Science & TechnologyS


Satellite

NASA briefly loses contact with ISS after power outage, relies on backup systems for first time - Russia's agency notified them of problem


The Guardian
Wed, 26 Jul 2023 01:34 UTC
NASA iss space station
© APA Nasa power outage disrupted communication between mission control and the International Space Station on Tuesday for about 90 minutes.
A power outage at Nasa's building in Houston disrupted communication between mission control and the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, forcing the space agency to rely on backup control systems for the first time.

The outage meant mission control lost command, telemetry and voice communications with the station in orbit. The power outage hit as upgrade work was under way in the building at Houston's Johnson Space Center.

The crew was notified of the problem through Russian communication systems, within 20 minutes of the outage.

Space station program manager Joel Montalbano said neither the astronauts nor station were ever in any danger and that backup control systems took over to restore normal communications within 90 minutes. "It wasn't an issue on board. That was purely a ground problem," he said. "At no time was the crew or the vehicle in any danger."


Comment: It's not clear whether Russia was the first to notify them of the problem, or whether they already knew.


Comment: It seems as though NASA has been beset with troubles of late; Roscosmos hasn't been without its issues either: See also: China, Russia 'deploying space weapons to attack US satellites', Space Force chief claims following $3.7 billion budget increase

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Info

Siberia's growing 'gateway to the underworld,' the largest permafrost depression in the world

Jennifer Nalewicki
Live Science
Tue, 25 Jul 2023 20:53 UTC
Newly released drone footage confirms that the Batagay crater in Siberia continues to grow in size.
The Batagay crater
© Padi Prints/Troy TV Stock/Alamy Stock PhotoThe Batagay crater is considered to be the largest permafrost depression in the world.
A massive crater in Siberia dubbed the "gateway to the underworld" by locals is continuing to grow larger, new drone footage reveals.

The footage, which was released on July 12, offers viewers a bird's-eye view of the Batagay (also spelled Bagatayka and Batagaika) crater, considered to be the largest permafrost depression in the world, according to Ruptly.tv.

Covering approximately 0.3 square miles (0.8 square kilometers) — equivalent to the area of about 145 football fields — the deep scar cutting through the east Siberian woodlands was likely triggered by deforestation during the 1940s. This led to erosion, which then exacerbated seasonal melting of the permafrost and created a "megaslump," or the massive crater in the ground. Because the permafrost in this region is comprised of 80% ice, the large amounts of melting forced sediment on the hillside to collapse, revealing what looks like a giant gash slashing through the landscape in Russia's Sakha Republic.

And it's not just drone imagery that shows that the crater continues to expand. Over the years, satellite imagery has also confirmed that the megaslump has grown in size. As the land has retreated, it has revealed "tens of thousands of years of frozen remains," dating as far back as the Middle Pleistocene, which ended 126,000 years ago.
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Seismograph

Best of the Web: Seismic signals from Space: Intriguing correlation between earthquakes and cosmic radiation discovered

The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences
Sci Tech Daily
Sun, 18 Jun 2023 12:00 UTC
space earthquakes weather
© IFJ PAN/NASA/JSCIn space, you can see impending earthquakes. Not so literally, as in the above collage of photos, but still clearly - in the changes in the intensity of cosmic rays recorded by observatories on the surface of our planet.
Scientists have found a strong statistical link between changes in cosmic radiation and seismic activity, potentially aiding in earthquake prediction. However, the ability to predict specific locations remains unclear, and the discovery has led to intriguing questions about the potential influence of phenomena like dark matter streams.

There is a clear statistical correlation between global seismic activity and changes in the intensity of cosmic radiation recorded at the surface of our planet, potentially helping to predict earthquakes. Surprisingly, it exhibits a periodicity that escapes unambiguous physical interpretation.

Strong earthquakes usually result in many human casualties and huge material losses. The scale of the tragedy could be significantly reduced if we had the ability to predict the time and place of such cataclysmic events. The CREDO project, initiated in 2016 by the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow, attempts to verify the previously known hypothesis that earthquakes could potentially be predicted by observing changes in... cosmic radiation. Statistical analyses have shown that a correlation between the two phenomena does indeed exist, but manifests characteristics that no one had expected.

