2016年3月31日 星期四
Big Dipper to Southern Cross
NASAWatch is 20
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1ZP0N4B
via IFTTT
In pictures: Russian cargo ship shuffle underway
from Planetary Society Blog http://ift.tt/1SpXw6a
via IFTTT
NASA Awards Spacecraft Avionics Development Contract
March 31, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1MEVqTl
via IFTTT
Hubble Peers Into the Heart of the Milky Way Galaxy
Astronomers Map A Distant Super-Earth, But It’s a Molten Hell
40 light years from Earth lies the binary star 55 Cancri, a cool red dwarf (55 Cancri B) orbiting a star not too different than the Sun (55 Cancri A), though about twice as old. And orbiting closer in to this Sun-like star are at least five planets. One of them, called 55 Cancri e, is basically hell.
It has a radius just under twice Earth’s, and just over eight times our mass. That makes it a super-Earth, bigger than us but smaller than a gas or ice giant like Neptune. It’s a bit denser than Earth, and the surface gravity is over twice Earth’s too.
It orbits the star on a very tight path, just a couple of million kilometers over the star’s surface. It screams around the star so quickly its year is a mere 18 hours long.
And it’s hot. Really hot. How hot? Well, that depends on what you mean. For the first time, astronomers were able to map the temperature changes across the planet, and what they found is that 55 Cancri e is a place you really, really don’t want to be. It’s 1,100° C (2,000° F) there… on the night side.
On the day side, it’s a crispy 2,400° C, or 4,400° F. You might want to bring your SPF a billion*.
But wait! It gets weirder! Bear with me; this’ll take a moment to explain.
The planet orbits the star so closely that from Earth, we see it pass physically in front of the star once per orbit (called a transit) where it blocks a fraction of the star’s light, and then passes behind the star half an orbit later so the star blocks the planet. Over the course of an orbit the planet undergoes a complete set of phases as seen from Earth, like the phases of the Moon. When it’s in front of the star it’s “new”, and we see its unlit backside. As it circles around it’s a crescent, then half full, then gibbous, then full… but when it’s exactly full it’s behind the star. Then it pops out again, and we see the phases in reverse.
We don’t see the phases, actually. The planet is too far away from us and too close to the star. But as it undergoes these phases, the amount of light we see from the planet changes. Incredibly, using Spitzer Space Telescope (and some pretty fancy data processing techniques), a team of astronomers was able to measure this teeny change in the light from the planet.
Here’s what they saw:
This is called an orbital phase diagram. Along the horizontal axis is time in units of one orbit. In that case, 0 is when the planet is directly between us and the star, 0.25 is a quarter of the way around, 0.5 is when it’s directly behind the star, and 1 is when it’s back in front of the star again.
The y axis is brightness, such that 0 is when we only see the star (the planet is hidden). So at x=0, the total light is lower because the planet blocks starlight; at x=0.5 we see just the star, and in between we see the planet plus the star.
Right away, you can see that graceful long up-and-down curve of light across the whole plot. That’s the light of the planet changing with its phase! If we were just seeing the star, that would be a flat horizontal line. But as the planet circles around to the back side of the star its phase increases, and we see more light from it. The reverse is true as it comes back around.
Right away, that’s pretty boggling. We’re seeing the change in light from a planet 400 trillion kilometers away! Wow!
But this is where the weird part comes in. The planet is so close to the star that the gravity (really, the tides) from the star should lock the planet’s day to its year, so that it spins once every 18 hours as it goes around the star once every 18 hours.
The brightest spot on the planet should be directly under the star, what’s called the substellar point. That faces us right before the planet goes behind the star, so the whole system should be brightest when the planet is just about to be blocked.
But look closer. The brightness does peak before eclipse, but then it dips a little. That means the brightest spot on the planet is not the substellar point. For some reason, the hottest part of 55 Cancri e is about 40° east of that point.
What? Why?
That’s a really good question. The astronomers provide two possibilities. One is that the planet has a dense atmosphere, and is redistributing the heat from the star around the planet, and for some reason that has moved the hot spot.
