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China eyes asteroid defence system, comet mission


Reuters
Sat, 24 Apr 2021 09:54 UTC
Asteroid/Kejan
© The Frontier Post/Reuters
Depiction of asteroid defense system • Head of China National Space Admin. Zhang Kejian
China will hold discussions on building a defence system against near-Earth asteroids, a senior space agency official said on Saturday, as the country steps up its longer term space ambitions.

Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, did not provide further detail in his opening remarks at a ceremony for China's space day in the eastern city of Nanjing.

China has made space exploration a top priority in recent years, aiming to establish a programme operating thousands of space flights a year and carrying tens of thousands of tonnes of cargo and passengers by 2045.

The European Space Agency last year signed a deal worth 129 million euros ($156 million) to build a spacecraft for a joint project with NASA examining how to deflect an asteroid heading for Earth.

China is pushing forward a mission where one space probe will land on a near-Earth asteroid to collect samples, fly back toward Earth to release a capsule containing the samples, and then orbit another comet, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing Ye Peijian, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The mission could take about a decade to complete, Ye said.
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Better Earth

Climate shifted axis of the Earth in 1990s, new study suggests

American Geophysical Union
Phys.org
Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:00 UTC
earth axis
© Deng et al (2021) Geophysical Research Letters/AGU
Melting of glaciers in Alaska, Greenland, the Southern Andes, Antarctica, the Caucasus and the Middle East accelerated in the mid-90s, becoming the main driver pushing Earth's poles into a sudden and rapid drift toward 26°E at a rate of 3.28 millimeters (0.129 inches) per year.Color intensity on the map shows where changes in water stored on land (mostly as ice) had the strongest effect on the movement of the poles from April 2004 to June 2020. Inset graphs plot the change in glacier mass (black) and the calculated change in water on land (blue) in the regions of largest influence.
Glacial melting due to global warming is likely the cause of a shift in the movement of the poles that occurred in the 1990s.

The locations of the North and South poles aren't static, unchanging spots on our planet. The axis Earth spins around — or more specifically the surface that invisible line emerges from — is always moving due to processes scientists don't completely understand. The way water is distributed on Earth's surface is one factor that drives the drift.

Melting glaciers redistributed enough water to cause the direction of polar wander to turn and accelerate eastward during the mid-1990s, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences.

Comment: For an idea of the other drivers of the changes we're seeing on our planet, and throughout our solar system, and beyond, see:

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Galaxy

The effects of solar flares on Earth's magnetosphere

Ingrid Fadelli
Phys.org
Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:00 UTC
solar flare
© Jing Liu
An illustration of solar flare impacts on the whole geospace.
Planet Earth is surrounded by a system of magnetic fields known as the magnetosphere. This vast, comet-shaped system deflects charged particles coming from the sun, shielding our planet from harmful particle radiation and preventing solar wind (i.e., a stream of charged particles released from the sun's upper atmosphere) from eroding the atmosphere.

While past studies have gathered substantial evidence of the effects that solar wind can have on Earth's magnetosphere, the impact of solar flares (i.e., sudden eruptions of electromagnetic radiation on the sun) is poorly understood. Solar flares are highly explosive events that can last from a few minutes to hours and can be detected using X-rays or optical devices.

Comment: As we enter a 'grand' solar minimum, that results in a significant reduction of solar flares, one wonders what impact this will have on the dynamics of our own planet; although it's possible we are already seeing some of the effects: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Telescope

Tiny newfound 'Unicorn' is closest known black hole to Earth

Mike Wall
Space.com
Thu, 22 Apr 2021 07:21 UTC
Artist's illustration of the tiny black hole candidate known as
© Ohio State illustration by Lauren Fanfer)
Artist's illustration of the tiny black hole candidate known as "The Unicorn" tugging on its companion, a red giant star.
Astronomers have apparently found the closest known black hole to Earth, a weirdly tiny object dubbed "The Unicorn" that lurks just 1,500 light-years from us.

The nickname has a double meaning. Not only does the black hole candidate reside in the constellation Monoceros ("the unicorn"), its incredibly low mass — about three times that of the sun — makes it nearly one of a kind.