Comment: For fascinating insight into the driving forces of everything from weather to cataclysms on our planet, check out Pierre Lescaudron's book: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection as well as his SOTT article Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle. For more, check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

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Comet

Best of the Web: Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks explodes and sprouts 'horns'


Space Weather
Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:41 UTC
A comet with horns? Believe it. On July 20th, something on the surface of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks exploded, increasing its brightness 100-fold. Debris from the outburst looks like this:
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks
"Here is a quick view of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks taken last night between some high clouds," reports Thomas Wildoner of Weatherly, PA. "Just in the last several days, this comet has gone from a star-like appearance to brightening by five magnitudes and now sporting a coma in the shape of two horns."

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is famous for exploding. Discovered in 1812 by Pons and discovered again in 1883 by Brooks, the bursty comet visits the inner solar system every 71 years. Since the 19th century at least 7 significant outbursts have been observed, suggesting that it might be a cryovolcanic comet like 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann.

Comment: For fascinating insight into this phenomena, and more, check out the following articles: Of note regarding the above, is the similarities between asteroids, comets, and even planets; as Pierre Lescaudron writes in Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection:
Traces of this movement can be found in the late 19th century,when Scientific American published an article stating that Professor Zollner of Leipzig ascribed the 'self-luminosity' of comets to 'electrical excitement.' Zollner proposed that:
...the nuclei of comets, as masses, are subject to gravitation, while the vapors developed from them, which consist of very small particles, yield to the action of the free electricity of the sun
Then, regarding comet tails, the August 11th 1882 issue of English Mechanic and World of Science included the following:
There seems to be a rapidly growing feeling amongst physicists that both the self-light of comets and the phenomena of their tails belong to the order of electrical phenomena.
In 1896, Nature published an article stating:
It has long been imagined that the phenomenon of comet's tails are in some way due to a solar electrical repulsion, and additional light is thrown on this subject by recent physical researches.
[...]

So, comets don't seem to be dirty snowballs after all. From the data presented above, they are glowing chunks of rock. On the other side, asteroids don't seem to be the non-glowing chunks of rocks posited by mainstream science. For example asteroids P/2013 P5 recently puzzled the whole scientific community when it started exhibiting a million miles long glowing tail. To rationalize this oddity official science claimed the asteroid was spinning so fast that it was ejecting tons of dust, while acknowledging that finally the difference between 'comets' and 'asteroids' might not be so clear-cut.1

The fundamental difference between asteroids and comets is not their chemical composition, i.e. dirty, fluffy icy comets vs. rocky asteroids. Rather, as has long been put forward by plasma theorists, what differentiates 'comets' from 'asteroids' is their electric activity.

When the electric potential difference between an asteroid and the surrounding plasma is not too high, the asteroid exhibits a dark discharge mode2 or no discharge at all. But when the potential difference is high enough, the asteroid switches to a glowing discharge mode.3 At this point the asteroid is a comet. From this perspective, a comet is simply a glowing asteroid and an asteroid is a non-glowing comet. Thus the very same body can, successively, be a comet, then an asteroid, then a comet, etc., depending on variation in the ambient electric field it is subjected to.4

Note that a comet can also exhibit the third plasma discharge mode, namely lightning or 'arc discharge mode', which is probably what happened when Comet Shoemaker-Levy entered the vicinity of Jupiter in July 1994:
Note that this comes on the heels of a discovery that Mercury was recently discovered to have a magnificent comet-like tail, and aurora.

The following article from Mr Lescaudron sheds more light on the topic: The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus

And check out SOTT radio's:
Live Science adds more information:
As of July 26, the comet's coma had grown to around 143,000 miles (230,000 kilometers) across, or more than 7,000 times wider than its nucleus, which has an estimated diameter of around 18.6 miles (30 km), Richard Miles, an astronomer with the British Astronomical Association who studies cryovolcanic comets, told Live Science in an email.

