly replenished and/or has a protective magnetosphere, these winds can be the deciding factor between a planet becoming habitable or a lifeless ball of rock.

Logarithmic scale of the Solar System, Heliosphere, and Interstellar Medium (ISM). Credit: NASA-JPL

While stellar winds mainly comprise protons, electrons, and alpha particles, they also contain trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, and even iron. Despite their importance to stellar and planetary evolution, the winds of Sun-like stars are notoriously difficult to constrain. However, these heavier ions are known to capture electrons from neutral hydrogen that permeates the ISM, resulting in X-ray emissions. Using data from the XXM-Newton mission, Kislyakova and her team detected these emissions from other stars.

These were 70 Ophiuchi, Epsilon Eridani, and 61 Cygni, three main sequence Sun-like stars located 16.6, 10.475, and 11.4 light-years from Earth (respectively). Whereas 70 Ophiuchi and 61 Cygni are binary systems of two K-type (orange dwarf) stars, Epsilon Eridani is a single K-type star. By observing the spectral lines of oxygen ions, they could directly quantify the total mass of stellar wind emitted by all three stars. For the three stars surveyed, they estimated the mass loss rates to be 66.5±11.1, 15.6±4.4, and 9.6±4.1 times the solar mass loss rate, respectively.

In short, this means that the winds from these stars are much stronger than our Sun’s, which could result from the stronger magnetic activity of these stars. As Kislyakova related in a University of Vienna news release:

“In the solar system, solar wind charge exchange emission has been observed from planets, comets, and the heliosphere and provides a natural laboratory to study the solar wind’s composition. Observing this emission from distant stars is much more tricky due to the faintness of the signal. In addition to that, the distance to the stars makes it very difficult to disentangle the signal emitted by the astrosphere from the actual X-ray emission of the star itself, part of which is “spread” over the field-of-view of the telescope due to instrumental effects.”

XMM-Newton X-ray image of the star 70 Ophiuchi (left) and the X-ray emission from the region (“Annulus”) surrounding the star represented in a spectrum over the energy of the X-ray photons (right). Credit: C: Kislyakova et al. (2024)

For their study, Kislyakova and her team also developed a new algorithm to disentangle the contributions made by the stars and their astrospheres to the emission spectra. This allowed them to detect charge exchange signals from the stellar wind oxygen ions and the neutral hydrogen in the surrounding ISM. This constitutes the first time X-ray charge exchange emissions from the extrasolar astrospheres have been directly detected. Moreover, the mass loss rate estimates they derived could be used by astronomers as a benchmark for stellar wind models, expanding on what little observational evidence there is for the winds of Sun-like stars. As co-author Manuel Güdel, also of the University of Vienna, indicated:

“There have been world-wide efforts over three decades to substantiate the presence of winds around Sun-like stars and measure their strengths, but so far only indirect evidence based on their secondary effects on the star or its environment alluded to the existence of such winds; our group previously tried to detect radio emission from the winds but could only place upper limits to the wind strengths while not detecting the winds themselves. Our new X-ray based results pave the way to finding and even imaging these winds directly and studying their interactions with surrounding planets.”

In the future, this method of direct detection of stellar winds will be facilitated by next-generation missions like the European Athena mission. This mission will include a high-resolution X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) spectrometer, which Athena will use to resolve the finer structure and ratio of faint emission lines that are difficult to distinguish using XMM-Newton’s instruments. This will provide a more detailed picture of the stellar winds and astrospheres of distant stars, helping astronomers constrain their potential habitability while also improving solar evolution models.

Further Reading: University of Vienna, Nature Astronomy

The post Stellar Winds Coming From Other Stars Measured for the First Time appeared first on Universe Today.

I felt remarkably well when I awoke despite the previous night’s beer. I was a little thirsty, and my mouth felt like I brushed my teeth with a toilet brush. I took a long shower and took my time getting ready for work. I bought a scone and tea on my way to the trolley and picked up a newspaper. For the […]

The post Skeptics in the Pub. Cholera. Epilogue first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

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When Robert Zubrin published his classic book The Case for Mars a quarter century ago, setting foot on the Red Planet seemed a fantasy. Today, manned exploration is certain, and as Zubrin affirms in The New World on Mars, so too is colonization. From the astronautical engineer venerated by NASA and today’s space entrepreneurs, here is what we will achieve on Mars and how.

SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are building fleets of space vehicles to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passages to America. We will settle on Mars, and with our knowledge of the planet, analyzed in depth by Dr. Zubrin, we will utilize the resources and tackle the challenges that await us. What we will we build? Populous Martian city-states producing air, water, food, power, and more. Zubrin’s Martian economy will pay for necessary imports and generate income from varied enterprises, such as real estate sales—homes that are airtight and protect against cosmic space radiation, with fish-farm aquariums positioned overhead, letting in sunlight and blocking cosmic rays while providing fascinating views. Zubrin even predicts the Red Planet customs, social relations, and government—of the people, by the people, for the people, with inalienable individual rights—that will overcome traditional forms of oppression to draw Earth immigrants. After all, Mars needs talent.

With all of this in place, Zubrin’s Red Planet will become a pressure cooker for invention in bioengineering, synthetic biology, robotics, medicine, nuclear energy, and more, benefiting humans on Earth, Mars, and beyond. We can create this magnificent future, making life better, less fatalistic. The New World on Mars proves that there is no point killing each other over provinces and limited resources when, together, we can create planets.

Robert Zubrin is former president of the aerospace R&D company Pioneer Astronautics, which performs advanced space research for NASA, the US Air Force, the US Department of Energy, and private companies. He is the founder and president of the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars, leading the Society’s successful effort to build the first simulated human Mars exploration base in the Canadian Arctic and growing the organization to include 7,000 members in 40 countries. A nuclear and astronautical engineer, Zubrin began his career with Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin) as a Senior Engineer involved in the design of advanced interplanetary missions. His “Mars Direct” plan for near-term human exploration of Mars was commended by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and covered in The Economist, Fortune, Air and Space Smithsonian, Newsweek (cover story), Time, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, as well as on BBC, PBS TV, CNN, the Discovery Channel, and National Public Radio. Zubrin is also the author of twelve books, including The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, with more than 100,000 copies in print in America alone and now in its 25th Anniversary Edition. He lives with his wife, Hope, a science teacher, in Golden, Colorado. His latest book is: The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet. The next big Mars Society conference in Seattle August 8-11.

Read Zubrin’s discussion of his paper on panspermia for seeding like on Earth.

Shermer and Zubrin discuss:

• Why not start with the moon?
• What’s it like on Mars? Like the top of Mt. Everest?
• Was Mars ever like Earth? Water, life, etc.?
• How much will it cost to go to Mars?
• How to get people to Mars: food, water, radiation, boredom?
• Where on Mars should people settle?
• What are “natural resources”?
• Resources on Mars already there vs. need to be produced
• Analogies with Europeans colonizing North America
• Public vs. private enterprise for space exploration
• Economics on Mars
• Politics on Mars
• Lessons from the Red Planet for the Blue Planet
• Ingersoll’s insight: free speech & thought > science & technology > machines as our slaves > moon landing. “This is something that free people can do.”
• Liberty in space: won’t the most powerful people on Mars threaten to shut off your air if you don’t obey?
• Independent City-States on Mars
• Direct vs. representative democracy
• America as a model for what we can create on Mars
• Are new frontiers needed for civilization to continue?
• The worst idea ever: that the total amount of potential resources is fixed.

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

One of the big mysteries about dark matter particles is whether they interact with each other. We still don’t know the exact nature of what dark matter is. Some models argue that dark matter only interacts gravitationally, but many more posit that dark matter particles can collide with each other, clump together, and even decay into particles we can see. If that’s the case, then objects with particularly strong gravitational fields such as black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs might capture and concentrate dark matter. This could in turn affect how these objects appear. As a case in point, a recent study looks at the interplay between dark matter and neutron stars.

Neutron stars are made of the most dense matter in the cosmos. Their powerful gravitational fields could trap dark matter and unlike black holes, any radiation from dark matter won’t be trapped behind an event horizon. So neutron stars are a perfect candidate for studying dark matter models. For this study, the team looked at how much dark matter a neutron star could capture, and how the decay of interacting dark matter particles would affect its temperature.

The details depend on which specific dark matter model you use. Rather than addressing variant models, the team looked at broad properties. Specifically, they focused on how dark matter and baryons (protons and neutrons) might interact, and whether that would cause dark matter to be trapped. Sure enough, for the range of possible baryon-dark matter interactions, neutron stars can capture dark matter.

The team then went on to look at how dark matter thermalization could occur. In other words, as dark matter is captured it should release heat energy into the neutron star through collisions and dark matter annihilation. Over time the dark matter and neutron star should reach a thermal equilibrium. The rate at which this occurs depends on how strongly particles interact, the so-called scattering cross-section. The team found that thermal equilibrium is reached fairly quickly. For simple scalar models of dark matter, equilibrium can be reached within 10,000 years. For vector models of dark matter, equilibrium can happen in just a year. Regardless of the model, neutron stars can reach thermal equilibrium in a cosmic blink of an eye.

