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Image: Rolls Royce
By Jo Nova
The Space Race is back
Australia couldn’t build a nuclear plant “til 2045”, but NASA is going to put one on the moon in five years time.
The new NASA chief, Sean Duffy, is set to announce urgent plans to get a very small nuclear reactor on the moon. What was going to be a 40MW microreactor in the “early 2030s” is now said to be a 100MW one launched in 2029. The reason for the rush is because three months ago China and Russia announced plans to cooperate and build their own nuclear plant on the moon in the early 2030s. They want the power to set up what they call an international lunar base. According to Politico, the fear is that the first nation to colonize the moon could declare a “keep out zone” — a quasi form of ownership that would stop another nation setting up in the same area.
Space race: US aims to beat out China and Russia with nuclear reactor on the Moon
By:Sébastian SEIBT , France 24
NASA’s interim chief Sean Duffy has made deploying a nuclear reactor on the […]
Bogong moths resting in caves in the Snowy Mountains. Photo by Eric Warrant. The Conversation.
By Jo Nova
First insects to use the stars to navigate?
Flight paths of Bobong moths. | The Conversation.
Each year thousands of Bogong moths hatch all over Eastern Australia. Somehow they fly 1,000 kilometers to caves in the Snowy Mountains that they have never seen. Once inside, they hang around and do an insect form of hibernation in the cool Alpine caves through the heat of summer. When autumn comes, they fly 1,000 kilometers back to where they came from so they can breed, and keel over. Next year their children make the exact same trip.
Researchers managed to catch some moths and put them in flight simulators (for real) where Earths magnetic field was neutralized, so they could figure out if the moths could navigate without it. Somehow they “tethered” the moths, and showed them night sky and lo’, behold, the moths still tried to fly in the right direction. When the sky was flipped, the moths reversed course, and when the stars were randomized, the moths were confused.
Ponder that the stars revolve through the night, […]
NOAA 30 min forecast
UPDATE Friday: –– For readers in darkness, there is currently a G4 geomagnetic storm. Satellites at L1 suggest a spike in density (SWEPAM) coming through in minutes (5.30pm WST 8.30pm EDT). See Glendale for live reports of where the action is. Graphs and discussion at SpaceWeatherlive. Nullschool-Space (a very low resolution, generic estimate) is as colorful as it gets. This post is temporarily bumped.
8.6 out of 10 based on 18 ratings
Paul Hoelen, Mortimer Bay, Hobart, Tasmania
UPDATE: I want to see an aurora, but living at 32S in Perth, Australia, this is like hoping to see the NorthernLights in Jerusalem or San Diego. No luck for me tonight, but there was one report from Geraldton 400km north of us (28.7S). Hopefully sometime in the next year during the solar max…
A quick note to say a CME just hit Earth, and some people may be able to see an aurora tonight that wouldn’t normally see one. A severe Kp 7 Geomagnetic storm is in progress (BOM estimate). Kp 7 is the bottom end of what is classed as a “severe” geomagnetic storm with Kp 8 and 9 being bigger (and even rarer).
Reports on X (Twitter): #AuroraAustralis #Auroraborealis
Southern Hemisphere data — BOM 3 day Geomagnetic Indices | Northern Hemisphere: SpaceWeatherLive
Spaceweather.com
9.4 out of 10 based on 31 ratings […]
By Jo Nova
Betelgeuse is the red giant at the top of Orion. Image by yoshitaka2 from Pixabay
Astronomers are very excited. A new paper suggests Betelgeuse — the red giant in Orion — might be only a decade or two (or maybe a century) away from going supernova. It’s the sort of thing that only happens once in a thousand years. Whenever it does go boom, it will shine brighter than the moon, and dominate the sky for a few months to a year.
It’s 600 light years away, so if it is going to go supernova in the next twenty years, then, of course, it must have already happened and the light is on the way.
Before anyone cracks the champers, the new paper by Saio is based on models trying to figure out what’s happening on a pulsating ball of fire 5,600 trillion kilometers away.
Charlie Martin, PJ Media:
Will We See a Supernova in Our Lifetimes?
There hasn’t been a supernova in our neighborhood since July 4, 1054, when Chinese astronomers observed a supernova, now labeled SN1054, that remained visible for almost two years. The remnants of that supernova are […]
Art by Ofjd125gk87
By Jo Nova
In the next great environmental cult moment, “The Science” has a plan to explode a 10-billion-kilogram dust cloud off the moon between the Earth and the Sun. Shimmery white moon dust will dim the evil solar rays and “save us from our addiction to fossil fuels” (at least until we run out of Moon). The dust will disperse every couple of weeks, so we just need to keep topping up our global sunscreen by setting the explosives off. At least it probably won’t kill many whales.