What could such an atmosphere be made of? Hydrogen is very light, so it escapes the planet’s gravity easily (it helps that the planet is really hot, increasing the speed of the molecules to make it easier to escape). In fact no hydrogen has been detected. So the air there might be something much denser and heavier, like vaporized silicates — yes, rock so hot it’s turned into a gas. It would expand on the day side, blow around to the night side, and condense as clouds. Rocky clouds. I suppose that might be similar to a volcanic ash plume.
But an atmosphere efficient enough to move the hot spot so far east should be able to heat the night side of the planet too, yet we see that huge 1300° C temperature difference. So that’s not consistent.
The second possibility is that 55 Cancri e has no atmosphere. In that case the hot spot might be lava flows, molten rock that flows east (or perhaps a volcanic vent at that 40° east location). However, that’s pretty speculative. It might very well be the reason, but at the moment there’s no way to tell. The planet’s a long way away, and we can barely detect it at all.
Still, this is all pretty amazing. We only discovered 55 Cancri e in 2004, and only started getting a decent understanding of it in 2011. Its light was teased out from the star’s just a year after that.
So our exploration of this weird exoplanet has just begun. But we’re already doing so much! Measuring its temperature, and mapping its surface; being able to tell that one side is hotter, and the heat is off-center. Just being able to do this at all is simply amazing.
Not too long in the future we’ll have the James Webb Space Telescope to look at planets like these, and ground-based telescopes equipped with more sensitive detectors as well. We still won’t be able to resolve these exoplanets, see them as disks, but we’ll still learn a vast amount about them.
55 Cancri e may be our version of hell, but for astronomers it’s a delight: A place where we can test our skills, our knowledge, and our hypotheses of how planets form and how they behave. All that, from a tiny spark we can’t even see with our eyes.
Science! I love this stuff.
* The uncertainties in those temperatures are only a few hundred degrees, so the difference is quite real.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1PHxCsC
via IFTTT
ISS Daily Summary Report – 03/30/16
March 31, 2016 at 12:52AM
from NASA http://ift.tt/1pNcX0X
via IFTTT
2016年3月30日 星期三
NGC 6188 and NGC 6164
NASA Advisory Council Meeting This Week
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1MUCZVA
via IFTTT
NASA's Plan For Commercializing Low Earth Orbit Is Still A Mystery
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1TjPwbH
via IFTTT
LPSC 2016: So. Much. Ceres.
from Planetary Society Blog http://ift.tt/1MUamHZ
via IFTTT
GAO Report on NASA Cost and Schedule Issues
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1RKmU91
via IFTTT
NASA’s Spitzer Maps Climate Patterns on a Super-Earth
March 30, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1MBW1VT
via IFTTT
Earth Art in Northwestern Australia
Arctic Sea Ice Reaches Another Scary Record
The north pole’s ice is disappearing as we watch: This year, the Arctic sea ice had the lowest winter maximum extent on record.
Every year the ice melts in the summer and grows in the winter. Although the specific date varies, it generally reaches its maximum amount in March. In 2016, that maximum was likely reached on March 24, with an extent measured at 14.52 million square kilometers.
The problem is that this number is the lowest on record (satellite measurements go back to 1979). That’s 1.12 million sq. km lower than the average — nearly twice the area of Texas. Worse, the average itself is probably artificially low; it’s measured from 1981 to 2010, an era when global warming had already long made its effects known.
I want to be clear here: Last year’s sea ice had a maximum extent of 14.54 million sq. km. This year’s max is technically lower than that, but statistically they are very close. However, the point still stands: Over time, the trend we’re seeing is a loss of sea ice. The 13 lowest maximum extents ever seen have all been in the last 13 years. That is very, very bad.
The Arctic has been experiencing nearly unbelievable record temperatures. December, January, and February were incredibly hot compared to normal. In that last month alone, much of the Arctic saw temperatures over 11° C higher than average — that’s 20° F. This contributed to the record low amounts of ice seen.
