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Damn Space, You Scary

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Enormous solar storm caused hidden US bombs to detonate during the the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War may have been one of the most unpopular wars in U.S. history, but the massive solar event that took place in August 1972, towards the end of the war may have caused a greater impact than the government let on.

According to a new study published in the journal Space Weather, the enormous solar storm may have actually caused old sea mines to detonate unintentionally.

"These effects, long buried in the Vietnam War archives, add credence to the severity of the storm: a nearly instantaneous, unintended detonation of dozens of sea mines south of Hai Phong, North Vietnam on 4 August 1972," the plain language summary of the study reads. "This event occurred near the end of the Vietnam War. The U.S. Navy attributed the dramatic event to magnetic perturbations of solar storms."

NASA SHOWS INCREDIBLE IMAGE OF THE SUN 'EXPLODING'

vietnam-war-nasa.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

It continues: "In researching these events we determined that the widespread electric‐ and communication‐grid disturbances that plagued North America and the disturbances in southeast Asia late on 4 August likely resulted from propagation of major eruptive activity from the Sun to the Earth."

The solar flares caused significant disruptions to Earth's communications equipment, with X-ray emissions remaining high for more than 16 hours, the researchers wrote.

They also noted that a defense communications satellite "suffered a mission-ending on orbit power failure;" and Air Force sensors turned on, giving a false reading that a nuclear weapon had detonated on Earth.

NASA describes the 1972 event as "legendary" because it happened between two Apollo missions: "the crew of Apollo 16 had returned to Earth in April and the crew of Apollo 17 was preparing for a moon landing in December," NASA writes on its website. Former radiation health officer Francis Cucinotta estimates that had astronauts been in space, they could have absorbed 400 rem from the solar flare. Perhaps not enough to cause death, although they would have needed "a quick trip back to Earth for medical care" to save their lives.

According to LiveScience, pilots flying near that part of Vietnam noticed approximately two dozen explosions in just a 30-second period. Eventually, the U.S. Navy investigated the situation and determined the solar storm caused the magnetic sensors in the mines to trip as if ships were passing them, causing them to detonate.

The events were felt all over the Earth. A 3,080 kilometer/second shock was felt near the Guam observatory. Magnetometer traces went "off scale" in Boulder, CO and a "bright aurora appeared in the northern United States," the researchers wrote.

Effects were also felt in Honolulu, HI, along the southern coast of the U.K. and "within 2 hours, "commercial airline pilots reported aurora as far south as Bilbao, Spain."

Ultimately, the solar event caused the U.S. Navy to look for alternatives to magnetic sensor mines that would be not be affected by solar events, such as this.

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Cacti

Cacti 191

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8 hours ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

Damn space particles, you scary spooky.

Was doing some light reading on Quantum Entanglement (Einstein's Spooky Action at a Distance) and it seems very likely that everything we think we know about causality is a gussied up version of control-- an illusion.

Causality in a quantum world

Quote

 

A neatly aligned row of dominoes stands before you. Satisfyingly, you gently tap the first tile with your finger to topple it. The domino falls and crashes into its neighbor, which falls in the same way, and creates a ripple effect that continues until all the dominoes have toppled.

Falling dominoes illustrate a deeply rooted concept of science and of everyday life: causation. Event B (the last domino falls) occurs because of event A (the first domino falls). B occurs only if A occurs, and the occurrence of A is independent of that of B.

But that simple causal structure of everyday life can break down in the quantum realm. Recent research reveals that causal relationships can be placed in quantum superposition states in which A influences B and B influences A. In other words, one cannot say if the toppling of the last quantum domino is either the result of the first domino’s fall or its cause

 

 

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MillerEP

MillerEP 30446

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On 1/9/2019 at 8:03 AM, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

Damn space particles, you scary spooky.

Was doing some light reading on Quantum Entanglement (Einstein's Spooky Action at a Distance) and it seems very likely that everything we think we know about causality is a gussied up version of control-- an illusion.

Reminds me of this comic:

No photo description available.

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NASA Has Released Incredible Images of That Giant Meteor Explosion We All Missed

fireball-sequence_1024.gif

A meteor that exploded above the clouds over the Bering Sea in December was caught on camera by NASA's eyes in the sky.

Just minutes after the meteor burst apart on 18 December 2018, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard the Terra satellite captured the scene in a sequence of images.

Clearly visible is the shadow of the bolide (or meteoric explosion) seen as a dark streak on the clouds below.

If you look closely, you can also spot the fiery orange cloud left behind from the meteor super-heating the air as it passed through at a speed of 115,200 kilometres per hour (71,600 miles per hour).

The explosion was the third most powerful we've recorded since 1900, exploding with the equivalent of 173 kilotons of TNT - over 10 times the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb (15 kilotons).

It comes in behind the 2013 Chelyabinsk explosion (440 kilotons) and the Tunguska event in 1908 (at least 3 megatons).

However, since it occurred in a remote location, no one was around to see it.