If this model is correct, then dark matter could play a measurable role in the evolution of neutron stars. We could, for example, identify the presence of dark matter by observing neutron stars that are warmer than expected. Or perhaps even distinguish different dark matter models by the overall spectrum of neutron stars.

Reference: Bell, Nicole F., et al. “Thermalization and annihilation of dark matter in neutron stars.” Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2024.04 (2024): 006.

The post Neutron Stars Could be Heating Up From Dark Matter Annihilation appeared first on Universe Today.

Two readers came through with batches of photos, so I think we’re good until Wednesday. If you have good one, well, I can always use them. Thanks!

Today’s photos of fungi come from reader Rik Gern from Austin, Texas.. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

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A few weeks ago I sent you some pictures of mushrooms from Copper Falls State Park in Morse, Wisconsin. Here are the rest of the species I observed on that hike.

This lone sentry was at the very beginning of the trail. I wasn’t able to identify it precisely, but it may be from the Rhizopogon family, or maybe not; I had a hard time finding any information that could confirm its identity. On a walk of several miles, this was the only mushroom of it’s kind that I saw.

It would be easy to mistake this fungal cluster for an order of fries abandoned by a careless hiker, but in reality it is Clavariadelphus americanus. I couldn’t find a common name for them, so for now I’ll cal them French fry mushrooms.

They weren’t all grouped so tightly together though; there were a few open patches of pine needles bursting with these odd looking mushrooms:

Late in the hike, as the sun was getting low, these Golden trumpets (Xeromphalina campanella) came into view. According to Wikipedia, “The genus name Xeromphalina means “little dry navel” and campanella means “bell-shaped”, respectively describing the mature and young shapes of the pileus, or cap”. You can see an example of that here with the two smaller mushrooms sporting convex caps while those on the larger mushrooms are starting to go concave.

Golden trumpets like to grow on logs and all of these pictures are from the same fallen tree:

Here is a view of their brownish red stalks.

The black and white picture gives the effect of some large plants growing in an underwater cavern. The lower right hand part of the image has a number of little white dots that look like dust spots on the picture, but when you look closely you can see that they are tiny insects trapped and wrapped up in a spider’s web.

The nearly horizontal rays of the setting sun did a nice job of highlighting the gills of these mushrooms and giving them a majestic look. Once again we can see the downward facing caps on the presumably younger mushrooms on the bottom and the upward arching caps on the older mushrooms on the top.

Links:

Rhizopogon.

Clavariadelphus americanus

Golden trumpet (Xeromphalina campanella)

Conservationists think tweaking pandas’ diets might shift their gut microbiomes in a way that could encourage them to mate

After a journey lasting about two billion years, photons from an extremely energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) struck the sensors on the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope on October 9th, 2022. The GRB lasted seven minutes but was visible for much longer. Even amateur astronomers spotted the powerful burst in visible frequencies.

It was so powerful that it affected Earth’s atmosphere, a remarkable feat for something more than two billion light-years away. It’s the brightest GRB ever observed, and since then, astrophysicists have searched for its source.

NASA says GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the Universe. They were first detected in the late 1960s by American satellites launched to keep an eye on the USSR. The Americans were concerned that the Russians might keep testing atomic weapons despite signing 1963’s Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Now, we detect about one GRB daily, and they’re always in distant galaxies. Astrophysicists struggled to explain them, coming up with different hypotheses. There was so much research into them that by the year 2,000, an average of 1.5 articles on GRBs were published in scientific journals daily.

There were many different proposed causes. Some thought that GRBs could be released when comets collided with neutron stars. Others thought they could come from massive stars collapsing to become black holes. In fact, scientists wondered if quasars, supernovae, pulsars, and even globular clusters could be the cause of GRBs or associated with them somehow.

GRBs are confounding because their light curves are so complex. No two are identical. But astrophysicists made progress, and they’ve learned a few things. Short-duration GRBs are caused by the merger of two neutron stars or the merger of a neutron star and a black hole. Longer-duration GRBs are caused by a massive star collapsing and forming a black hole.

This sample of 12 GRB light curves shows how no two are the same. Image Credit: NASA

New research in Nature examined the ultra-energetic GRB 221009A, dubbed the “B.O.A.T: Brightest Of All Time,” and found something surprising. When it was initially discovered, scientists said it was caused by a massive star collapsing into a black hole. The new research doesn’t contradict that. But it presents a new mystery: why are there no heavy elements in the newly uncovered supernova?

The research is “JWST detection of a supernova associated with GRB 221009A without an r-process signature.” The lead author is Peter Blanchard, a Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) postdoctoral fellow.