“Extent” is essentially the area of ice; technically it’s measured as a region covered by more than 15 percent ice. But it’s only one way to measure the amount of ice. Volume is a better way, because you can get a thin covering of ice that adds a lot to the area but very little to the actual amount. And guess what: The volume of Arctic ice is decreasing over time as well.
Worse (and yes, things get much worse), it’s old ice that we’re seeing disappearing; ice that had been persistent. The new ice is thinner and tends to come and go with the seasons, but old ice provides a baseline. But that’s melting away as well. Every year as more of that melts in the summer, the overall amount of ice will drop.
I have little doubt that deniers will ramp up their blustery lies as they do whenever a record like this occurs. The most common one is that gain in Antarctic sea ice offsets the loss in Arctic sea ice. This is grossly misleading. Antarctic sea ice is transitory, waxing and waning over time but generally staying around the same amount, while Arctic sea ice is in a death spiral:
In fact, some computer models show that the Arctic could see an ice-free summer as early as 2040. The volume of sea ice is dropping at a rate of about 3000 cubic kilometers per decade, and at its minimum (reached in September every year) it’s now at roughly 6000 cubic km. If this rate continues, then yes, 2040 sounds about right.
Combine this with the 420 billion tons of land ice lost from Greenland and Antarctica every year — yes, every year — and you can see we’re running history’s most dangerous experiment on the only planet that can sustain our lives. And be sure of this: We are not seeing changes due to a natural cycle. This is our fault.
The scary thing is, we’re not really sure how this will affect the climate, but no matter how you slice it, it won’t be good. The introduction of billions of tons of fresh water into the oceans can disrupt the way temperatures are regulated across the planet, with vast and severe repercussions.
I cannot stress this enough: Global warming is real, it’s disastrously affecting our climate, and the economic impact alone will be crushing. And that’s not to mention the oceans becoming acidified, extreme weather on the rise, sea levels rising, and a host of other catastrophic effects.
Remember, in November Americans will be voting for President of the United States. On one side of the ballot will be a candidate who understands all this, and will take action. On the other side will be one who actively buries their head in the sand and denies it all.
Choose wisely.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/22Oo1gk
via IFTTT
ISS Daily Summary Report – 03/29/16
March 30, 2016 at 12:57AM
from NASA http://ift.tt/1RKuaPl
via IFTTT
2016年3月29日 星期二
NASA's 'Spaceport of the Future' Reaches Another Milestone
March 29, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1MQVbz6
via IFTTT
NASA’s ‘Spaceport of the Future’ Reaches Another Milestone
March 29, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1RxwD0j
via IFTTT
NASA Awards Contract for Atmospheric Science Research
March 29, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1V20iDf
via IFTTT
NASA Selects Instrument Team to Build Next-Gen Planet Hunter
March 29, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/22YpgX5
via IFTTT
We Are Dead Stars
My friend Michelle Thaller is an amazing person. I met her when she was doing public outreach for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope mission many years ago, and she has since risen in the ranks at NASA to become the Deputy Director of Science Communication there. She has a wide and deep understanding of astronomy, so much so that I asked her to be my science/astronomy advisor on Crash Course Astronomy.
But there’s more to it than that. She has more than knowledge; she has a profound appreciation for astronomy. She’s connected to it, and it informs her life in a deeply fundamental way. She and I see things very similarly in that manner, which is why I so enjoyed her recent TEDxBaltimore talk, “We Are Dead Stars”.
Before we had an understanding of physics and mathematics, we made up stories about how we came to be. Some of them are comforting, some of them hit on some basic truths, and some speak to us emotionally, poetically, or philosophically. That’s fine, but what these myths tend to lack is evidence, or at least a self-consistent narrative based on that evidence (rather than trying to ignore evidence that doesn’t fit the story).
The beauty, the true power of science, is its ability to weave the evidence into a self-consistent story that ever-approaches describing reality, and to test that evidence to make sure it’s true. For example, we measure the speed of light and find it to be rapid, but finite. That means when we see farther back in space, we see farther back in time. If we go back far enough we see a simpler Universe, with only hydrogen and helium in it. Since that dawn of space and time, we see stars making heavier elements and scattering them into space when they die. We are made of these heavier elements, and therefore we are made of dead stars.
