Science & Technology

The mega-comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein will get as close as Saturn in 2031

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Thu, 14 Oct 2021 19:32 UTC

© Will Gater. Used by permission.
A graphic comparing the size of Comet 2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) to other solar system objects.

A mega-comet - potentially the largest ever discovered - is heading from the Oort Cloud towards our direction. Estimated to be 100-200 kilometers across, the unusual celestial wanderer will make its closest approach to the Sun in 2031. However, the closest it will come to Earth is to the orbit of Saturn.

Astronomers say Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014 UN271) could be the largest member of the Oort Cloud ever detected, and it is the first comet on an incoming path to be detected so far away.

The graphic above, by astronomer Will Gater compares the size of the comet to other Solar System objects.

The comet was discovered Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, from the University of Pennsylvania earlier this year. They were scouring through data from the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile. They found data of this object that was originally collected from 2014-2018, which did not show a typical comet tail, and the object was therefore thought to be a dwarf planet.

But within a day of the announcement of its discovery via the Minor Planet Center, astronomers using the Las Cumbres Observatory network took new images which revealed that it has grown a coma in the past 3 years, and that it was rapidly moving rapidly through the Oort Cloud. The object was then officially classified as a comet.

Android phones send device, user 'identifier' data to manufacturers & Big Tech firms offering 'pre-installed' apps, new study says

RT
Wed, 13 Oct 2021 11:57 UTC

Android OS devices transmit sensitive user data like handset serial numbers and app usage info to manufacturers like Samsung and third parties like Google, Microsoft and Facebook - even after consumers opt out, a new study shows.

According to the study, proprietary variants of Google's Android system developed by popular vendors like Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme send "substantial amounts" of information to these manufacturers as well as third party firms whose apps come pre-installed in these devices.

In the study, which was published on Monday, researchers from Trinity College Dublin and the University of Edinburgh found that the data silently collected by these companies was linked to "long-lived identifiers" like the device's IMEI code (the unique number linked to a device's SIM card slot) and other hardware serial numbers. In some cases, the MAC address generated by the user's WiFi network was also transmitted.

Comment: Just because it was not "unexpected" doesn't make it OK! See also:

Strange radio waves emerge from the direction of the galactic center

University of Sydney
Phys.org
Tue, 12 Oct 2021 12:00 UTC

Astronomers have discovered unusual signals coming from the direction of the Milky Way's center. The radio waves fit no currently understood pattern of variable radio source and could suggest a new class of stellar object.

"The strangest property of this new signal is that it is has a very high polarization. This means its light oscillates in only one direction, but that direction rotates with time," said Ziteng Wang, lead author of the new study and a Ph.D. student in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.

"The brightness of the object also varies dramatically, by a factor of 100, and the signal switches on and off apparently at random. We've never seen anything like it."

Comment: It's starting to look like the number of 'mysterious' events being discovered in space cannot simply be explained by increased technological ability; this is particularly notable because on our own planet unusual phenomena also seems to be on the rise:

No beginning - Universe has always existed

Paul Sutter
Live Science
Mon, 11 Oct 2021 18:30 UTC

In the beginning, there was ... well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our universe has always existed — and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could work.

"Reality has so many things that most people would associate with sci-fi or even fantasy," said Bruno Bento, a physicist who studies the nature of time at the University of Liverpool in the U.K.

In his work, he employed a new theory of quantum gravity, called causal set theory, in which space and time are broken down into discrete chunks of space-time. At some level, there's a fundamental unit of space-time, according to this theory.

Bento and his collaborators used this causal-set approach to explore the beginning of the universe. They found that it's possible that the universe had no beginning — that it has always existed into the infinite past and only recently evolved into what we call the Big Bang.

Smoking Gun: 'Giant Comet' theory by Napier, Clube et al. vindicated in new paper

Ignacio Ferrin and Vincenzo Orofino
The Cosmic Tusk
Tue, 12 Oct 2021 17:47 UTC

Taurid Meteor Stream pummels planet in human history; remains menace; Nobel Prize?

A comprehensive study of the Taurid meteor stream confirms a central understanding of astronomer Dr. Bill Napier and the Comet Research Group, one which was incorporated into the YDI hypothesis from the start.

From Discover Magazine this week:

The longest-studied comets in our solar system have inspired ancient myths, religious fervor and modern scientific controversies. Now, the discovery of 88 asteroids and meteoroids orbitally aligned with one of them, Comet Encke, suggests that they all formed from the relatively recent breakup of an even bigger, icy comet. The findings are welcomed by those who believe Comet Encke and the other products of this astronomical event are responsible for many of Earth's most violent and consequential impacts over the last 20,000 years.....

.....Such a dynamic, unpredictable and well-populated complex capable of frequently getting close to Earth stoked academic imaginations; astronomers began to rewind the clock and look for evidence of Earth's interactions with the Taurids in the archaeological record and beyond. Scientist Richard Firestone, now at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in 2007 invoked the Taurid complex to explain global climate cooling at the start of a near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas and the sudden demise of the Clovis culture, a prehistoric people thought to be the ancestors of most indigenous peoples in the Americas. And last year, a team including Napier claimed to have found their own evidence of impact during the Younger Dryas: meltglass and scorched earth deposits that appeared to mark the demise of an early hunter-gatherer community in modern-day Syria.

