The Moon was geologically active between 3.7 and 2.5 billion years ago, experiencing quakes, volcanic eruptions, and outgassing. Thanks to the Moon being an airless body, evidence of this past has been carefully preserved in the form of extinct volcanoes, lava tubes, and other features. While the Moon has been geologically inert for billions of years, it still experiences small seismic events due to tidal flexing (because of Earth's gravitational pull) and temperature variations. These latter events happen regularly and are known as "moonquakes."

Thanks to the Apollo missions, scientists have measured this activity using seismometers placed on the surface. In a recent NASA-funded study, a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) reexamined the seismic data with a machine-learning model. This revealed that moonquakes occur with precise regularity, coinciding with the Sun rising to its peak position in the sky and then slowly setting. In this respect, moonquakes are like a "Lunar Alarm Clock," which could be useful for future missions and lunar settlers!

Earth's Blood Pressure is too high now

Modern Science looks more like a Medieval Guild every day

Back in May humans did the first ever study quantifying Earth System Boundaries, which was incredible luck. After two hundred thousand years of homo sapiens stretching the bounds of the planet, we barely discovered "Earth System Boundaries" in time to find out we hit the limit 12 weeks later. What are the odds?

It's almost as if a whole twig of science was invented in order to write scary press releases? It's another unauditable, unaccountable collective of Experts who can never be wrong, only "useful" to the bureaucratic machine. They call themselves scientists but their predictions will never be tested, only marked against the Department wish-list.

We can all appreciate the talismanic symbolism (and marketing value) below, where segments of the sacred arcs are tainted blood red, as Earth progressively descends into the anthropogenic abyss year upon year.
Red Agate pendants cut-to-match will no doubt be ready for Christmas.

The recent and concerning collapse of the once revered scientific process in large parts of the climate change and medical community is detailed in a highly critical 'open review' paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Someday, charge the authors, there will need to be an inquiry into how so many scientific bodies abandoned core principles of scientific integrity, took strong positions on unsettled science, took people's word for things uncritically, and silenced those who tried to continue the scientific endeavour.

Universities have abandoned their historical role of open and disinterested enquiry on behalf of humanity, and "should be sanctioned for this by revoking their charitable status". Group-think that maintains prevailing fads and supresses dissent on behalf of alleged 'consensus' is the opposite of the central purpose of universities. Mainstream media have long been uncritical receptacles for alarmist 'clickbait' political scare stories, and this, it might be added, encourages self-promotion among aggressive publicity-hungry scientists. There are many errors and deceptions and much censorship, state the authors, blighting the complete story being told in an unbiased manner. Singling out the behaviour of state broadcaster the BBC, they note:

"Any reasonable observer will wonder whether Ofcom [the state regulator] is asleep at the wheel, not requiring the BBC to correct the errors it has been made aware of by experts, nor return to some form of neutrality."

The report is mainly written by Professor Michael Kelly, the former Prince Philip Professor of Engineering, Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, and Clive Hambler, Science Lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford. There is also economic input from Professor Roger Koppl from Syracuse University. The full GWPF report is due to be published in December and the paper is currently open for review, comments and contributions from other academics. The GWPF notes habitual attacks on its work from activists, and its 'open review' policy is explained here.

Science is not done by consensus, it isn't a vote.

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Regarding 'global boiling', the widely-publicized '97% consensus' study was done by Australian John Cook — a conclusion that to this day is routinely regurgitated by AGW Party members:

One researcher hypothesizes that experiments carried out by NASA's Viking landers in 1976 could have inadvertently killed microbes living in Martian rocks. Other experts are skeptical.

A scientist recently claimed that NASA may have inadvertently discovered life on Mars almost 50 years ago and then accidentally killed it before realizing what it was. But other experts are split on whether the new claims are a far-fetched fantasy or an intriguing possible explanation for some puzzling past experiments.

After landing on the Red Planet in 1976, NASA's Viking landers may have sampled tiny, dry-resistant life-forms hiding inside Martian rocks, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Technical University Berlin, suggested in a June 27 article for Big Think.

If these extreme life-forms did and continue to exist, the experiments carried out by the landers may have killed them before they were identified, because the tests would have "overwhelmed these potential microbes," Schulze-Makuch wrote.