“The GRB was so bright that it obscured any potential supernova signature in the first weeks and months after the burst,” Blanchard said. “At these times, the so-called afterglow of the GRB was like the headlights of a car coming straight at you, preventing you from seeing the car itself. So, we had to wait for it to fade significantly to give us a chance of seeing the supernova.”

“When we confirmed that the GRB was generated by the collapse of a massive star, that gave us the opportunity to test a hypothesis for how some of the heaviest elements in the universe are formed,” said lead author Blanchard. “We did not see signatures of these heavy elements, suggesting that extremely energetic GRBs like the B.O.A.T. do not produce these elements. That doesn’t mean that all GRBs do not produce them, but it’s a key piece of information as we continue to understand where these heavy elements come from. Future observations with JWST will determine if the B.O.A.T.’s ‘normal’ cousins produce these elements.”

Scientists know that supernova explosions forge heavy elements. They’re an important source of elements from oxygen (atomic number 8) to rubidium (atomic number 37) in the interstellar medium. They also produce heavier elements than that. Heavy elements are necessary to form rocky planets like Earth and for life itself. But it’s important to note that astrophysicists don’t completely understand how heavy elements are produced.

This periodic table from the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio shows where the elements come from, though scientists still have some uncertainty. Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Scientists naturally wondered if an extremely luminous GRB like GRB 221009A would produce even more heavy elements. But that’s not what they found.

“This event is particularly exciting because some had hypothesized that a luminous gamma-ray burst like the B.O.A.T. could make a lot of heavy elements like gold and platinum,” said second author Ashley Villar of Harvard University and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “If they were correct, the B.O.A.T. should have been a goldmine. It is really striking that we didn’t see any evidence for these heavy elements.”

Stars forge heavy elements by nucleosynthesis. Three processes are responsible for that: the p-process, the s-process and the r-process (proton capture process, slow neutron capture process, and the rapid neutron capture process.) The r-process captures neutrons faster than the s-process and is responsible for about half of the elements heavier than iron. The r-process is also responsible for the most stable isotopes of these heavy elements.

That’s all to illustrate the importance of the r-process in the Universe.

The researchers used the JWST to get to the bottom of GRB 221009A. The GRB was obscured by the Milky Way, but the JWST senses infrared light and saw right through the Milky Way’s gas and dust. The telescope’s NIRSpec (Near Infrared Spectrograph) senses elements like oxygen and calcium, usually found in supernovae. But the signatures weren’t very bright, a surprise considering how bright the supernova was.

“It’s not any brighter than previous supernovae,” lead author Blanchard said. “It looks fairly normal in the context of other supernovae associated with less energetic GRBs. You might expect that the same collapsing star producing a very energetic and bright GRB would also produce a very energetic and bright supernova. But it turns out that’s not the case. We have this extremely luminous GRB, but a normal supernova.”

Confirming the presence of the supernova was a big step to understanding GRB 221009A. But the lack of an r-process signature is still confounding.

Scientists have only confirmed the r-process in the merger of two neutron stars, called a kilonova explosion. But there are too few neutron star mergers to explain the abundance of heavy elements.

This artist’s illustration shows two neutron stars colliding. Known as a “kilonova” event, they’re the only confirmed location of the r-process that forges heavy elements. Credits: Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)

“There is likely another source,” Blanchard said. “It takes a very long time for binary neutron stars to merge. Two stars in a binary system first have to explode to leave behind neutron stars. Then, it can take billions and billions of years for the two neutron stars to slowly get closer and closer and finally merge. But observations of very old stars indicate that parts of the universe were enriched with heavy metals before most binary neutron stars would have had time to merge. That’s pointing us to an alternative channel.”

Researchers have wondered if luminous supernovae like this can account for the rest. Supernovae have an inner layer where more heavy elements could be synthesized. But that layer is obscured. Only after things calm down is the inner layer visible.

“The exploded material of the star is opaque at early times, so you can only see the outer layers,” Blanchard said. “But once it expands and cools, it becomes transparent. Then you can see the photons coming from the inner layer of the supernova.”

All elements have spectroscopic signatures, and the JWST’s NIRSpec is a very capable instrument. But it couldn’t detect heavier elements, even in the supernova’s inner layer.

“Upon examining the B.O.A.T.’s spectrum, we did not see any signature of heavy elements, suggesting extreme events like GRB 221009A are not primary sources,” lead author Blanshard said. “This is crucial information as we continue to try to pin down where the heaviest elements are formed.”

Scientists are still uncertain about the GRB and its lack of heavy elements. But there’s another feature that might offer a clue: jets.

“A second proposed site of the r-process is in rapidly rotating cores of massive stars that collapse into an accreting black hole, producing similar conditions as the aftermath of a BNS merger,” the authors write in their paper. “Theoretical simulations suggest that accretion disk outflows in these so-called ‘collapsars’ may reach the neutron-rich state required for the r-process to occur.”