The plan involves getting man back on the moon for the first time in fifty years, setting up a moon base, and a permanent mining colony, but (guard your coffee) — it might be cost effective:
Squirting a carefully calculated stream of Moondust from a future lunar station at the right point between the Sun and Earth might be the most cost-effective, risk-free means of keeping our cool until we come to our senses and cut emissions.
— PLOS Climate
But not as cost effective as spending 0.000000001% of that to check the science and blow up a few climate models instead.
[…]
By Jo Nova
Well that was lucky. Early reports suggest the Chinese space junk from the launch four days ago has crashed in the Pacific 1,000 km short of Mexico. However, if I am reading those maps (below) correctly, on this uncontrolled reentry it only missed Australia and New Zealand by half an hour, and just a few minutes later and it would have “landed” somewhere in Mexico or maybe Florida. (Now that would have been a November surprise).
Despite what China says, this is not what the rest of the world does:
China Lucks Out Again as Out-of-Control Rocket Booster Falls in the Pacific
Kenneth Chang, New York Times
It was China’s latest round of celestial roulette involving a deliberate uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry. The rocket stage, by design, did not include a system to guide it into a specific spot on Earth, far away from people.
“The thing I want to point out about this is that we, the world, don’t deliberately launch things this big intending them to fall wherever,” Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant for the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit group largely financed by the U.S. government that […]
China’s Long March-5B launch*
This should rattle the Wokeness Cage: Russia and China are actively testing the US defences in space on a daily basis. US assets are being harassed with lazers, radio jammers, cyber attacks and even other satellites with robotic grappling hook arms. The Russians even launched a satellite into an orbit so close to a US Security satellite that from the ground people couldn’t tell if it was being attacked, then, in something like a James Bond movie stunt, the Russian satellite launched a little target and shot it, “dangerously close”. That was in 2019. We can see now why Trump set up “Space Force”.
Last week the news came out that China’s space program was going nuclear, and the 1MW reactor would be 100 times larger than the one NASA plans to put on the moon by 2030.
Gen. David Thompson from Space Force estimates China may overtake the US in space by the end of the decade.
So by 2030 the US hopes to reduce CO2 by 50% and China hopes it will command space.
Meanwhile, China is a developing nation that doesn’t need to reduce CO2 emissions at all, and in the […]
With the US Defence Force about to release “something” on UFO’s, these very engaging videos from Mick West are persuasive and apropos. But if smart guys with trigonometry and metadata can explain how these aliens are mysterious camera artefacts — surely the Pentagon can too?
Why then are they called “unexplained” and why are they being released as teasers for “the big news?” Did the DoD forget parallax and gymbal corrections?
Apparently 120 incidents will be reviewed in June. Former intelligence director John Ratcliffe has hinted the report will be a big deal. Let’s hope they saved the best stuff. I’m looking forward to a good tantalizing mystery.
Michael Shermer (of Skeptic.com infamy) wrote this all up in a long feature on Quillette:
Understanding the Unidentified
The “Go Fast” video purportedly shows an object with no heat source (and therefore propelled by some unconventional engine) that appears to move impossibly fast just above the surface of the ocean. West then conducted what he describes as “10th grade trigonometry” (based on the numbers provided in the video image itself) to show that, in fact, the object was well above the ocean surface at around 13,000 feet and was probably […]
Ben Davidson speaks from Spaceweathernews.com and claims that there was a short sharp geomagnetic storm over the East Coast of Australia around the time the Queensland Callide Power plant exploded.
The CME that flew past Earth didn’t do much around the world, causing a small 1% deviation in magnetometers. But there was a burst of activity in the Southern Hemisphere that appears to have hit the east coast of Australia. Magnetometers there saw a 300 – 500% change* between noon and 3pm on the same day as the Callide Coal Power Plant blew up. The explosion happened at 1.44pm and the 275 kV transmission lines tripped at 2:06pm.
*(UPDATE: There is some contention in comments about the Australian DST figures — we’re they really that high or unusual? I’ll update the post when I can confirm it either way).
We don’t know if this tipped something over the edge at Callide, but the timing is highly coincidental. If Earth’s magnetic field is weakening it would seem urgent, to say the least, to understand the risks these spaceweather events pose to our critical infrastructure.
Perhaps an engineer who knows the design of (hydrogen cooled) supercritical coal reactors might be able […]
This week a mild Coronal Mass Ejection off the sun blasted past Earth. It was only a mild CME with solar winds at 500km per second, which is a medium kind of speed. The experts were all predicting a G1 class Geomagnetic storm, and were a bit astonished when we got much bigger G3 storm instead. (NOAA’s G scale runs from G1 up to G5).
