And yet-more information from (or about) Spaaaaaace!

NOTE: I supply a little bit of a riff concerning the rarity of science – not simply on Earth however probably throughout the cosmos – on the finish. 

We’re gadually making an attempt to renew ‘regular’ life after our household suffered a ‘disruption’ in our residing preparations that has left us frazzled, with little time for weblog updates. However issues are a bit higher now, so right here is… a roundup of latest* house information and updates.

*(Properly, ‘latest’ as of when these postings had been really drafted, in January, earlier than we realized how loopy issues had been gonna get!)

== Heading for the moon ==

Sending landers to the lunar floor: In mid-January, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched two industrial landers – Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and Japan’s ispace’s Resilence lander – to the moon. 

The landers comprise scientific devices to investigate the lunar regolith and magnetosphere, and arrange a moon-based international navigation system, laying the groundwork for future lunar missions.

*As of March 30… nicely… any house junkies know the way it went.

== Rogue planets throughout! ==

One of many imperfectly inadequate (by itself) however considerably believable theories for the Nice Silence or “Fermi Paradox” (horrible identify) is that interstellar journey… even at simply 10% of sunshine velocity… is made very troublesome by a minefield of hidden obstacles.  No, I’m not speaking about my quick story “Crystal Spheres.”  However reasonably, these can be rogue planets which might be untethered from stars. Yearly we discover they’re extra frequent within the galaxy.

For instance, the infrared-sensitive Webb Telescope has discovered lots of… right down to Saturn measurement, simply within the Orion Nebula, alone! Forty-two of them are in binary pairs. Wow. Implicit: billions of free-floating planets within the darkness between the celebs.

Yet one more unimaginable accomplishment by this implausible instrument that this implausible, scientific civilization created, in our regular and accelerating progress as apprentices within the Laboratory of Creation! 

And but some ignore the just about (or precise) theological significance of those unimaginable accomplishments (Robots roaming Mars! New human-made life varieties! The brand new expertise to save this lovely world from … ourselves!) Okay, grad college students in Creation’s Lab ought to respect those that clutch the Kindergarten textual content given to illiterate shepherds. High-quality. 

However those that wage all-out struggle vs science are clearly the true heretics, right here.

See extra unimaginable Webb Wonders!  A way-kewl podcast from Fraser Cain. 

== Monitoring Methane Emissions ==

Among the many worst criminals alive at the moment are those that are intentionally venting methane into the ambiance. After GOP Congresses intentionally canceled or slashed the satellites to trace down vents and Trump delayed them, we now, ultimately, have the policing instruments. A satellite tv for pc that measures methane leaks from oil and gasoline firms is ready to start out circulating the Earth 15 occasions a day subsequent month. Google plans to have the info mapped by the top of the yr for the entire world to see. (Thanks Sergey.)

Methane is a potent greenhouse gasoline estimated to be chargeable for almost a 3rd of human-caused international warming. Scientists say slashing methane emissions is likely one of the quickest methods to gradual the local weather disaster as a result of methane has 80 occasions the warming energy of carbon dioxide over a decade. Although farming is the most important supply of methane emissions from human actions, the power sector is a detailed second. Oil, gasoline, and coal operations are thought to account for 40% of world methane emissions from human actions. The IEA says specializing in the power sector ought to be a precedence, partially as a result of decreasing methane leaks is cost-effective. Leaking gasoline could be captured and bought, and the expertise to try this is comparatively low-cost.

Two new methane-detecting satellites – Carbon Mapper and MethaneSAT/EDF at the moment are surveying the planet’s local weather. As a result of the Biden admin pushed by the standard methane satellites, the data shall be so extensively seen that members of the general public will be capable of act on their very own – even regardless of a suborned EPA and Justice dept.  A case the place the fitting could also be bitten by the ‘market/client different to authorities’ that they’ve lengthy raved about.

== Darkish comets, Dwarf galaxies – and Darkish Matter ==

If I had adopted my authentic scientific path – not lured away by the likes of you telling me to jot down extra scifi – I’d doubtless have been within the combine of those research of “darkish comets,” whose orbits get considerably altered by gassy or dusty emissions, the best way it occurs with common, icy comets, however with none seen indicators of watery volatiles. “dark comets are completely different from one other middleman class between asteroids and comets, often called energetic asteroids, though there could also be some overlap. Energetic asteroids are objects with out ice that produce a cloud of mud round them, for quite a lot of causes…” 

Solely the Darkish Comets – and a few embody the odd cigar-shaped interstellar customer ‘Oumuamua‘ – nonetheless don’t have any agency rationalization. Although some theories counsel emission of some risky substance that doesn’t depart an ionized spectral hint.

The Milky Manner’s central (enormous) black gap is spinning surprisingly quick and out of orientation with the remainder of the galaxy; the explanations stay unknown. Now, knowledge from the Occasion Horizon Telescope – that first captured the black gap’s picture in 2022 has revealed a clue: The Sagittarius A* we see at the moment was born from a cataclysmic merger with one other big black gap billions of years in the past.