…but it is worth USD $10 billion…
PS. Let’s look for the aliens, already…
https://apnews.com/article/james-webb-telescope-first-photos-32c7cad1f6b277f871990d029bedba72
A picture isn’t worth a thousand words…
July 12, 2022
International asteroid day!
June 30, 2022
Today is “International Asteroid Day”!
Who knew?
Asteroids hold large amounts of valuable minerals and metals. That is what International Asteroid Day is raising awareness about on 30 June.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-61985813
Amino acids found in material brought back by Hayabusa-2
June 6, 2022
More than 20 types of amino acids have been detected in samples Japan’s Hayabusa2 space probe brought to Earth from an asteroid in late 2020, a government official said Monday, showing for the first time the organic compounds exist on asteroids in space.
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/06/9a7dbced6c3a-amino-acids-found-in-asteroid-samples-collected-by-hayabusa2-probe.html
This lends support to the hypothesis that life on Earth was brought to it during the Late Heavy Bombardment period – in which meteors brought not just water but the building blocks of life…
Now imagine if someone were to find an asteroid with addition proteins NOT found on Earth… (i.e., my novel’s scientific premise…)
Super Flower Blood Moon coming soon
May 15, 2022
…if you are lucky enough to live Western Europe, parts of northwestern Africa, and some of the Americans…
As for why the Moon appears red…
“You’ll actually be seeing every sunrise and every sunset occurring around the Earth at once. All of that light will be projected on to the Moon.” (Dr Gregory Brown, Royal Observatory
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61423765
And if you happened to be standing on the Moon at the time, you’d see a blood ring encircling the Earth in front of you (ah, assuming you were not on the other side of the Moon).
Come on. Somebody has got to figure out how to get a picture of that.
US government’s plans for the Moon included — using nukes to dig tunnels??
April 25, 2022
“Perhaps most intriguing among the documents are the several dozen Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs), which discuss the viability of various “advanced technolog[ies].” This collection includes reports on “traversable wormholes, stargates, and negative energy,” “high-frequency gravitational wave communications,” “warp drive, dark energy, and the manipulation of extra dimensions,” and many other topics that will sound familiar to fans of science fiction.”
https://www.livescience.com/us-government-report-nuke-the-moon
Looks like the AATIP wasn’t simply searching for aliens…
When planets align! Eh. Again.
April 24, 2022
(Note: You won’t be able to see the planets actually looking like these photoshopped images…unless you happen to have a really powerful telescope in your backyard.)
Not sure why I first got this info from a site based in New Jersey. The info about what time of day and in what part of the sky is only relevant to people living in the NJ_NYC area.
Still, it’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs once every few years…
2005. 2016. 2020. And 2022. Not exactly a regular pattern, it seems.
And, no, there is no “spiritual significance” to a planetary alignment. It’s an illusion, an imaginary lining up of the solar system that doesn’t affect you personally. Sorry.
But it’s still fun to watch. Er, if you enjoy getting up before dawn (I don’t).
According to nj.com, “The planetary parade of sorts will occur when Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn all appear to be lined up in a row above the horizon during the pre-dawn hours — starting Saturday morning, April 23. The alignment will also be visible during the next few mornings, and April’s crescent moon will soon join the parade, according to experts from LiveScience and AccuWeather.”
Yeah, lots of web sites are covering this. At least the one I linked above doesn’t have automated videos, flashing ad gifs, and other random pop-ups that drain your smartphone battery.
Click here for more info about the next great alignment (not as impressive as the so-called “Great Conjunction” a couple years ago, but we’ll see more planets in June and July): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/17/planets-align-april-venus-mars-jupiter-saturn/7351117001/
Psyche! It might not be as heavy as we thought
March 4, 2022
A new study suggests that 16 Psyche, one of the most intriguing and most valuable asteroids we know of, could be covered in iron-spewing volcanoes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2022/02/24/the-iron-giant-asteroid-worth-more-than-our-global-economy-may-have-an-explosive-secret-say-scientists
Psyche is an asteroid that was probably once the heart of a planet in the early system, one that didn’t survive the violent process of planet formation.
Yep — that “worth more than the global economy” rock in space.
But we’ll have to wait a few years to find out if it’s “less metal and more hard rock” — the Psyche Mission rockets off in August 2022 and the probe won’t arrive for four more years.
How do we find ET? Look for pollution…
February 24, 2022
“We give off waste heat (from industry and homes and so on) and artificial light at night, but perhaps most significantly, we produce chemicals that fill our atmosphere with compounds that wouldn’t otherwise be present. These artificial atmospheric constituents just might be the thing that gives us away to a distant alien species scanning the galaxy with their own powerful telescope.”
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-webb-telescope-civilizations-air-pollution.html
Or, as Futurism puts it: “SCIENTISTS ALREADY PLOTTING HOW James Webb COULD DETECT ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS WHOA.”
Just. Settle down, wouldja. Sheesh.
Scientists have proposed aiming the James Webb space telescope the Trappist system, specifically Trappist-1e.
Really hope this isn’t what they find…
The Death Star has an inner ocean
January 22, 2022
New analysis of one of Saturn’s moons suggests that it may harbor a liquid ocean. No, not the usual suspects – the new culprit is Mimas, the little moon with a big crater, which gives it more than a passing resemblance to the ‘Death Star’ from Star Wars.
https://www.sciencealert.com/evidence-for-a-liquid-ocean-has-been-uncovered-in-saturn-s-death-star-moon
Add Mimas to Europa and Enceladus as possible moons harboring ET.
Like, IWOW —-
Should Pluto and Ceres be “planets”?
January 3, 2022
…a study announced in December from a team of researchers in the journal Icarus now claims the IAU’s definition was based on astrology — a type of folklore, not science — and that it’s harming both scientific research and the popular understanding of the solar system.
I’m not sure I agree that moons of Jupiter and Saturn should be classified as “planets,” but frankly I see little difference between “dwarf planets” and “planets.”
Plus it wrecks the song I learned to remember the order…
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/pluto-planet-debate-rages-rcna8848
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