The “accretion disk outflows” the researchers refer to are relativistic jets. The narrower the jets are, the brighter and more focused their energy is.

Could they play a role in forging heavy elements?

“It’s like focusing a flashlight’s beam into a narrow column, as opposed to a broad beam that washes across a whole wall,” Laskar said. “In fact, this was one of the narrowest jets seen for a gamma-ray burst so far, which gives us a hint as to why the afterglow appeared as bright as it did. There may be other factors responsible as well, a question that researchers will be studying for years to come.”

The researchers also used NIRSpec to gather a spectrum from the GRB’s host galaxy. It has the lowest metallicity of any galaxy known to host a GRB. Could that be a factor?

“This is one of the lowest metallicity environments of any LGRB, which is a class of objects that prefer low-metallicity galaxies, and it is, to our knowledge, the lowest metallicity environment of a GRB-SN to date,” the authors write in their research. “This may suggest that very low metallicity is required to produce a very energetic GRB.”

The host galaxy is also actively forming stars. Is that another clue?

“The spectrum shows signs of star formation, hinting that the birth environment of the original star may be different than previous events,” Blanshard said.

Yijia Li is a graduate student at Penn State and a co-author of the paper. “This is another unique aspect of the B.O.A.T. that may help explain its properties,” Li said. “The energy released in the B.O.A.T. was completely off the charts, one of the most energetic events humans have ever seen. The fact that it also appears to be born out of near-primordial gas may be an important clue to understanding its superlative properties.”

This is another case where solving one mystery leads to another unanswered one. The JWST was launched to answer some of our foundational questions about the Universe. By confirming that a supernova is behind the most powerful GRB ever detected, it’s done part of its job.

But it also found another mystery and has left us hanging again.

The JWST is working as intended.

The post The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Seen Came from a Collapsing Star appeared first on Universe Today.

It’s an exciting time for the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Thanks to cutting-edge observatories, instruments, and new techniques, scientists are getting closer to experimentally verifying theories that remain largely untested. These theories address some of the most pressing questions scientists have about the Universe and the physical laws governing it – like the nature of gravity, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy. For decades, scientists have postulated that either there is additional physics at work or that our predominant cosmological model needs to be revised.

While the investigation into the existence and nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy is ongoing, there are also attempts to resolve these mysteries with the possible existence of new physics. In a recent paper, a team of NASA researchers proposed how spacecraft could search for evidence of additional physical within our Solar Systems. This search, they argue, would be assisted by the spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation and using interferometers. Such a mission could help resolve a cosmological mystery that has eluded scientists for over half a century.

The proposal is the work of Slava G. Turyshev, an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and research scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was joined by Sheng-wey Chiow, an experimental physicist at NASA JPL, and Nan Yu, an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina and a senior research scientist at NASA JPL. Their research paper recently appeared online and has been accepted for publication in Physical Review D.

A new study shows how measuring the Sun’s gravitational field could search for additional physics. Credit: NASA/ESA

Turyshev’s experience includes being a Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission science team member. In previous work, Turyshev and his colleagues have investigated how a mission to the Sun’s solar gravitational lens (SGL) could revolutionize astronomy. The concept paper was awarded a Phase III grant in 2020 by NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. In a previous study, he and SETI astronomer Claudio Maccone also considered how advanced civilizations could use SGLs to transmit power from one solar system to the next.

To summarize, gravitational lensing is a phenomenon where gravitational fields alter the curvature of spacetime in their vicinity. This effect was originally predicted by Einstein in 1916 and was used by Arthur Eddington in 1919 to confirm his General Relativity (GR). However, between the 1960s and 1990s, observations of the rotational curves of galaxies and the expansion of the Universe gave rise to new theories regarding the nature of gravity over larger cosmic scales. On the one hand, scientists postulated the existence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy to reconcile their observations with GR.

On the other hand, scientists have advanced alternate theories of gravity (such as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), Modified Gravity (MOG), etc.). Meanwhile, others have suggested there may be additional physics in the cosmos that we are not yet aware of. As Turyshev told Universe Today via email:

“We are eager to explore questions surrounding the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter. Despite their discovery in the last century, their underlying causes remain elusive. Should these ‘anomalies’ stem from new physics—phenomena yet to be observed in ground-based laboratories or particle accelerators—it’s possible that this novel force could manifest on a solar system scale.”