"Because the system is so unique and so weird, you know, it definitely warranted the nickname of 'The Unicorn,'" discovery team leader Tharindu Jayasinghe, an astronomy Ph.D. student at The Ohio State University, said in a new video the school made to explain the find.

"The Unicorn" has a companion — a bloated red giant star that's nearing the end of its life. (Our sun will swell up as a red giant in about five billion years.) That companion has been observed by a variety of instruments over the years, including the All Sky Automated Survey and NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
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Nebula

Chernobyl's liquidators didn't pass on radiation damage to their children

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:11 UTC
Chernobyl
© Shutterstock
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Radiation exposure from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — the world's deadliest nuclear accident — raised the risk of certain mutations linked to thyroid cancer, but it didn't cause new mutations in DNA that parents who cleaned up after the nuclear accident passed along to their children, two new studies find.

The new research is a step forward in understanding the mechanisms that drive human thyroid cancer, said Stephen Chanock, the director of the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the senior author on both research papers. It's also reassuring for those exposed to radiation in events such as the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster and who plan to start families, Chanock told Live Science.

"People who had very high-dose radiation didn't have more mutations in the next generation," he said. "That's telling us that if there's any effect it's very, very subtle and very rare."

Comment: Our understanding of the impact of radiation, as well as nature's resilience, and abilities of adaptation, is changing:

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Rocket

Russian military reportedly creates 'dead zones' for enemy drones and cruise missiles

Ilya Tsukanov
Sputnik
Thu, 22 Apr 2021 11:02 UTC
Field 21-M
© Russian Defense Ministry
Russian Field 21-M (Polye-21M) electronic warfare system
The significance of cruise missiles and drone warfare has become all too apparent in the 21st century, with the United States and its allies in the Middle East regularly using state of the art weapons to launch attacks across Africa, the Middle East and West Asia over the past two decades, mostly against nations without developed air defences.

The Russian military is training to create 'dead zones' completely inaccessible to enemy drones, cruise missiles and other precision weapons, Russian media reports, citing military sources. Sources indicate that the dead zone concept has already been worked out and adopted, and that Electronic Warfare Troops units in several military districts have been practising the concept's employment through drills. Large-scale exercises at the national level are expected to begin next year.

The military reportedly expects to use the 'dead zone' concept to create 'practically impenetrable defences' against enemy drones, cruise missiles and other precision fires, and to defend not only army facilities, but social and industrial infrastructure as well.
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Snakes in Suits

Two weeks to slow global warming: Scientists suggest humanity may be able to avoid climate catastrophes with quick, controversial interventions


RT
Fri, 23 Apr 2021 18:11 UTC
glacier
© Erik Mclean from Pexels
According to the latest research, global warming points of no return for invaluable environmental assets like glaciers and rainforests may have "grace periods" during which humanity can prevent irrevocable loss.

The majority of the climate change debate has focused on the preventative measure of capping temperature rises to below two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.

Now, however, the latest research led by Paul Ritchie and Peter Cox from the School of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at Exeter University has explored whether, through extraordinary effort, humanity may row back against the impending climate catastrophe.

These tipping points are the cataclysmic events which would lead to widespread destruction of vast swathes of Earth through flooding, ocean level rise or deforestation among others.
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Meteor

NASA to participate in tabletop exercise simulating asteroid impact


Jet Propulsion Laboratory - NASA
Wed, 21 Apr 2021 06:41 UTC
Asteroid crater from space station
© NASA, International Space Station Expedition 59
This image was captured by the International Space Station Expedition 59 crew as they orbited 400 kilometers above Quebec, Canada. Right of center, the ring-shaped lake is a modern reservoir within the eroded remnant of an ancient 100 kilometer diameter impact crater, which is over 200 million years old.
JPL's Center for Near Earth Object Studies will lead the hypothetical impact scenario to see how international agencies respond to an actual impact prediction.