This is not just myth. This is fact, based on evidence and investigation and experimentation. And yet it is a story, a wonderful one, of how we came to be. It’s our origin story, and it has the profound and deeply impactful advantage of being true.
You can (and should!) follow Michelle on Twitter, and also subscribe to her podcast, Orbital Path.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1RxeoYS
via IFTTT
Greenland's Ice Sheet From 40,000 Feet
Jupiter Got Whacked By Yet Another Asteroid/Comet!
On Mar. 17, 2016, an amateur astronomer in Mödling, Austria was taking video of Jupiter using a 20 cm telescope. This is a common technique to capture thousands of frames of an object, so that the best parts of each frame can be teased out to create a high-resolution image, removing the distorting effects of the atmosphere.
But he got more than he expected*. At 00:18:33 UTC he captured what looks very much like the impact of a small comet or asteroid into Jupiter! Watch, and keep your eyes on the upper right part of Jupiter’s limb (it might help to change the playback speed to 1/2):
Whoa. The flash is very brief, but definitely there. When I first saw the video I thought it looked very much like an impact, but it could have also been a reflection inside the telescope, or many other non-impacty things.
To confirm it, what we really need is a second observer who happened to be looking at the same time.
That was taken by John McKeon, observing with a 28 cm ‘scope in Swords, just north of Dublin, Ireland, and the timing is consistent with what’s seen in the first video. I would say this is very strong evidence for an actual impact.
As to what did the impacting, that’s less clear. It could be either a small asteroid or a small comet. Given how brief the flash was, and how bright, I’m sure it wasn’t terribly big, probably in the tens-of-meters wide range. I know that sounds small, but remember, Jupiter has ferocious gravity, and velocity is critical here! The energy released by an object slamming into another depends linearly on the mass (double the mass, double the energy), but on the square of the velocity: double the velocity, quadruple the energy.
On average (and ignoring orbital velocity), an object will hit Jupiter with roughly five times the velocity it hits Earth, so the impact energy is 25 times as high. The asteroid that burned up over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 was 19 meters across, and exploded with the energy of 500,000 tons of TNT.
Now multiply that by 25, and you can see how it doesn’t take all that big a rock to hit Jupiter for us to be able to see it from Earth.
Incidentally, at these huge speeds, hitting the atmosphere is like slamming into a wall. A lot of people get understandably confused how an asteroid can explode due to air, but the pressures involved as it rams through the atmosphere at these speeds are ridiculously huge. The air and rock heat up, the rock starts to fall apart, and each chunk then gets hot, and so on, creating a very rapid cascade that releases the energy of motion in just a second or two.
Bang. Very, very big bang.
Jupiter gets hit a lot. We’ve seen impacts like this before, many times in fact! The most famous is the string of impacts from the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994, which hammered the planet over and again as the comet, broken into a dozen separate pieces by Jupiter’s gravity, slammed into the planet and exploded. In 2009 something relatively big hit the planet (and Hubble caught the aftermath). It was hit again in June 2010 (with a cool color photo this time), and then again in August 2010. A repeat performance was held in September 2012.
Looking over these observations, it seems that on average Jupiter gets hit by something big enough to see from Earth about once per year. Mind you, we miss ones that happen on the far side of the planet, or when Jupiter is too close to the Sun to be observed.
I’ll note that Jupiter has always been getting hit, but the uptick in detections is because our technology is getting better and less expensive. You don’t need a zillion dollar observatory to catch something like this; an off-the-shelf telescope and video camera can do the trick. I’m not saying it’s easy; astrophotography still takes skill and patience.
But there is no lack of talented and eager amateur astronomers out there willing to put in the time. If I had had tech like this when I was in high school and observing in my yard every clear night, I’d have been videoing Jupiter every night it was up! The hard part, though, is actually finding the event in the footage. As you can see, it only lasts for a second or so, which might be hard to spot in hours of footage. Kudos to the two (so far) who did manage to see it.