This occurred near the minimum weak point of the solar cycle, and we’re going to get much bigger blasts as Cycle 25 ramps up. But if mild CMEs can rattle the Earth’s magnetic field this much, things might get much more exciting when moderate or strong CME’s shake the cage. Satellites and networks could be in trouble. “Grid’s Away”…
Is Earths magnetic field weaker or more vulnerable than we thought? How could we miss that?
As Cap Allon of Electroverse said:
“Nobody saw the KP Index hitting 7.
…when I say nobody, I mean nobody predicted this: not NASA, NOAA, ESA or IPS in Australia.”
It was not dense, and the filament released was hardly cause for concern.
“There is absolutely nothing in the history of […]
All around the world are dawning headlines wondering if we have founds signs of life on Venus.
Despite the hunt for life on star systems that are lightyears from Earth, it turns out there may be something on the Planet-next-door. “May” being the operative word. A team found phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus and can’t think of any other way it could have got there. Phosphine is considered to be a biomarker. And microbes on Earth would have no trouble making it, though none of them could easily survive on Venus where the atmosphere clouds and rain are nearly pure hot sulphuric acid.*
Scientists find gas linked to life in atmosphere of Venus
Ian Sample, The Guardian
Sara Seager, a planetary scientist on the study at MIT in the US, called the finding “mind-boggling”. She hypothesises a lifecycle for Venusian microbes that rain down, dry out and are swept back up to more temperate altitudes by currents in the atmosphere.
For 2bn years, Venus was temperate and harboured an ocean. But today, a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere blankets a near-waterless surface where temperatures top 450C. The clouds in the sky are hardly inviting, […]
For those who want to immerse themselves in the engineering masterpiece of the Apollo 11 mission, Burt Rutan recommends this documentary series. A whole fascinating hour each. Burt Rutan is an aerospace engineer who has designed 46 aircraft, received six honorary doctoral degrees and hundreds of awards. If these documentaries can keep him interested …
Hail the brilliant technical minds that triumphed and the brave men who got there.
Only 12 men have walked on the moon and three out of four still alive are skeptics. Buzz Aldrin is an outspoken skeptic, as are other astronauts Harrison Schmidt, and Charles Duke. So is Australian born Phil Chapman (support crew, Apollo 14) and Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7). Burt Rutan too, of course.
Remember a time when NASA could achieve great things…
Part I: We choose to go to the moon: Hosted by Bill Whittle
Part II: The clock is running … ….
Burt Rutan says Part 3 and 4 are on the way.
The URLs: https://youtu.be/k9BmufbVf2E https://youtu.be/2lmPWkd2Kx0
Rutan warns that Google or Youtube searches may not find the series. Apparently Bill Whittle is too politically incorrect for them. At this point the Google search works with […]
That’s not in the models
The cosmic ray theory, Henrik Svensmark, (Click to enlarge)
What if our clouds are partly driven by a rain of cosmic radiation from far flung exploding stars… What if the warming on Earth had more to do with magnetic fields than with CO2? h/t GWPF
The Grand Mal test of Henrik Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory was 780,000 years ago when the poles on Earth flipped. For 5,000 wild years our magnetic shield was down to about a quarter of its normal strength. That would have allowed more cosmic rays to come streaking through the atmosphere down to the lowest part, crashing into molecules and generally busting things up in the air. Those ionised particles then seed clouds — in theory, which make an umbrella shade for the planet, keeping things cooler, and reflecting all that solar heat back into space. But how do we measure clouds that disappeared three quarters of a million years ago?
A team at Kobe University studied the patterns of monsoons in East Asia during the reversal. They argue that the extra low clouds would cause the winter monsoons to become stronger, so they looked closely at layers of dust […]
A brief break in transmission now for the first photograph of a black hole, looking pretty much exactly as anyone would expect it to. The photons caught in this image traveled for hundreds of years at the speed of light. Lots of “hundreds” — burning through space for some 55 million years.
The numbers melt neurons: The supermassive black hole called M87 is 6.5 billion times bigger than our Sun. It’s bigger than the orbit of Neptune (which is circling 30 times further out from the Sun than we are). This star is 10 billion kilometers across.
Geoffrey Crew, a research scientist at Haystack Observatory commented that “With the M87 black hole being so massive, an orbiting planet would go around it within a week and be traveling at close to the speed of light.”
The black heart of Messier 87, or M87, a galaxy within the Virgo galaxy cluster, 55 million light years from Earth.
It takes a telescope roughly as big as The Earth to catch an image 20 micro-arcseconds across. Eight radio telescopes were combined across four continents and lined up on a few special days when they all had clear weather together. Each telescope took […]
ZeroHedge asks: What the hell are NASA Hiding?
