Sedition: It’s About Time

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Sep 162020
 

Attorney General William Barr suggests charging violent protesters with sedition

Good. We are *looooong* past the time when people rioting in the streets could legitimately claim that they were protesting some injustice. After the most recent incident of a knife-wielding lunatic getting *justly* shot by a cop in Lancaster, PA, whackaloons took to the street in “protest.” You have to be a grade-A doubpleplusungood moron to not recognize that this is a good shoot of a truly dangerous person:

And that’s jut one. The majority of the cases that people claim to be protesting about, from Michael Brown on up to Jacob Blake, have turned out to be unfortunate but justifiable, even praiseworthy, incidents of police shooting someone posing an immediate threat. We’ve skated well past the time when it’s reasonable to assume that the protestors are on the up-and-up; it’s time to recognize the violent ones for what they are: enemies of the state, the people, the culture who want to just tear everything down and dance on the ashes. Best to stomp them down *now* before they plunge the US into a full-on civil war which will kill millions and will likely lead to the end of western civilization as a going concern.

 Posted by at 5:35 pm

WD 1856+534 (TIC 267574918)

 Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Sep 162020
 

Huh.

A giant planet candidate transiting a white dwarf

In short: 80 light years away in the constellation Draco a Jupiter-sized (up to about 14 times as massive, thought) planet orbits a 6-billion year old white dwarf star a mere 11,000 miles in diameter, once every 1.4 days. The orbit is apparently stable.

There is virtually not a chance in hell that the gas giant evolved in that orbit around the original star. When the original star died and became the white dwarf, it likely would have shed a *lot* of mass; in which case any planets orbiting it would have moved outwards or been lost entirely. However, had there been other massive planets, other small stars, or perhaps wandering rogue stars, gravitational interactions could have knocked the planet into a highly elliptical orbit with e very close periastron. Over time the elliptical orbit could have circularized that close in.

What I’ve found hasn’t given data for the semi-major axis of the planetary orbit… but it’s got to be pretty close. Should be interesting to see what sort of system this is and how warm the planet is. Being 14 times more massive than Jupiter means that it could *easily* have multiple moons Earth-sized or even bigger, depending of course on tidal disruption from the star. It would be an interesting place if the planet is close to the white dwarfs habitable zone.

 

 Posted by at 12:37 pm

Nuke News

 awesomeness, news, nukes, politics, science  No Responses »
Sep 142020
 

First U.S. Small Nuclear Reactor Design Is Approved

That sounds like good news. One issue, however:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved the design of a new kind of reactor, known as a small modular reactor (SMR). The design, from the Portland, Ore.–based company NuScale Power, is intended to speed construction, lower cost and improve safety over traditional nuclear reactors…

Portland? OREGON?!?!

Anyway, it’s a 50 megawatt design, able to be built in clusters to gin up to 600 megawatts. A company exec is quoted as saying they think they can sell up to 1,682 of the reactors by 2042… which sounds like a lot, but it would still only produce around 82% as much energy as the current set of larger reactors. Of course if hundreds of small reactors start coming online producing cheap, safe, reliable and carbon-free electricity, one imagines that larger reactors will also start coming along. Ideally, thorium and breeder reactors will also *finally* enter production. Additionally, a very large number of reactors should require a large number of a new generation of nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians… *exactly* the people you need to develope even more advanced nuclear power systems, including fusion systems. You certainly won’t advance the cause of civilized humanity by hiring THESE idjits.

Looks like the first unit will be sold to power Utah, but will be located in Idaho. I still think that the Great Salt Lake would be a fantastic place for a few hundred of these things.

 Posted by at 8:46 pm

*Bio* chemistry on Venus?

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Sep 142020
 

Seems the horrible nightmare of heat and acid that is the atmosphere of Venus has something else: phosphine. This chemical is *usually* a product of biological processes, and is difficult to produce otherwise. The suggestion is made that there is an existing ecosystem of microorganism floating in the clouds of Venus at altitudes where the temperatures are temperate. These likely single-celled organisms would have had to have evolved billions of years ago when Venus was presumably Earth-like, and survived the transition to hellish conditions that now prevail by wafting up into the sky.

Scientists Detect Apparent Signature of Life in Venus’s Atmosphere

What will *probably* end up being the case is that the phosphine is the result of some previously unexpected chemical process involving the heat, pressure and existing soup of horrifying chemicals that make up the land and sky of Venus. But for now, “life” can’t be easily discounted as a possibility.

 Posted by at 2:28 pm
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