So it’s worth the call: If you happened to be taking video of Jupiter that night, please let me know. I don’t think any big observatories will be following up with this event (it wasn’t big enough to leave any visible damage in the cloud tops), but the more info we have on it, the better.
* I sent a note to the astronomer who took this video to get more information, but had not yet received a reply at the time this article was posted.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1StCHsY
via IFTTT
ISS Daily Summary Report – 03/28/16
March 29, 2016 at 01:32AM
from NASA http://ift.tt/1MynA29
via IFTTT
Selfies, messages and names delivered for LightSail 2 flight
from Planetary Society Blog http://ift.tt/1pXx6SE
via IFTTT
2016年3月28日 星期一
Orions Belt and Sword over Teides Peak
CASIS Is Not The Best Way To Use a Space Station
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1MNWPSa
via IFTTT
NASA Awards Information Technology Services Contract
March 28, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1VQlo8x
via IFTTT
Significant Command and Control System Problems for SLS and Orion
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/22UyW4B
via IFTTT
Psychedelic Stroboscopic Easter Eggs
Via Laughing Squid and Evil Mad Scientist, I saw this fantastic video made by Jiri Zemanek from Czech Technical University; it shows patterns dancing on Easter Eggs seemingly by magic. Watch:
How is this possible?
I’ve described this effect before. Video is an illusion; it’s really a series of still images that are shown so rapidly our eyes and brain interpret them as continuous motion. If you can time some sort of motion correctly, you can trick the camera (and the viewer) into seeing motion that isn’t really there. It’s why you sometimes see car wheels apparently spinning backwards in TV shows. Really the wheel is making almost one complete turn between video frames, so when you play the video back it looks like the wheel is rotating the wrong way.
In the case of eggs, patterns are drawn on the eggshell such that spinning the egg causes the same sort of beating with the video frame rate. A simple case would be to draw a series of dots around an egg forming a tilted circle around it. If you spin the egg such that the next dot comes into view just as the camera takes a video frame, it’ll appear that the dot moves up and down. With time.
In the video the patterns are substantially more complicated, but the principle is the same. They were drawn using Egg-Bot, an open-source art robot, which you can buy at that link (and the Electro-Kista, which you can also get online). Very cool.
Of course, you can also decorate eggs in a new version of the old-fashioned way like my friend Jenny did. That’s cool too. Either way, you have 364 days to think about it.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/22UtY8b
via IFTTT
Simulated Atmosphere of a Hot Gas Giant
20 Years Ago Today: The Seeds of NASAWatch
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1LUh71I
via IFTTT
Trump’s Faith in Denial
First, off, I know: Dissecting anything Trump says is like digging a hole in water. If you debunk one sentence, another one comes to fill in the hole. It’s pretty clear that he’ll say anything — and I do mean anything (warning: clicking that will make your brain barf) — as long as it’s red meat to his audience*.
Still, he’s the GOP front-runner, and that means he has to deny climate science. That’s as de rigueur for the party as Muslim bashing these days, so it’s not even a question that he’ll do that.
Whereas more skilled — but still dead wrong — politicians like Ted Cruz and Lamar Smith are familiar with the science (the better to deny it), Trump’s handle on it appears to be covered in butter. He just seems to be against climate science for some reason. Those reasons are unclear.
He recently did an interview with The Washington Post’s editorial board, and was asked about climate change. This disaster ensued:
HIATT: Last one: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?
TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.
It’s tempting, instead of picking apart this Gordian knot of nonsense, to employ Solomon’s solution and cut it in half, simply saying, “Trump is wrong about everything.”
Still, a quickie debunking of this bag of fertilizer might be handy at family gatherings:
First: Weather isn’t climate. You can’t disprove global warming because it got cold out one day. As the great Stephen Colbert put it:
Remember, weather is your mood; climate is your personality.
Second: Global warming is happening whether or not you believe in it. Science isn’t faith based. And the fact that humans are causing it is just that: a fact.
Third: There was no cooling in the 1920s; in fact that was the start of a multi-decadal warming trend that lasted until just after World War II (followed by a brief cooling trend, possibly due to increased aerosols dimming incoming sunlight together with some pretty big volcanic eruptions which did the same thing).