This is "a suggestion that some people surely will find provocative," Schulze-Makuch said. But similar microbes do live on Earth and could hypothetically live on the Red Planet, so they can't be discounted, he added.

However, other scientists believe the Viking results are far less ambiguous than Schulze-Makuch and others make them out to be.

Mysteriously, warming is happening across the solar system. The one common factor is at the center of it all: the sun.
Because man is burning fossil fuels, our planet is allegedly becoming increasingly covered by a blanket of "heat-trapping" greenhouse gases, scientists like to make people believe. The recent global warming simply couldn't have anything to do with the sun, they insist.

They're likely way off the mark.

Today German Prof. Stefan Homburg tweeted a summary of warming that's happening at other places within our solar system, suggesting the sun is behind it.

"Global warming isn't only happening on earth," he tweets.

A new investigation with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide.

A new investigation with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb's discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface.

The first insight into the atmospheric properties of this habitable-zone exoplanet came from observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which prompted further studies that have since changed our understanding of the system.

Scientists have struggled to accurately forecast the strength of the sun's 11-year cycle — even after centuries of solar observations.
The sun looks immutable, a boring celestial lightbulb that's always turned on. But this fusion-powered ball of plasma is in constant flux. Every 11 years or so, it swings between slumber and an active, unruly epoch marked by sunspots and solar eruptions, such as flares and plasma outbursts.

The sun is now approaching its maximum level of activity in the current cycle, and it's not exactly behaving according to plan. Scientists had predicted that this cycle would be weak, like the previous one, but the sun is exhibiting a level of activity unseen in more than 20 years. In June and July of this year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it averaged roughly 160 sunspots daily, more than twice as many as predicted. Solar flares are also increasing.

The discrepancy between prediction and observation was apparent as early as July 2022, when Nicola Fox — then the director of NASA's heliophysics division — wrote on NASA's website that "the Sun has been much more active this cycle than anticipated."

A reliable solar cycle prediction is now more important than ever because of our increasing dependence on vulnerable technology. Earth's atmosphere puffs up with solar activity and increases the drag on the (very many) satellites that need to maneuver in orbit. Solar outbursts can fry electronic equipment, jam radio signals, confound GPS systems, and disrupt power grids.

As with most forecasts, the challenges of predicting the solar cycle are numerous. It doesn't follow a clear pattern from one cycle to the next — some are shorter than others — and solar physics is still a relatively young discipline. "We like to say we're about 60 years behind the weather forecasters," said Robert Leamon, a solar physicist at the University of Maryland.

Historically, researchers looked for statistical correlations between solar activity and the number of sunspots, their total surface area, and the timing of their appearance. But the scientific consensus is that those techniques — even while modernized — don't reveal much about the sun's future behavior. Now, fueled by more sophisticated solar observations, scientists are evaluating and finessing methods that instead use the inner workings of the sun as a guide.

While progress is slow — 11 years is a long time — let's take a closer look at the current state of solar system prediction.

A mysterious golden "orb" found at the bottom of the ocean during a research expedition is "biological in origin" — but scientists have no idea what it is.

"While we were able to collect the 'golden orb' and bring it onto the ship, we still are not able to identify it beyond the fact that it is biological in origin," Sam Candio, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ocean Exploration expedition coordinator said in a statement.

"While somewhat humbling to be stumped by this finding, it serves as a reminder of how little we know about our own planet and how much is left to learn and appreciate about our ocean."

[This is an updated version of an article originally published on electroverse.net. I'm currently travelling from Portugal to the UK, and will be back to it with new posts on Monday, September 11]

In recent years, the Sun has been at its weakest state in more than a century, with the two most recent solar cycles (24 and 25) on course to be the weakest pair in more than 200 years, since the Dalton Minimum.

This is revealed by the sunspot count (shown below) — a great barometer for solar activity:

The Sun's output ebbs and flows on a roughly 11-year cycle.

As visualized above, the most recently completed solar cycle (24) finished up closely matching those of 'The Centennial Minimum' (≈1880-1914) — the previous multi-cycle period of low output, aka a 'Grand Solar Minimum' (GSM).

Grand Solar Minimums themselves can also range in depth and length, and, crucially for all of inhabitants of Earth, these factors determine the severity of the accompanying 'global cooling'.