Artist’s impression of a proposed Solar Gravity Lens telescope. Credit: The Aerospace Corporation

For their latest study, Turyshev and his colleagues investigated how a series of spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation could investigate the Sun’s gravitational field. These investigations, said Turyshev, would search for deviations from the predictions of general relativity at the Solar System scale, something that has not been possible to date:

“These deviations are hypothesized to manifest as nonzero elements in the gravity gradient tensor (GGT), fundamentally akin to a solution of the Poisson equation. Due to their minuscule nature, detecting these deviations demands precision far surpassing current capabilities—by at least five orders of magnitude. At such a heightened level of accuracy, numerous well-known effects will introduce significant noise. The strategy involves conducting differential measurements to negate the impact of known forces, thereby revealing the subtle, yet nonzero, contributions to the GGT.”

The mission, said Turyshev, would employ local measurement techniques that rely on a series of interferometers. This includes interferometric laser ranging, a technique demonstrated by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, a spacecraft pair that relies on laser range finding to track Earth’s oceans, glaciers, rivers, and surface water. The same technique will also be used to investigate gravitational waves by the proposed space-based Laser Interferometry Space Antenna (LISA).

The spacecraft will also be equipped with atom interferometers, which use the wave character of atoms to measure the difference in phase between atomic matter waves along different paths. This technique will allow the spacecraft to detect the presence of non-gravitational noise (thruster activity, solar radiation pressure, thermal recoil forces, etc.) and negate them to the necessary degree. Meanwhile, flying in a tetrahedral formation will optimize the spacecraft’s ability to compare measurements.

“Laser ranging will offer us highly accurate data on the distances and relative velocities between spacecraft,” said Turyshev. “Furthermore, its exceptional precision will allow us to measure the rotation of a tetrahedron formation relative to an inertial reference frame (via Sagnac observables), a task unachievable by any other means. Consequently, this will establish a tetrahedral formation leveraging a suite of local measurements.”

Artist’s impression of the path of the star S2 as it passes very close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Ultimately, this mission will test GR on the smallest of scales, which has been sorely lacking to date. While scientists continue to probe the effect of gravitational fields on spacetime, these have been largely confined to using galaxies and galaxy clusters as lenses. Other instances include observations of compact objects (like white dwarf stars) and supermassive black holes (SMBH) like Sagittarius A* – which resides at the center of the Milky Way.

“We aim to enhance the precision of testing GR and alternative gravitational theories by more than five orders of magnitude. Beyond this primary objective, our mission has additional scientific goals, which we will detail in our subsequent paper. These include testing GR and other gravitational theories, detecting gravitational waves in the micro-Hertz range—a spectrum not reachable by existing or envisioned instruments— and exploring aspects of the solar system, such as the hypothetical Planet 9, among other endeavors.”

Further Reading: Physical Review D

The post Formation-Flying Spacecraft Could Probe the Solar System for New Physics appeared first on Universe Today.

The hatching of the 250th California condor chick at the San Diego Zoo marks a notable milestone for a species that narrowly evaded extinction

Everybody in the Biden administration is all juiced up to reward Hamas for attacking Israel by giving the Palestinians a state, one presumably run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).  People who make this suggestion, who include Biden and his running dog Anthony Blinken, seen to be ignorant of the fact that the PA is a terror-promoting organization that in some ways is even worse than Hamas, for it produces schoolbooks that have brought up generations of Palestinians to hate and want to kill Jews.

If you want to know why neither Hamas nor the PA (nor even a revised version of the PA) should be running Gaza and the West Bank after the war, read the Tablet piece below, which is reasonably short and full of facts. The author, Gaudi Taub, is also a broadcaster, a screenwritere, and a historian.  Click the headline; it’s a free read:

The title of the article is startling, but it is accurate. For the PA has placed a value on the stipend a terrorist will get depending on how many Jews he’s planned to hurt, actually hurt, or killed. And the more Jews you kill, the more money a jailed Palestinian gets, all through the “Martyr’s Fund” described in Wikipedia.  (It’s often called “pay-for-slay”.) I and others have talked about it before, yet many people still seem surprised that it exists. Not only that, but it’s funded in part by American taxpayers (via fungible money we give to NGOs, which becomes extra money for the PA), and, if the terrorist is killed (and becomes a martyr, or shahid), the terrorist’s family gets a stipend for life.

Now if anything is genocide, a program whereby Palestinians are financially rewarded for killing Jews is that.  Imagine if Jews got paid for each Palestinian they killed! The world would be outraged, and it would properly be called “genocide” (which Israel is not committing now).

The Martyr’s Fund takes up a huge portion of the PA;’s budget: about 7%, and according to Tablet ,the PA considers it the most important item in its budget, one that cannot ever be dispensed with. Below is a table of what dead Jews are worth to a jailed Palestinian; monthly stipends to prisoners (or their families) are calculated based on the time a terrorist is sentenced to jail.  (A New Israeli Shekel is worth 27¢ U.S, so divide by about four to get the monthly salary in dollars.