There was a cooling trend from 1900 to 1910 or so, which may have been natural cycling of global temperatures. That happens. But when you look at the data from 1975 to now, the trend is obvious. The natural cycles are being overwhelmed by human-induced global warming.
Fourth: No one is “using ‘extreme weather’” instead of global warming. That’s like calling a sore throat a virus. The latter causes the former. In fact, you could say it this way: Global warming is causing climate change which is increasing the instances and severity of extreme weather.
Also, the idea of using the term “climate change” instead of “global warming” was a GOP strategy in the first place. When Republicans talk about scientists changing the term global warming to climate change it makes my irony gland explode.
OK, so when it comes to climate science Trump is the wrongiest wrong of wrongness. But wait! He can be wronger! Here’s the next exchange with The Washington Post editorial board:
STROMBERG: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?
TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.
“Militarily tremendous risks”? I wonder if he asked, y’know, the military about that?
Because they would have told him that climate change is a serious threat to national security. So is climate change denial.
I’ll agree with Trump that nuclear weapons are a clear danger, because duh — and his point that we don’t know where they all are is arguably valid — but that risk is a potential one. Climate change is real, it’s now, and it’s more than a risk. It’s a direct threat.
We need a leader who understands this†, and one who relies on the experts’ opinions instead of making one up.
Don’t forget Trump said this:
When caught out on how ridiculous a claim this was, he tried to pass this off as a joke. I’m not buying it.
We shouldn’t buy anything he — or any of the GOP candidates — is selling.
* And just as an aside, it really bugs me when people start off a comment about him with, “Trump wants to …” No. Stop. What’s really happening is Trump says he wants to do something. Does he really want to build a wall, throw out Muslims, or whatever outrageous thing flits into his brain? We don’t know. He lies as glibly and easily as he declares bankruptcy.
† Who understands anything, actually.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1pFcJJg
via IFTTT
2016年3月27日 星期日
NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars
The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth. The Rest of Us ...
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/25rx8m0
via IFTTT
The Tribeca Film Festival Pulls Anti-Vax “Documentary”
The Tribeca Film Festival is an extremely popular New York-based event designed to showcase the city as a destination for independent movie-makers. That’s great, and I’m glad it exists and supports non-Hollywood creators. However, this year they almost made a massive mistake that would have hurt them—and very likely others—in the long run.
Until yesterday, they were planning on airing an anti-vaccination film almost guaranteed to be full of dangerous misinformation. The good news is, after facing pressure from the media and scientists, they made the right decision: They pulled it from their lineup, and my sincere thanks goes to them for doing so. But it’s worth discussing, because things like this have happened before, and no doubt will again.
The “documentary” is called Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, which right away gives you an idea of what it’s about. The trailer is available on the official film site, and it is loaded with anti-vax propaganda (they refused to provide screeners of the documentary to journalists).
Moreover, the film was directed by Andrew Wakefield. Yes, that Wakefield, the de-listed and disgraced doctor who started the modern anti-vax movement. I’ll get to him in a moment.
Based on the trailer, it appears to focus on the claim that in 2014 a whistleblower in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) leaked information that there was a massive cover-up inside the agency about a purported connection between vaccines and autism.
This conspiracy theory lit up social networks, but there’s one problem: It’s baloney. It’s been debunked numerous times; Snopes.com has a good overview, and you can get details at Science-Based Medicine, Harpocrates Speaks, and in numerous articles by Orac at Respectful Insolence.
Let me be clear: This CDC conspiracy theory is on the level of the Apollo Moon hoax. It’s nonsense. But apparently the people behind Vaxxed think it’s real.
The Vaxxed trailer employs a lot of typical anti-vax rhetoric, for example confusing causation with correlation (that is, confusing timing with cause; children start showing signs of autism around the same time they get vaccinated, so anti-vaxxers assume that vaccines cause autism). It also features a laundry list of anti-vaxxers in it, including Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana), Rep. Bill Posey (R-Florida), Dr. Jim Sears, and MIT Senior Research Stephanie Seneff.