The NASA site used to have a page titled “What are the primary forcings of the Earth system?“. In 2010 this page said that the Sun is the major driver of Earth’s climate, that it controls all the major aspects, and we may be on the cusp of an ice age. Furthermore NASA Science said things like clouds, albedo and aerosol behaviour can have more powerful cooling effects that outdo the warming effect of CO2.
Today that page says Share the science and stay connected, and “Access Denied”.
https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/big-questions/what-are-the-primary-causes-of-the-earth-system-variability/
Whatever you do, don’t tell the world that NASA says the Sun is more important than CO2.
The Wayback Machine captured the same NASA “Primary Climate Forcings” link in 2010.
Click to enlarge.
Here’s the text from the original page (my bolding).
NASA 2010: What are the primary forcings of the Earth system?
The Sun is the primary forcing of Earth’s climate system. Sunlight warms our world. Sunlight drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Sunlight powers the process of photosynthesis that plants need to grow. Sunlight causes convection which carries warmth and water vapor up into […]
Image Erin Silversmith
Three amazing things in this story. One that solar cycles might influence the oceans to such an extent that jellyfish plagues are cycling in tune with the sun. Second is that the sun might control food for jellyfish on Earth somehow but have no effect on clouds, temperature or our climate (join the dots that expert climate models don’t). Third is that (briefly) there was actual scientific debate published on the ABC (even if only a few Australians were exposed to it). No one called anyone names, and both sides got to speak (albeit on different channels). Put it in your diary.
A couple of weeks ago on the ABC jellyfish were booming and it was because of climate change:
Jellyfish are causing mayhem as pollution, climate change see numbers boom
RN By Hong Jiang and Sasha Fegan for Late Night Live
…the brainless, spineless, eyeless, bloodless creatures are booming in numbers — and causing mayhem around the world.
Some scientists think jellyfish numbers are increasing as the climate changes — the creatures reproduce well in warmer waters.
Last year, Nick Kilvert of the ABC saw it as a […]
MIT researchers think they have solved a bit of a mystery regarding Sahara dust, but if they’re right it means the Sahara Desert has already come and gone 3 – 5 times since humans walked the Earth. The Sahara is the largest desert on Earth, and this would be the largest and longest drought “ever” on the planet (as far as we know).
UPDATED: Commenter Javier points out these drying cycles were known years ago. (See below)
This would rather redefine the whole idea of “climate change” — 3.5 million square miles of Green Sahara turns into Dust-bowl Sahara — and it’s all thanks to sunlight. The drought doesn’t just last 7 years, but more like 7,000. And it’s happening over 9 million square kilometers, an area larger than Australia. The major climate models leaned towards the monsoonal cycle, rather than the longer ice age one. So this theory may have resolved one of the 495 contradictions in climate models. Or not. But the bigger message here is that the sun causes climate change and on a massive scale.
h/t to Roger Tallbloke.
The Sahara is the largest dust bowl in the world, dumping 10 million trucks of dust across […]
Our understanding of the sun’s effect of Earth’s weather is so immature
Remarkably, some Japanese families kept weather record diaries in the 1700 and 1800s, and some for as long as 150 years. The connections they reveal are tantalizing but so incomplete. We are trying to fish out primitive signals from murky water. The Sun turns around on itself every 27 days, so these researchers are looking for repeating patterns in lightning that fit, but the poles of the sun spin slower than the equator and the sun spots can take their own time. Hence, it’s not a neat “27” days.
During periods of high solar activity, they found regular peaks in lightning activity with the right timing, from May to September when the cold Siberian air mass is not so influential.
Other studies we’ve discussed here have investigated long solar cycles on the 11 year or 200 year scales. But here, the researchers are thinking of day to day weather, and looking for a solar influence on timeframe that might improve weather forecasting. Obviously there is a long way to go. As for mechanisms they suspect that it’s the solar wind that is influential, but they don’t know, when […]
Solar Wind, Earths magnetosphere. Image: NASA
The Solar Wind is a torrent of space weather cruising past at 500 — 800 kilometers per second which is around 1.5 million miles per hour or, if you prefer, Mach 2,000.* It’s so powerful it erodes rocks on Mars, ejects particles up high and creates a kind of atmosphere of tiny rock particles which we can study. Then it blows that Martian atmosphere away.
In this new research people realized it was not just the rain of tiny high-speed protons fritzing Mars at 800 km per second that were carving up the rocks — the main role was from the heavy and highly charged He2+. (Now there’s a molecule you don’t see too often).
You might think that a variable torrent of charged particles that are constantly changing speed and direction might have an impact on our atmosphere, but you’d be wrong (or at least, politically incorrect). On Earth the solar wind “just causes the northern lights”. How do we know? We’ve got climate models. In all known GCMs the total global forcing for solar wind is “zero”. Must be true.
Thus and verily the IPCC can conclude that a flow […]
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