The unusual shape of the comet's coma is likely due to an irregularity in the shape of 12P's nucleus, Miles said. The outflowing gas was likely partially obstructed by an out-sticking lobe on the nucleus, which created a "notch" in the expanded coma. As the gas continued to move away from the comet and grow, the notch, or "shadow," became more noticeable, he added. But the expanded coma will eventually disappear as the gas and ice becomes too dispersed to reflect sunlight.

[...]

This is the first major eruption detected from 12P in 69 years, Miles said, mainly because its orbit takes it too far away from Earth for its outbursts to be noticed.
12P/Pons-Brooks comet orbit
© NASA/HorizonsOrbital path of comet 12P/Pons-Brooks
12P has one of the longest known orbital periods of any comet. It takes around 71 years for the floating volcano to fully orbit the sun, during which time it is catapulted out to the farthest reaches of the solar system. The comet is due to reach its closest point to the sun on April 21, 2024 and make its closest approach to Earth on June 2, 2024, at which point it will be visible in the night sky, Spaceweather.com reported. Earthlings could, therefore, get a front-row seat to more eruptions over the next few years.

In December 2022, astronomers witnessed the largest eruption from 29P in around 12 years, which sprayed around 1 million tons of cryomagma into space. And in April this year, for the first time ever, scientists were able to accurately predict one of 29P's eruptions before it actually happened, thanks to a slight increase in brightness, which suggested more gas was leaking out of the comet's nucleus as it prepared to pop.


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Brain

How can a woman missing her olfactory bulbs still detect odors?

Denyse O'Leary
Evolution News
Mon, 24 Jul 2023 19:00 UTC
olfactory bulb nose sense of smell anatomy
© Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator/via Wikimedia Commons.The olfactory bulb
Ever since neuroscientists started imaging the brain, they've been turning up cases where people are missing brain parts we would expect them to need in order to do something — but they are doing that very thing anyway. One example, written up in Live Science in 2019, concerns women who are missing their olfactory bulbs but can still smell.
Researchers have discovered a small group of people that seem to defy medical science: They can smell despite lacking "olfactory bulbs," the region in the front of the brain that processes information about smells from the nose. It's not clear how they are able to do this, but the findings suggest that the human brain may have a greater ability to adapt than previously thought.

Yasemin Saplakoglu, "Women Missing Brain's Olfactory Bulbs Can Still Smell, Puzzling Scientists," LiveScience,November 6, 2019. The paper in Neuron is open access.
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Black Cat 2

"If I fits, I sits": Research delves into intricacies of feline vision

Jennifer Ouellette
Ars Technica
Thu, 06 May 2021 17:47 UTC
cat in box
© Sean CarrollLike most cats, nothing delights Ariel more than an empty box in which to lounge. This might tell us something about feline visual perception of shapes and contours, per a study in Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
What cats' love of boxes and squares can tell us about their visual perception

It is a truth universally acknowledged — at least by those of the feline persuasion — that an empty box on the floor must be in want of a cat. Ditto for laundry baskets, suitcases, sinks, and even cat carriers (when not used as transport to the vet). This behavior is generally attributed to the fact that cats feel safer when squeezed into small spaces, but it might also be able to tell us something about feline visual perception. That's the rationale behind a new study in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science with a colorful title: "If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvers catus)."

The paper was inspired in part by a 2017 viral Twitter hashtag, #CatSquares, in which users posted pictures of their cats sitting inside squares marked out on the floor with tape — kind of a virtual box. The following year, lead author Gabriella Smith, a graduate student at Hunter College (CUNY) in New York City, attended a lecture by co-author Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere, who heads the Thinking Dog Center at Hunter. Byosiere studies canine behavior and cognition, and she spoke about dogs' susceptibility to visual illusions. While playing with her roommate's cat later that evening, Smith recalled the Twitter hashtag and wondered if she could find a visual illusion that looked like a square to test on cats.
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Dig

Rare fossil suggests some early mammals may have feasted on dinosaurs

Maddie Burakoff
Associated Press
Tue, 18 Jul 2023 16:56 UTC
mammal dinosaur entangled fossil
The fossil shows a badger-like creature chomping down on a beaky dinosaur three times its size. The research published on Tuesday, July 18, 2023, adds to growing evidence that even when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, some mammals were biting back.
An unusual find in China suggests some early mammals may have hunted dinosaur for dinner.