The PA, as I said, also creates and promotes terrorism through its schools, producing materials that are also used in UN (UNRWA) schools:.

Schools are a critical part of the socialization of Palestinian children into this culture. Not only do Palestinian school books contain direct incitement in the form of explicit murderous antisemitic ideology, but also every subject, including grammar and math, drills the same message into children’s brains. Take the following exam questions that Shemesh cites (p. 20):

“Hamas shoots a rocket which weighs 50 kilos in the direction of occupied Tel Rabia [Tel Aviv], which is 90.25 kilometers away. What speed does it need to fly, what would be the maximum height, and how long will it take it get there?”

Or:

“Two people are carrying on their shoulders a coffin weighing 200 Newton in the funeral of a martyr weighing 800 Newton.” The students are asked to calculate the strength the two men would need.

. . . . In other words, the cult of death reigns everywhere you turn. Regardless of how much well-meaning Israelis tried desperately to imagine otherwise over the years, the Palestinian national ethos is built around a genocidal war to ethnically cleanse Palestine, from the river to the sea, of Jewish presence.

Finally, the PA itself not only encourages terrorism, but also practices terrorism:

By now, moreover, we know that PA security forces personnel are directly involved in terror attacks. In fact, even as the press in Israel and in the West tries to ignore it, PA officials brag about their complicity in terrorism in Arabic to their own people. They cannot stand to lose their competition with Hamas in the national Jew-killing contest.

A Palestinian Media Watch report published in February, titled “Terrorists in Uniform,” quoted a PA spokesperson bragging that “roughly 63-65% of the number of Martyrs in the West Bank … are members of the Fatah Movement. And most of them are members of the [PA] Security Forces or their sons.” The police forces Israel armed and the U.S. military trains are active participants in the terror they were supposed to stop. Using the guns we gave them to stop terror, they instead kill Jews—in the process securing the livelihoods of their families.

There’s more, but just these three aspects of PA-induced terrorism should make Americans very wary of trying to have the organization help run a postwar government in Gaza—or any government ruling entities created in the now-impossible “two state solution. One of the morons who’s been roped into PA corral is Thomas Friedman of the NYT, who seems to have ignored this:

Regardless of this bloody track record, the White House and the State Department, along with pro-Democratic Party Israeli think tanks, former IDF generals nurtured on a woke ideological diet in American universities, and the Israeli press, are careful to maintain a conceptual barrier between Hamas as a terror organization, and the PA. The latter, they maintain, is a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism—the same PA that, in reality, glorifies and incentivizes terrorism.

The last sentence—the “solution” that Thomas Friedman, Biden, and Blinken love so much—is risible. No, the PA will never be “a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism”, for it is an explicit promoter of terrorism.  If you hear somebody touting the PA as a “nicer” version of Hamas, one that can work with America, remember the things above, especially the pay-for-slay program.

 

The Tablet article ends eloquently:

Less than two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, the PA’s Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs included an infamous Hadith—a saying attributed in the tradition to the messenger of Islam—in its official guidelines that provided imams with talking points to use in their Oct. 20 Friday sermon in Palestinian mosques. The Hadith says that judgment day will only come after the believers have exterminated the Jews. On that day, it says, even rocks and trees will help in the cause of jihad. They will say, “Oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me; come and kill him.”

This horrific image, nature itself partaking in ridding the world of the unnatural Jewish scourge, is even more jarring against the backdrop of the Oct. 7 attack on the Nova nature festival, where partygoers attempted to hide behind rocks and bushes in the Negev desert to escape the slaughter.

The PA, the U.S. partner that Washington wants to put in charge of Gaza, has since added the families of the “martyrs,” the terrorists who were killed while committing the horrors of that terrible Shabbat morning, to the list of pay-for-slay beneficiaries.

Yes, the trees all say to come and kill the hiding Jews.

Most satellites share the same fate at the end of their lives. Their orbits decay, and eventually, they plunge through the atmosphere toward Earth. Most satellites are destroyed during their rapid descent, but not always

Heavy pieces of the satellite, like reaction wheels, can survive and strike the Earth. Engineers are trying to change that.

Satellite debris can strike Earth and is a potential hazard, though the chances of debris striking anything other than ocean or barren land are low. Expired satellites usually just re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. But there are a lot of satellites, and their number keeps growing.

In February 2024, the ESA’s European Remote Sensing 2 (ERS2) satellite fell to Earth. The ESA tracked the satellite and concluded that it posed no problem. “The odds of a piece of satellite falling on someone’s head is estimated at one in a billion,” ESA space debris system engineer Benjamin Bastida Virgili said.

