Science & Technology

Comet Iwamoto fast approaching Earth

Eddie Irizarry
EarthSky
Sun, 03 Feb 2019 20:36 UTC

© Emilio Lepeley
Emilio Lepeley in Elqui Valley, Vicuna, Chile, caught comet C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto) – the green fuzzball at bottom center – on February 3, 2019, in the same field of view as the famous Sombrero Galaxy. Thank you, Emilio!

A new celestial visitor - a comet - was discovered by Japanese astronomer Masayuki Iwamoto in late 2018. It'll provide nice opportunities for astrophotographers, as it will pass close to a couple of Messier objects in February 2019. It's a fast-moving comet that will be closest to Earth on February 12, 2019, at around 2:57 p.m. ET (19:57 UTC; translate to your time zone). The celestial visitor will safely pass by Earth at some 28 million miles (45 million km). The comet has been designated C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto).

This comet is fast! Comet C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto) is traveling through space at the amazing speed of 147,948 miles per hour (238,099 km/h) or 66 km per second, relative to Earth.

The best nights for observing the comet (with binoculars and small telescopes) should be on February 11 and 12. Preliminary estimates suggest the newly found comet might reach a brightness or magnitude between 7 and 7.8 , which means it should be easily seen with small telescopes and binoculars. It will not be visible to the eye alone.

Oumuamua a debris of disintegrated interstellar comet says latest study

Matt Williams
Universe Today
Fri, 01 Feb 2019 19:32 UTC

Since it was first detected hurling through our Solar System, the interstellar object known as 'Oumuamua has been a source of immense scientific interest. Aside from being extrasolar in origin, the fact that it has managed to defy classification time and again has led to some pretty interesting theories. While some have suggested that it is a comet or an asteroid, there has even been the suggestion that it might be an interstellar spacecraft.

However, a recent study may offer a synthesis to all the conflicting data and finally reveal the true nature of 'Oumuamua. The study comes from famed astronomer Dr. Zdenek Sekanina of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who suggests that 'Oumuamua is the remnant of an interstellar comet that shattered before making its closest pass to the Sun (perihelion), leaving behind a cigar-shaped rocky fragment.

Having worked with the JPL for almost 40 years - where he specializes in the study of meteors, comets and interstellar dust - Dr. Sekanina is no stranger to celestial objects. In fact, his work includes groundbreaking studies on Halley's comet, the Tunguska event, and the break-up and impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter.

His latest study, titled "1I/'Oumuamua As Debris of Dwarf Interstellar Comet That Disintegrated Before Perihelion", recently appeared online. In it, Sekanina addresses the possibility that the observations that began in October of 2017 by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) was actually a fragment of the original object that entered our system in early 2017.

First pics of Russia's new autonomous 'Hunter' drone appear online

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Sat, 02 Feb 2019 18:50 UTC

The world first got wind of Russia's massive, 20-ton stealth drone fighter last summer when Russian defense industry sources told TASS, a Russian state-owned media outlet:

According to the defense official, the sixth generation jet program "has not yet taken full shape, its main features are already known."

"First of all, it should be unmanned and capable of performing any combat task in an autonomous regime. In this sense, the stealth drone will become the prototype of the sixth generation fighter jet,' the source said, adding that the drone will be able to "take off, fulfill its objectives and return to the airfield."

"However, it will not receive the function of decision-making regarding the use of weapons - this will be decided by a human," he said.

Well, as LiveJournal now reports, new images of the first prototype of the unmanned recon-strike drone - nicknamed "Hunter" - have been taken at the airdrome of the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant.

This model is undergoing factory ground tests there from November 2018. The start of the prototype flight tests of the prototype is scheduled for 2019.

The Truth Perspective: Mind the Gaps: Locating the Intelligence in Evolution and Design

Adam Daniels, Harrison Koehli, Elan Martin, Corey Schink
Sott.net
Sat, 02 Feb 2019 17:00 UTC

Neo-Darwinism is dead. But is intelligent design the answer? While most proponents of ID are neutral as to the source of the intelligence behind biological design, the vast majority seem to hold a traditional view of God as the creator of biological information. A few others, like Perry Marshall, locate the intelligence of design in the cells themselves. But are there other possibilities?

Today on the Truth Perspective we wade into the debate and propose a third option that incorporates the best aspects of both, without the problems each of these opposing options runs into. The answer may not be 'either/or' but rather 'both/and', with intelligence on both sides of the equation.

Running Time: 01:33:00

Download: MP3

Russian Navy receives system that 'blinds the enemy'

Paul Antonopoulos
Fort Russ
Sat, 02 Feb 2019 12:00 UTC

Russian Navy

Ruselectronics, owned by the Russian state corporation Rostec, began supplying the Russian Navy with 5P-42 Filin visual optical interference stations. These systems are capable of blinding the enemy, the company's press service said.

At present, the frigate Admiral Kasatonov and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov are equipped with two sets of the Filin station. This equipment will also be installed on two Project 22350 frigates being built at the Severnaya Verf shipyard.

The Filin station was designed and developed by the Integral Experimental Factory for the suppression of visual and optical optical channels of observation and aiming of light weapons at night and at dusk. Station operation is based on the modulation of the brightness of the light radiation. The low frequency oscillations of radiation brightness cause reversible temporary disturbances of the organs of vision due to excitation of the optic nerves.

Comment: Russia yet again proves it's at the forefront of defensive military weaponry:

Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Putin The World To Rights: Russia's New Nuclear Weapons And The End of 'Unipolarity'

Existence of alien life 'much more likely than previously thought' - NASA admin

RT
Sat, 02 Feb 2019 11:20 UTC

In comments that will likely fuel ardent Ufologists worldwide, a senior NASA official has conceded that the existence of alien life is "much more likely to be out there than we thought before."

Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist and associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, told Boston University he believes there is life beyond Earth for the simple reason that we once "doubted whether water or complex molecules would exist beyond Earth," but in actuality "each one of those is much easier to achieve than we thought possible."

"We find it right in front of our doorsteps, everywhere, including the polar craters of the planet Mercury," he explained. "As for how that relates to the chain of life... well, life is much more likely to be out there than we thought before."

Comment: See also:

'Artificial diet systems' Rigging the science of GMO ecotoxicity

Jonathan Latham, PhD
independentsciencenews.org
Thu, 31 Jan 2019 13:52 UTC

Researchers who work on GMO crops are developing special "artificial diet systems". The stated purpose of these new diets is to standardise the testing of the Cry toxins, often used in GMO crops, for their effects on non-target species. But a paper published last month in the journal Toxins implies a very different interpretation of their purpose. The new diets contain hidden ingredients that can mask Cry toxicity and allow them to pass undetected through toxicity tests on beneficial species like lacewings (Hilbeck et al., 2018). Thus the new diets will benefit GMO crop developers by letting new ones come to market quicker and more reliably. Tests conducted with the new diets are even being used to cast doubt on previous findings of ecotoxicological harm.

In Cambrian Explosion Debate, Intelligent Design Wins by Default

Evolution News
Thu, 06 Dec 2018 18:10 UTC

Sometimes you win a game by default. The loser might not acknowledge losing, but fails to show up.

Picture a world champion prize fighter who has command of the media. He hears a challenger who claims to have a knockout punch, but refuses to get into the ring with him. Instead, he runs to the media and tells them there is indeed a big challenge, and it "might" be winnable. That's it. Reporters run with the story and report, "The Fight Might Be Winnable." Nothing is said about the challenger or his knockout punch. Question: under these circumstances, who wins the fight?

This is the impression you get reading the mainstream media regarding the debate about the Cambrian explosion. Stephen Meyer offered a big challenge in Darwin's Doubt, claiming that Darwinian evolution is not only incapable of explaining the Cambrian event, but that the hierarchical information required to explain almost 20 new body plans that appeared suddenly in Cambrian layers gives positive evidence of intelligent design. His challenge was not lost on Darwin proponents. The book created a strong backlash by evolutionists in blogs, but only one Darwinian got into the ring with Meyer, so to speak, but at least by taking on his challenge. That was "heavyweight" paleontologist Charles Marshall, and a gentlemanly interchange resulted. Meyer answered the response by demonstrating that it did not explain the main point: the origin of the information required to create hierarchical body plans (see Debating Darwin's Doubt, Section III). The challenge stood.

Physics experiment leads to 1st quantum entanglement of living organisms

Rafi Letzter
Live Science
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 17:13 UTC

A lot of scientists think that major quantum effects like entanglement, in which particles separated by vast distances mysteriously link up their states, shouldn't work for living things. But a new paper argues that it already has - that scientists in 2016 have already created a sort of Schrödinger's cat - only with quantum-entangled bacteria.

Usually, we describe quantum physics as a set of rules that governs the behavior of extremely tiny things: light particles, atoms and other infinitesimally small objects. The larger world, at the bacterial scale (which is also our scale - the chaotic realm of life) isn't supposed to be anywhere near that weird.

That was what the physicist Erwin Schrödinger meant to say when he proposed his famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, as Jonathan O'Callaghan pointed out in Scientific American. In that thought experiment, a cat in a box would be exposed to a radioactive particle that had even odds of decaying or not. Until the box was opened, the poor cat would be both alive and dead at the same time, which seemed clearly absurd to Schrödinger. There's just something about the quantum world that doesn't seem to make sense in ours.

A step closer to self-aware robots

Holly Evarts
Columbia University
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 02:07 UTC

New York, NY - Robots that are self-aware have been science fiction fodder for decades, and now we may finally be getting closer. Humans are unique in being able to imagine themselves-to picture themselves in future scenarios, such as walking along the beach on a warm sunny day. Humans can also learn by revisiting past experiences and reflecting on what went right or wrong. While humans and animals acquire and adapt their self-image over their lifetime, most robots still learn using human-provided simulators and models, or by laborious, time-consuming trial and error. Robots have not learned to simulate themselves the way humans do.

Columbia Engineering researchers have made a major advance in robotics by creating a robot that learns what it is, from scratch, with zero prior knowledge of physics, geometry, or motor dynamics. Initially the robot does not know if it is a spider, a snake, an arm-it has no clue what its shape is. After a brief period of "babbling," and within about a day of intensive computing, their robot creates a self-simulation. The robot can then use that self-simulator internally to contemplate and adapt to different situations, handling new tasks as well as detecting and repairing damage in its own body. The work is published today in Science Robotics.

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Science & Technology

Comet Iwamoto fast approaching Earth

Oumuamua a debris of disintegrated interstellar comet says latest study

First pics of Russia's new autonomous 'Hunter' drone appear online

The Truth Perspective: Mind the Gaps: Locating the Intelligence in Evolution and Design

Russian Navy receives system that 'blinds the enemy'

Existence of alien life 'much more likely than previously thought' - NASA admin

'Artificial diet systems' Rigging the science of GMO ecotoxicity

In Cambrian Explosion Debate, Intelligent Design Wins by Default

Physics experiment leads to 1st quantum entanglement of living organisms

A step closer to self-aware robots

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