During the week of April 26, members of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) will participate in a "tabletop exercise" to simulate an asteroid impact scenario. The exercise depicting this fictional event is being led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), allowing NASA's PDCO and other U.S. agencies and space science institutions, along with international space agencies and partners, to use the fictitious scenario to investigate how near-Earth object (NEO) observers, space agency officials, emergency managers, decision makers, and citizens might respond and work together to an actual impact prediction and simulate the evolving information that becomes available in the event an asteroid impact threat is discovered.

The fictitious impact scenario will occur during the 7th IAA Planetary Defense Conference, hosted by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), and will evolve over the five days of the conference, starting Monday, April 26. At several points in the conference program, leaders of the exercise will brief participants on the latest status of the fictitious scenario and solicit feedback for next steps based on the simulated data that is "discovered" each day. These type of exercises are specifically identified as part of the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan developed over a three-year period and published by the White House in June 2018.

Comment: Meanwhile a record number of asteroids were observed flying past Earth in 2020 - Despite lockdowns interrupting surveys.

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Arrow Up

Largest flare from sun's nearest neighbor breaks records

Daniel Strain
University of Colorado Boulder
Wed, 21 Apr 2021 19:00 UTC
Proxima Centauri
© NRAO/S. Dagnello
Artist's conception of a violent flare erupting from the star Proxima Centauri.
Scientists have spotted the largest flare ever recorded from the sun's nearest neighbor, the star Proxima Centauri.

The research, which appears today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by CU Boulder and could help to shape the hunt for life beyond Earth's solar system.

CU Boulder astrophysicist Meredith MacGregor explained that Proxima Centauri is a small but mighty star. It sits just four light-years or more than 20 trillion miles from our own sun and hosts at least two planets, one of which may look something like Earth. It's also a "red dwarf," the name for a class of stars that are unusually petite and dim.

Proxima Centauri has roughly one-eighth the mass of our own sun. But don't let that fool you.

In their new study, MacGregor and her colleagues observed Proxima Centauri for 40 hours using nine telescopes on the ground and in space. In the process, they got a surprise: Proxima Centauri ejected a flare, or a burst of radiation that begins near the surface of a star, that ranks as one of the most violent seen anywhere in the galaxy.

"The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," said MacGregor, an assistant professor at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy (CASA) and Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS) at CU Boulder.

The team's findings hint at new physics that could change the way scientists think about stellar flares. They also don't bode well for any squishy organism brave enough to live near the volatile star.

"If there was life on the planet nearest to Proxima Centauri, it would have to look very different than anything on Earth," MacGregor said. "A human being on this planet would have a bad time."
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Nuke

Study says nuclear fallout showing up in U.S. honey decades after bomb tests

Nikk Ogasa
Science Magazine
Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:36 UTC
Nuclear Fallout in Honey
© ARX0NT/ISTOCK
Flowering plants can transfer radiocesium from soils to honey bees, who can then concentrate the contaminant in honey.

Fallout from nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and '60s is showing up in U.S. honey, according to a new study. Although the levels of radioactivity aren't dangerous, they may have been much higher in the 1970s and '80s, researchers say.

"It's really quite incredible," says Daniel Richter, a soil scientist at Duke University not involved with the work. The study, he says, shows that the fallout "is still out there and disguising itself as a major nutrient."

In the wake of World War II, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and other countries detonated hundreds of nuclear warheads in aboveground tests. The bombs ejected radiocesium — a radioactive form of the element cesium — into the upper atmosphere, and winds dispersed it around the world before it fell out of the skies in microscopic particles. The spread wasn't uniform, however. For example, far more fallout dusted the U.S. east coast, thanks to regional wind and rainfall patterns.

Radiocesium is soluble in water, and plants can mistake it for potassium, a vital nutrient that shares similar chemical properties. To see whether plants continue to take up this nuclear contaminant, James Kaste, a geologist at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, gave his undergraduate students an assignment: Bring back local foods from their spring break destinations to test for radiocesium.

One student returned with honey from Raleigh, North Carolina. To Kaste's surprise, it contained cesium levels 100 times higher than the rest of the collected foods. He wondered whether eastern U.S. bees gathering nectar from plants and turning it into honey were concentrating radiocesium from the bomb tests.
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