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MillerEP

MillerEP 30446

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https://news.yahoo.com/may-just-days-away-seeing-010305006.html

 

We may be just days away from seeing a black hole for the first time ever

BGR-Logo1-jpg_210257.jpg
Mike Wehner
,
BGR News•April 8, 2019
 
 
blackhole.jpg?quality=98&strip=all

For how much astronomers know about black holes — it’s a lot, trust me — it’s a bit of a shock that mankind has never actually seen one. Everything science knows about black holes is based on inference rather than actually witnessing one with our own eyes (electronic or otherwise), but that may be about to change.

The Event Horizon Telescope project plans to reveal the first-ever images of a black hole, and the international group of researchers working on the project have something very big to show the world this week. We may be just days away from seeing a black hole for the first time ever.

As you might have guessed, this is a pretty big deal. The Event Horizon researchers are going all-out with the announcement, which is scheduled for this Wednesday, and they’ll be holding press conferences in multiple languages simultaneously all around the globe.

The official announcement promises plenty of information as well as “audiovisual material” which we can only hope includes the first-ever images of a black hole.

Countless theories, calculations, and estimations have been made about black holes, leading science to suspect a jet black “pit” of sorts with gravitational pull so intense that nothing can escape it. What a real black hole actually looks like, however, could differ significantly. There’s a lot riding on what we see on Wednesday, and while we’ve seen black holes in science fiction for decades, we might be in for a surprise.

The images, once we see them, will have been made possible by a planet-wide network of telescopes working in unison to peer deeper into the galaxy than ever before. The Event Horizon Telescope project’s primary goal has always been to image a black hole, and they’re now just days away from delivering on that promise.

The announcement is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. EST on Wednesday, April 10th. And the entire event will be streamed online via Facebook as well as the ESO’s official website.

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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1 hour ago, MillerEP said:

https://news.yahoo.com/may-just-days-away-seeing-010305006.html

 

We may be just days away from seeing a black hole for the first time ever

BGR-Logo1-jpg_210257.jpg
Mike Wehner
,
BGR News•April 8, 2019
 
 
blackhole.jpg?quality=98&strip=all

For how much astronomers know about black holes — it’s a lot, trust me — it’s a bit of a shock that mankind has never actually seen one. Everything science knows about black holes is based on inference rather than actually witnessing one with our own eyes (electronic or otherwise), but that may be about to change.

The Event Horizon Telescope project plans to reveal the first-ever images of a black hole, and the international group of researchers working on the project have something very big to show the world this week. We may be just days away from seeing a black hole for the first time ever.

As you might have guessed, this is a pretty big deal. The Event Horizon researchers are going all-out with the announcement, which is scheduled for this Wednesday, and they’ll be holding press conferences in multiple languages simultaneously all around the globe.

The official announcement promises plenty of information as well as “audiovisual material” which we can only hope includes the first-ever images of a black hole.

Countless theories, calculations, and estimations have been made about black holes, leading science to suspect a jet black “pit” of sorts with gravitational pull so intense that nothing can escape it. What a real black hole actually looks like, however, could differ significantly. There’s a lot riding on what we see on Wednesday, and while we’ve seen black holes in science fiction for decades, we might be in for a surprise.

The images, once we see them, will have been made possible by a planet-wide network of telescopes working in unison to peer deeper into the galaxy than ever before. The Event Horizon Telescope project’s primary goal has always been to image a black hole, and they’re now just days away from delivering on that promise.

The announcement is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. EST on Wednesday, April 10th. And the entire event will be streamed online via Facebook as well as the ESO’s official website.

Staring God in the eye ?

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Longhornfan1024

Longhornfan1024 1707

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1 hour ago, Hagbard Celine said:

the israelis just crashed the moon an hour ago

main engine failed on landing.

7th nation to orbit the moon, 4th to reach the surface (crashing counts)

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/space/os-ae-beresheet-moon-landing-live-stream-20190411-story.html

 

They crashed the moon?  Won't that fuck up the tides?

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Sam Lin

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Apollo Mission Control has been fully restored, soon to reopen to the public. It sounds incredible, read to see how they even copied the original carpet and wallpaper, as well as getting the correct brand of tobacco in the ashtray for each workstation user (and that the cigarette butts are actual old cigarette butts they found in the equipment when it was disassembled). Screens are configured to exactly what they would have been for Apollo 15.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/behind-the-scenes-at-nasas-newly-restored-historic-apollo-mission-control/

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Newfound Monster Black Hole Is Too Big for Theories to Handle

Scientists recently found a black hole so big that theory strains explain it, a new study reports.

A Chinese-led team discovered a stellar-mass black hole that appears to be 68 times heftier than Earth's sun — nearly three times bigger than the heaviest such objects should be, according to current thinking.

Calculations suggest that the Milky Way galaxy's stellar-mass black holes — which form after the violent deaths of giant stars — should top out at only 25 times the mass of the sun, the researchers said. (Supermassive black holes that lurk at the hearts of galaxies are much bigger, of course, containing millions or billions of solar masses.) 

What's more, the huge black hole is also relatively close to Earth in cosmic terms. It sits at 13,800 light-years from our planet — a small fraction of the Milky Way's estimated diameter of 200,000 light-years.

"Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," lead author Jifeng Liu, deputy director-general of the National Astronomical Observatories of China at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.

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2 satellites will narrowly avoid colliding at 32,800 mph over Pittsburgh on Wednesday

Two defunct satellites will zip past each other at 32,800 mph (14.7 kilometers per second) in the sky over Pittsburgh on Wednesday evening (Jan. 29). If the two satellites were to collide, the debris could endanger spacecraft around the planet.

It will be a near miss: LeoLabs, the satellite-tracking company that made the prediction, said they should pass between 50 feet and 100 feet apart (15 to 30 meters) at 6:39:35 p.m. local time.

One is called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Launched in 1983, it was the first infrared space telescope and operated for less than a year, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The other is called the Gravity Gradient Stabilization Experiment (GGSE-4), and was a U.S. Air Force experiment launched in 1967 to test spacecraft design principles, according to NASA. The two satellites are unlikely to actually slam into each other, said LeoLabs CEO Dan Ceperley. But predictions of the precise movements of fairly small, fast objects over vast distances is a challenge, Ceperley told Live Science. 

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This Image Is The Closest You’ll Ever Get to the Sun

sun-1-625x352.jpg

The surface of the Sun, it turns out, looks a lot like peanut brittle.

The National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope—located on the summit of Haleakala, Maui, Hawai’i—has produced the highest-resolution photos of our star ever taken.

“Since NSF began work on this ground-based telescope, we have eagerly awaited the first images,” foundation director France Córdova said in a statement.

Released this week, the snapshots show a pattern of turbulent “boiling” plasma covering the entire Sun. The cell-like structures (each about the size of Texas) convect masses of hot solar gas.

“NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope will be able to map the magnetic fields within the Sun’s corona, where solar eruptions occur that can impact life on Earth,” Córdova explained. “This telescope will improve our understanding of what drives space weather and ultimately help forecasters better predict solar storms.”

sun-2.jpg

Despite our reliance on that giant nuclear reactor in the sky, many of the Sun’s most vital processes remain unknown.

“On Earth, we can predict if it is going to rain pretty much anywhere in the world very accurately, and space weather just isn’t there yet,” according to Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which manages the Inouye Solar Telescope.

“Our predictions lag behind terrestrial weather by 50 years, if not more,” he continued. “What we need is to grasp the underlying physics behind space weather, and this starts at the Sun, which is what the Inouye Solar Telescope will study over the next decades.”

Built by NSF’s National Solar Observatory and managed by AURA, the machine combines a 13-foot mirror—the world’s largest for a solar telescope—with viewing conditions 10,000 feet high atop the Haleakala summit.

Moving forward, it will work with space-based solar observation tools like NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (currently in orbit around the Sun) and the soon-to-be-launched European Space Agency/NASA Solar Orbiter.

“These first images are just the beginning,” David Boboltz, program director in NSF’s division of astronomical sciences, said in a statement.

Over the next six months, a team of scientists, engineers, and technicians will continue testing and commissioning the scope to prepare it for use by international researchers.

“The Inouye Solar Telescope will collect more information about our Sun during the first five years of its lifetime than all of the solar data gathered since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the Sun in 1612,” Boboltz added.

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Doc Reeves

Doc Reeves 6434

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I, for one, welcome our new nematodes overlords....

Damn Space Nematodes, you crazy...

Astronauts aren’t the only ones living on the International Space Station. There are lab rats in space, plants in space, and yes, there are worms in space too. Space worms!!

Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode worm, is used for studying biology in space because this worm shares many essential biological characteristics of human biology and is a common, well-studied organism used in biomedical research as a model for human development, genetics, aging and disease.

C. elegans starts out as a single cell just like us. It has a transparent body so its cells are visible with a microscope. These worms breathe air from the Space Station environment via a series of ventilation holes in their housing container. In just 2-3 weeks, they undergo a complex process of development, with embryonic cleavage, morphogenesis and growth into the adult. C. elegans has a nervous system with a 'brain', muscles and a gut. They produce sperm and eggs, and reproduce as hermaphrodites. These worms are also capable of rudimentary learning. After reproduction, the worms gradually age, lose vigor and finally die.

C. elegans is currently being used to investigate the effects of radiation and microgravity on muscle anatomy to understand the influence of spaceflight on muscle physiology. These investigations help researchers understand how the human body loses muscle mass while living in microgravity because loss of muscle mass and performance is a problem for astronauts on future human space exploration missions.

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On 5/4/2020 at 11:51 AM, jeevsie said:

If all goes well, that sample should be returned to Earth on 24 September, 2023.

!!!

 

 

On 5/4/2020 at 11:59 AM, Onboard 2.0 said:

Our next great pandemic !!!!!!

Am I the only one that read The Andromeda Syndrome?

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Just now, Braff Zacklin said:

Possibly. Many have read The Andromeda Strain, a Crichton book about a virulent disease brought back to Earth by a satellite, but this Syndrome of yours sounds compelling. Tell us more.

D'oh... Strain. It's been 40 years, I was close.

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