Space and The wonders/mysteries of The Universe

We'll finally find out what's in Area 51.

Good to know about that weekly update site. I hadn't heard about that asteroid landing.

{{ Its a marvel of human imagination, skill, and endeavour against the odds, so naturally when they switch it on they will find out some berk has put the trillion dollar lens on backwards and made everything appear even further away and tiny than it was already! Its the human way. }}

Tyson is not the leading astrophysicist (hasn't done research in decades), but I'll grant him the leading explainer of astrophysics.

I already have one of the JWST images as my desktop background.... replacing my image of Andromeda /

They are already blowing anything Hubble produced out of the water and amazingly still, the time spent on these initial targets is much smaller on JWST.

Given what has already come out, I can imagine that we may pick up some traces of life when it targets some exo-planets over the coming years.

Exciting if you are in to that kind of thing.

Hmm...many of the electronic transitions in molecules are in the IR, so it should be able to get atmospheric spectrum.  Hadn't heard of that as being a goal but sounds technically reasonable.

EDIT: looked it up and it is indeed a major part of the mission!  
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1707/webb-reveals-steamy-atmosphere-of-distant-planet-in-detail/

Incredible

{{ Beautiful martian clouds and a sunset, as seen by the rover}}

Chris - how did I miss that earlier and where is Bruce Willis?

Petty - I don't remember many sky pictures from the rover, and forget they even had color because the landscape we usually see pictures of is so drab.

{{ Lecture from one of my favourite scholars, and Mesopotamia expert Prof Irving Finkel of the British Museum. Its like getting a history lecture from Gandalf. }}

At work now, will have to watch that later. But yeah, Irving Finkel rocks. He likes to teach school kids how to write cuneiform.

{{ I am not at all sure what to make of this. It was buried deep on Fox news of all places and Ive not seen it reported elsewhere, despite the contents being, well interesting at least-

'A draft research report authored by Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and Abraham Loeb, chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department was released on March 7 and focuses on the physical constraints of unidentified aerial phenomena.
"...An artificial interstellar object could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth, an operational construct not too dissimilar from NASA missions," the report read. "These ‘dandelion seeds’ could be separated from the parent craft by the tidal gravitational force of the Sun or by a maneuvering capability."
On October 19, 2017, the Pan-STARRS detected an unusual interstellar object that was later named ‘Oumuamua, or scout in Hawaiian, six months before ‘Oumuamua made its closest approach to Earth.
"With proper design, these tiny probes would reach the Earth or other solar system planets for exploration, as the parent craft passes by within a fraction of the Earth-Sun separation — just like ‘Oumuamua’ did," the authors wrote. "Astronomers would not be able to notice the spray of mini probes because they do not reflect enough sunlight for existing survey telescopes to notice them."

According to the NASA website Oumuamua is-

'While originally classified as a comet, observations revealed no signs of cometary activity after it slingshotted past the Sun on Sept. 9, 2017 at a blistering speed of 196,000 miles per hour (87.3 kilometers per second). It was briefly classified as an asteroid until new measurements found it was accelerating slightly, a sign it behaves more like a comet.
The first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system, this interstellar interloper appears to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The object, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated—perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike objects seen in our solar system.
These properties suggest that ‘Oumuamua is dense, composed of rock and possibly metals, has no water or ice, and that its surface was reddened due to the effects of irradiation from cosmic rays over hundreds of millions of years.'

Its quite a way to get from NASA's view of this object as natural to the Pentagons proposed hypothesis here that it is some sort of alien mothership dropping probes onto earth! }}

Definitely a hypothesis and probably reflects the difference in purpose behind NASA and the DoD. And the latter is at least possible, if not probable.

{{ Heres the draft report- }}

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/LK1.pdf

Yeah, just pushing the boundaries of what is possible within observational constraints. Barely even qualifies as "speculation" in scientific jargon, which typically requires an observation looking for explanation. Here they observe a strange shape, make a wild leap towards saying the shape might be explained as being designed by an alien civilization, then make a second wild leap on top of that by saying they can't rule out that it dropped probes.

File this away in the "worth ignoring" bin.

{{ Its not just the strange shape, its the strange route it took through our system and the fact it could accelerate with no apparent means of propulsion- seems for some time the theory was it was either radiation giving it a push or ice melting and releasing gas- problem is since then both those theories have been debunked by other scientists, leaving the propulsion bit a mystery still. }}

{{ Another lovely day on Mars-



bit like Mars round here of late- where is everyone? }}

I've been on. But a real dearth of Tolkien news of late.

We do seem to be down to about 4 active users these days, with a few others popping by on occasion. Not sure if I missed some people saying goodbyes or if they just stopped coming.

Thinking of Ringo, Orwell and Az particularly. Norc left this all behind a long time ago and Eldo too. They all left big holes that haven't been filled by anyone new coming in.

thats true. I miss them all.

Looks like the problem of overly massive early galaxies seen by the James Webb telescope is solved. No problems with our current model of cosmology. This gal explains it very well.

So Betelgeuse is showing all the signs of going supernova soon; we're talking within years or decades.  It seems it only switched to a red giant about a thousand years ago, according to a color shift noted in ancient records; now it's pulsating erratically. Will be quite an interesting sight in the night sky when it blows.

Haven't found a video I'm very happy with yet, will keep searching. But I did find this: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday/

This has been going on and off for a while. It dimmed massively for a while and everyone thought it was shedding a lot of its corona but then picked up again.

Even then though, it was "in the next few thousand years" which included that it could have already exploded (and we just hadn't seen it yet) to no human nay ever seen it.

Has that view changed?

I think with the recent fast erratic pulsing the forecast has been updated by some to say there's more likelyhood to happen within a few decades. But there's no confident prediction; a thousand years isn't off the table.