The fossil shows a badgerlike creature chomping down on a small, beaked dinosaur, their skeletons intertwined. The find comes from a site known as "China's Pompeii," where mud and debris from long-ago volcanoes buried creatures in their tracks.

"It does seem like this is a prehistoric hunt, captured in stone, like a freeze frame," University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte, who was not involved with the study, said in an email.

The fossil, described Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, shows two creatures from around 125 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
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Satellite

JWST makes 1st detection of diamond-like carbon dust in the universe's earliest stars

Robert Lea
Space.com
Wed, 19 Jul 2023 19:17 UTC
carbon PAH molecules surrounding early galaxies
© NASA/ESA/JWST/Robert LeaAn illustration shows carbon PAH molecules surrounding early galaxies seen by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The discovery suggests the earliest galaxies formed more quickly after the Big Bang than previously thought.

The James Webb Space Telescope has detected the earliest-known carbon dust in a galaxy ever.

Using the powerful space telescope, a team of astronomers spotted signs of the element that forms the backbone of all life in ten different galaxies that existed as early as 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

The detection of carbon dust so soon after the Big Bang could shake up theories surrounding the chemical evolution of the universe. This is because the processes that create and disperse heavier elements like this should take longer to build up in galaxies than the age of these young galaxies at the time the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) sees them.

"The surprising finding here is that we can directly see and learn about the properties of these dust grains at such an early time, and we can tell they're carbon-based," research lead author and University of Cambridge scientist Joris Witstok told Space.com. "That's quite surprising in the context of what we previously expected."

Comment:

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Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope spots boulders potentially shaken off asteroid following DART impact experiment

Julia Musto
Fox News
Sat, 22 Jul 2023 19:03 UTC
Dimorphos asteroid dart impact
© NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Alyssa Pagan (STScI)Image of the asteroid Dimorphos, with compass arrows, scale bar and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).
NASA says Hubble observed nearly 40 boulders drifting away from Dimorphos

The Hubble Space Telescope has found a swarm of boulders that were potentially shaken off the asteroid Dimorphos following NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test experiment last September.

The 37 boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble photometry. NASA says the space rocks are drifting away from the asteroid at little more than a half-mile per hour. The total mass in the detected boulders is about 0.1% the mass of Dimorphos.

"This is a spectacular observation - much better than I expected. We see a cloud of boulders carrying mass and energy away from the impact target. The numbers, sizes and shapes of the boulders are consistent with them having been knocked off the surface of Dimorphos by the impact," David Jewitt, a planetary scientist of the University of California at Los Angeles, said in a statement. "This tells us for the first time what happens when you hit an asteroid and see material coming out up to the largest sizes. The boulders are some of the faintest things ever imaged inside our solar system."

Comment: More on the DART experiment. Buuuuut . . . . What could go wrong? - NASA and ESA team to knock asteroid out of orbit to test Earth defense system

It appears NASA, as some predicted, managed to turn one problem into forty problems.

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Moon

A skyscraper-size asteroid flew closer to Earth than the moon — and scientists didn't notice until 2 days later

Brandon Specktor
Live Science
Thu, 20 Jul 2023 06:43 UTC
asteroid
© Shutterstock

An asteroid as large as a 20-story building sailed uncomfortably close to Earth last week, zooming by our planet at roughly a quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon — and astronomers didn't notice it until two days later.

Now dubbed 2023 NT1, the roughly 200-foot-wide (60 meters) space rock sailed past our planet on July 13, traveling at an estimated 53,000 mph (86,000 km/h), according to NASA. However, because the rock flew toward Earth from the direction of the sun, our star's glare blinded telescopes to the asteroid's approach until long after it had passed.

Astronomers didn't catch wind of the building-size rock until July 15, when a telescope in South Africa — part of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), an array of telescopes designed to spot asteroids several days to weeks before any potential impact — caught the rock making its exit from our neighborhood. More than a dozen other telescopes also spotted the rock shortly afterward, according to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.
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