Yow:
Just saw in this GCN Circular: https://t.co/qWZD6hLQ7w that the huuuuuge Gamma Ray Burst GRB221009A which is the brightest ever detected, has triggered detectable ionospheric disturbances in our own atmosphere. pic.twitter.com/DbGd0eEXDM
— Dominique Boutigny (@AlvindeDiaspar) October 14, 2022
The idea of reflecting sunlight in order to a lower the planetary temperature is not new. The idea is sound, though it would be an incomplete solution to the problem of global warming if carbon emissions remain as they are: sure, the temperature might decrease, but the carbon dioxide would still chemically alter the environment. The oceans would continue to acidify, for instance. And if the temperature issue is abated by reflection, the drive to decarbonize would drop, so the Chinese and Indians would continue to crank out coal plants, and the US would continue to fail to build nuclear powerplants.
Still, adding reflecting aerosols to the upper atmosphere or even glitter out in space would be useful at a certain level. There are negatives with each approach: one of the easiest, adding sulfur dioxide to the upper atmosphere by spraying it from jetliners, would result in some amount of acid rain. But something I see all too often: “the attempt to reflect sunlight will result in a new ice age.” This is, of course, nonsense. The amount of sunlight that would need to be reflect would be *vast,* while any attempt to reflect that much would start at a far lower level and sloooowly ramp up to that level. The effects, both positive and negative, would take a long time too accrue, and the process could be adjusted to account for things.
Some reflection ideas seem not only easier but more practical than others. In regions that are much more beset by summer heat than winter cold, simply painting black roofs white would not only aid in the cooling of the planet but the cooling of the building directly. Alternatively, cover black roofs with black solar panels: you don’t affect reflection, but you reduce the need for solar farms elsewhere that would replace bright dirt with dark solar panels.
Additionally, ground-level reflection strategies that cover anything but asphalt had better be done at sea. From space, the darkest areas of Earth are asphalt and deep oceans; covering the sea, especially near the equator, with reflective stuff would be more effective than covering lighter dirt, rock or especially sand in higher latitudes. I’ve even seen people float the idea of adding reflectants (like vast white insulating blankets) to high latitude glaciers. While that might add some small benefit for the glacier, that same white blanket would do far better work spread out over the surface of the Pacific near Indonesia.
A program to do enough of this sort of thing to effectively counter global warming would need to be a multi-national effort. The US going about it alone would be not only unlikely to be terribly effective, it would be an economic hit to the US, leaving the actual big polluters off the hook. but on the other hand, I’m less than thrilled about the idea of Chinese aircraft spraying crap into the air.
It seems that a black hole tore a star apart, trapped the tattered gaseous remains in an accretion disk, held onto it for three years, then blatted it back out into space at half the speed of light. The mechanism for this seems a little unclear.
$965 million sure *seems* like a lot of money. But Jones has one ray of hope: Bidenomics. If he can hold off paying for a few more months, the magic of inflation will turn that kingly sum into the cost of a loaf of bread.
This estimate appears to come from the FSB. Normally you’d expect them to underestimate the losses in order to try to make things look not quite so bad. So… is this an underestimate? Is it reasonably accurate? Or is it in the FSB’s interests to try to make things look *worse?* If the latter… one might think they’re doing it to make Ukraine look like enough of a threat to retroactively justify the invasion. or maybe they’re doing it to make the invasion look like enough of an unmitigated disaster to help spur on some home-grown regime change. Shrug.
In any event: good job, Vlad.
Assuming the video is accurate (these days, who knows), it appears that a Ukrainian soldier swatted a Russian cruise missile on its way to a war crime using a standard shoulder-launched short range missile.
It’s unclear to me what system was used, as the video is pretty potato in quality. Doesn’t look to me like a Stinger; not enough stuff on the front of the launcher. Maybe a Grail, Gremlin or Piorun.
A MANPAD vs a cruise missile makes sense: cruise missiles fly low, generally subsonic, have no countermeasures such as flares and do not try to maneuver to avoid getting hit. On the other hand their engines are small and do not put out nearly as much thermal energy as the turbojets of a fighter; but on the gripping hand, they are also not as IR shielded as the exhausts of a stealthy airplane or a battlefield helicopter. So the trick with using a MANPAD to take out a cruise missile is to be in the right place at the right time, and to be on the ball. It’s impossible to know what apartment building or orphanarium or kitten hospital the Russian cruise missile was targeted to obliterate, but it’s safe to say that the missileer here just saved a fair number of civilians a lot of grief.
A political test in any science other than “political science” is an abomination. So, of course, here comes the United States Federal Government instituting political tests: you have to pledge allegiance to a scientifically irrelevant political ideology *and* do a performative written struggle session explaining just how much you love Dear Leaders wise policies and how you, yes, YOU, plan on instituting them rather than doing, you know, science.
From the Department of Energy, which has apparently solved all our energy problems (did they finally crack fusion? Do the neighborhood-scale fusion powerplants start shipping next week?), comes this nightmare:
That is why, beginning in FY 2023, the Office of Science is adding a new requirement to our solicitation processes: applicants must now submit a plan for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research, or PIER Plan, along with their research proposals. PIER Plans should describe the activities and strategies that investigators and research personnel will incorporate to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in their research projects. The complexity and detail of a PIER Plan is expected to increase with the size of the research team and the number of personnel to be supported. This will be a requirement for proposals submitted to all Office of Science solicitations, as well as invited proposals from the DOE national laboratories. The PIER Plans will be evaluated under a new merit review criterion as part of the peer review process.
I have high hopes of lawsuits galore. And I would have hopes that, if the FBI was actually up to the task of doing its job, they’d be investigating the people pushing this crap. I would not be at all surprised to find some foreign involvement here. Why do the hard work of competing against aggressive and enthusiastic science when you can convince the gullible chuckleheads on the other side to eat themselves and corrupt their own science with pseudo-religious garbage?
Prior to impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit its larger parent asteroid Didymos. Astronomers used ground-based telescopes to measure how Dimorphos’ orbit changed after impact.Now, it takes Dimorphos 11 hours and 23 minutes to circle Didymos. The DART spacecraft changed its orbit by 32 minutes.
Initially, astronomers expected DART to be a success if it shortened the trajectory by 10 minutes.
Neato. A pity we didn’t have more spacecraft on-scene to get better bomb damage assessment images in the minutes, hours and days that followed. It kinda seems like the impact really trashed the rubble pile.