Comment: It good to see Bill Napier and Victor Clube getting the recognition they deserve. They've been voices in the wilderness for far too long.

New Horizons telescope spots Kuiper Belt "twins"

David Dickinson
Sky & Telescope
Fri, 08 Oct 2021 17:37 UTC

New Horizons has spotted two asteroid pairs in the outer solar system. Their existence sheds light on how planets formed.

NASA's New Horizons is still showing us how bizarre the outer solar system really is. A recent announcement out of the 53rd American Astronomical Society Meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences demonstrates that two Kuiper Belt objects that the spacecraft's camera homed in on are actually each close binary pairs.

NASA will attempt to nudge asteroid Didymoon off trajectory that poses threat to Earth

Joseph Curl
The Daily Wire
Wed, 06 Oct 2021 12:00 UTC

The U.S. space agency plans to conduct a mission next month to deflect a pair of asteroids far out in deep space to keep them from threatening Earth.

Dubbed the DART Mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will send spacecraft to a pair of asteroids — the Didymos binary — on November 24 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

If all goes as planned, DART will smash into one of the two asteroids, known as Didymoon, at roughly 13,500 mph nearly a full year later, on October 2, 2022.

Comment: Throughout history cosmic catastrophes appear to have coincided with times of societal and environmental upheaval, and one could say that's a rather fitting description of our current era. Unsurprisingly the establishment has suppressed this information, and its scientists have, for the most part, dismissed it. And so, ultimately, this exercise may be futile; because it is capable of so little and it may just be too late. However, considering the current state of the world and the incredible and increasing suffering caused by the tyranny of governments, it may be that intervention of this kind is, at least on some level, welcome:

Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle

The unknown Eocene-Oligocene boundary mass extinction event was accompanied by climate change and super eruptions, followed by an explosion of life

Marie Claire Chelini
Phys.org
Thu, 07 Oct 2021 12:00 UTC

© Matt Borths, Duke University Lemur Center
Fossils of the key groups used to unveil the Eocene-Oligocene extinction in Africa with primates on the left; the carnivorous hyaenodont, upper right; rodent, lower right. These fossils are from the Fayum Depression in Egypt and are stored at the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates.

Sixty-three percent. That's the proportion of mammal species that vanished from Africa and the Arabian Peninsula around 30 million years ago, after Earth's climate shifted from swampy to icy. But we are only finding out about it now.

Compiling decades of work, a new study published this week in the journal Communications Biology reports on a previously undocumented extinction event that followed the transition between the geological periods called the Eocene and Oligocene.

That time period was marked by dramatic climate change. In a reverse image of what is happening today, the Earth grew cooler, ice sheets expanded, sea levels dropped, forests started changing to grasslands, and carbon dioxide became scarce. Nearly two-thirds of the species known in Europe and Asia at that time went extinct.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's:

Identical twins carry distinctive epigenetic marks

Chloe Tenn
The Scientist
Thu, 30 Sep 2021 12:00 UTC

Sets of identical twins famously have much in common with one another. In a Dutch study published September 28 in Nature Communications, scientists find that they also have something in common with other identical twins the world over: a set of matching marks on their DNA. The researchers studied around 6,000 pairs of twins of varying ages from around the world, analyzing hundreds of thousands of sites on their genomes. Their finding of 834 sites in the genome with marks distinct to identical, but not fraternal, twins could provide clues to how identical twins come about, researchers say.

Comment: See also:

Wuhan and US scientists planned to create new coronaviruses

Sarah Knapton
The Telegraph
Tue, 05 Oct 2021 04:00 UTC

Scientists from Wuhan and the US were planning to create new coronaviruses that did not exist in nature by combining the genetic codes of other viruses, proposals show.

Documents of a grant application submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), leaked last month, reveal that the international team of scientists planned to mix genetic data of closely related strains and grow completely new viruses.

A genetics expert working with the World Health Organisation (WHO), who uncovered the plan after studying the proposals in detail, said that if Sars-CoV-2 had been produced in this way, it would explain why a close match has never been found in nature.

So far the closest naturally occurring virus to Sars-CoV-2 is a strain called Banal-52, which was reported from Laos last month and shares 96.8 per cent of the genome. Yet scientists expect a direct ancestor to be around a 99.98 per cent match - and none has been found so far.

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Science & Technology

The mega-comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein will get as close as Saturn in 2031

Android phones send device, user 'identifier' data to manufacturers & Big Tech firms offering 'pre-installed' apps, new study says

Strange radio waves emerge from the direction of the galactic center

No beginning - Universe has always existed

Smoking Gun: 'Giant Comet' theory by Napier, Clube et al. vindicated in new paper

New Horizons telescope spots Kuiper Belt "twins"

NASA will attempt to nudge asteroid Didymoon off trajectory that poses threat to Earth

The unknown Eocene-Oligocene boundary mass extinction event was accompanied by climate change and super eruptions, followed by an explosion of life

Identical twins carry distinctive epigenetic marks

Wuhan and US scientists planned to create new coronaviruses

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