That would be fine if ERS 2 was an isolated incident. But, according to the ESA, an object about as massive as ERS 2 reenters Earth’s atmosphere every one to two weeks. The statistics may show there’s no threat to people, but statistics are great until you’re one of them.

The ESA’s ERS-2 Earth observation satellite was destroyed when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on February 21st, 2004. Heavy parts of satellites, like reaction wheels, don’t always burn up in the atmosphere and can pose a hazard. ESA engineers are working on reaction wheels that will break into pieces to reduce the hazard. Image Credit: Fraunhofer FHR

The risk of being struck by chunks of a satellite isn’t zero. In 1997, a piece of mesh from a Delta II rocket struck someone’s shoulder in Oklahoma. It was a light piece of debris, so the person was okay. But it was an instructive event.

The heaviest parts of satellites, like reaction wheels, can be hazardous because they may not be destroyed during re-entry. Reaction wheels provide three-axis control for satellites without the need for rockets. They give satellites fine pointing accuracy and are useful for rotating satellites in very small amounts.

Reaction wheels can be quite massive. The Hubble Space Telescope has four reaction wheels weighing 45 kg (100 lbs) each. Other satellites don’t have such massive wheels, but the Hubble’s hefty wheels indicate the extent of the hazard. ESA engineers are designing reaction wheels that will break up during re-entry to reduce the hazard of one striking Earth.

“… the need is becoming urgent as more and more satellites are placed in space.”

Kobyé Bodjona, Mechanisms Engineer at the ESA

As part of the design process, they’re testing their wheels in a plasma wind tunnel at the University of Stuttgart Institute of Space Systems. The heated plasma in the tunnel moves at several km/sec, mimicking the friction a satellite is exposed to when it plunges through Earth’s atmosphere. The wheel is rotated inside the tunnel as if tumbling through the atmosphere.

At a recent Space Mechanisms Workshop at ESA’s ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands, engineers showed a clip of the blow-torch effect that the atmosphere has on falling debris.

“Space mechanisms cover everything that enables movement aboard a satellite, from deployment devices to reaction wheels,” explains workshop co-organizer Geert Smet.

“But these mechanisms often use materials such as steel or titanium that are more likely to survive reentry into the atmosphere. This is a problem because our current regulations say reentering satellites should present less than one in 10,000 risks of harming people or property on the ground or even one in 100 000 for large satellite constellations. ESA’s Clean Space group is reacting by D4D—devising methods to make total disintegration of a mission more likely, including mechanisms.”

The effort to make satellites disintegrate completely goes back a few years. The ESA program Design for Demise (D4D) is helping satellite manufacturers comply with the Space Debris Mitigation (SDM) requirements. It’s aimed at eliminating debris falling to Earth, removing debris already in orbit, and designing satellites that don’t linger in orbit after their missions have ended.

At the recent workshop, the ESA revealed more of its plans for active debris removal. There’s a push to develop dedicated spacecraft that can attach themselves to derelict satellites and force them into reentry. This will help remove dead satellites from the congested Low Earth Orbit.

“The idea behind this event is to present the mechanisms community with the latest research on space debris to see how they might contribute to the work going on,” said Kobyé Bodjona, Mechanisms Engineer at the ESA. “It’s important because large system integrators—the big companies that lead satellite projects—are going to need systems that are fully compliant with debris mitigation regulations. And the need is becoming urgent as more and more satellites are placed in space.”

The post Watch a Satellite Reaction Wheel Melt in a Simulated Orbital Re-Entry appeared first on Universe Today.

Bonobos have long been regarded as the peaceful ape, in sharp contrast with violent chimpanzees, but a study based on thousands of hours of observations suggests the real story is more nuanced

In 2022, astronomers discovered the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) of all time. Now, astronomers confirm that a 'normal' supernova, the telltale sign of a stellar collapse, accompanied the GRB. The team also looked for signatures of heavy elements like gold and platinum in the supernova. They found no evidence of such elements, deepening the mystery of their origins.

An international research team has for the first time directly detected stellar winds from three Sun-like stars by recording the X-ray emission from their astrospheres, and placed constraints on the mass loss rate of the stars via their stellar winds.

The rise of RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 highlights the need for new ways to fight them. RNA-targeting tools like CRISPR/Cas13 are powerful but inefficient in the cytoplasm of cells, where many RNA viruses replicate. Scientists have devised a solution: Cas13d-NCS. This new molecular tool allows CRISPR RNA molecules that are located within the nucleus of a cell to move to the cytoplasm, making it highly effective at neutralizing RNA viruses. This advancement opens doors for precision medicine and proactive viral defense strategies.