Again, let me be very, very clear: Vaccines don’t cause autism. Study after study after study shows this to be the case.
In other words, given what the trailer shows, this documentary is what comes out the south end of a north-facing bull.
And, amazingly, it gets worse. As I said, it was directed by Andrew Wakefield. If you need a reminder: This is a man who wrote the 1998 paper in The Lancet claiming to connect vaccines and autism… which was retracted by the journal when it was found that Wakefield acted unethically, even fraudulently. His license was revoked by the UK General Medical Council as a result of these actions. It turns out that at the time he was developing an alternative version of the MMR vaccine, so he was financially motivated to fear-monger the standard shot. And I do mean motivated: He stood to make tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars had he been successful. Then, once the fear took hold, vaccine rates dropped in the UK, and measles made a roaring comeback, he had the gall to try to shift the blame to the UK government for the outbreaks.
Yeah, quite a guy. So why the hell was Tribeca even thinking of showing anything created by this man?
It turns out it was due to Robert De Niro.
De Niro is a co-founder of the festival, and has an autistic son. At Respectful Insolence, Orac quotes from a letter he received from the Tribeca group:
I wanted to provide you with following statement from Robert De Niro, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, regarding Vaxxed at the Festival:
Grace and I have a child with autism and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined. In the 15 years since the Tribeca Film Festival was founded, I have never asked for a film to be screened or gotten involved in the programming. However this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening VAXXED. I am not personally endorsing the film, nor am I anti-vaccination; I am only providing the opportunity for a conversation around the issue.
I understand the need to have a discussion about this issue… but that discussion has already been held, many times, and the conclusion is clear: Wakefield is a quack (at best), and vaccines don’t cause autism.
My heart goes out to De Niro, and the love he has for his family is obvious. His desire to use this platform as a soapbox to get information out is laudable, but in this case it’s misinformation; what he’s doing is promoting an extraordinarily dangerous movement, one that most definitely is connected with outbreaks of harmful and potentially fatal infectious diseases. We’ve seen this over and again.
Worse still, a panel discussion planned for after the film screening was clearly biased toward anti-vaxxers, including reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who is an unwavering supporter of Wakefield even in the face of the tsunami of evidence against him.
Even with De Niro’s possibly well-intentioned desires, airing this film wouldn’t invoke “a discussion”. It would’ve been a tacit (and, given the panel after, overt) approval of a group of people who ignore overwhelming scientific evidence at the very real risk of peril to public health. The anti-vaccination movement is a direct threat to children too young to be vaccinated—some of whom die from these diseases—the elderly, and to the immunocompromised.
I love my family too, one of whom is immunocompromised. So to me, this is personal as well. That’s why my daughter, my wife, and I are fully vaccinated. We get our boosters on schedule, too.
So after all that, I’m very glad Tribeca decided to pull the film from the lineup. In doing so, De Niro said,
My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.
Precisely right. And kudos to him for saying so.
[Note: I wrote the first draft of this article before Tribeca decided to pull the film, and most of the original article remains intact; I’ll note that De Niro says essentially what I did: This discussion about vaccines and autism is over.]
I’m sure the anti-vaxxers will moan and wail over free speech — they always do when someone decides not to air their nonsense — but it’s not a free speech issue at all. First, Tribeca is not the United States government, so the First Amendment doesn’t apply. They have full discretion over the films they choose. Second, the anti-vaxxers still have the ability to spread their message on social media and on the usual websites and TV shows, as dangerous as this is.
So we must remain vigilant. Anti-vaxxers buy space on billboards, they get airlines to air puff piece interviews on the in-flight TV (one that was eventually pulled as well), they get on TV talk shows (Katie Couric apologized for that, sort of). Their view is sympathetic: They want to help people, they have families they want to protect, they are mothers and fathers. But the bottom line is they’re wrong, and what they’re saying is dangerous.
I’m very happy Tribeca reconsidered this. They’ve done the right thing. Good on them.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1pRfA2w
via IFTTT
2016年3月26日 星期六
Sostice to Equinox Cubed
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos is a sweet, short, Oscar-nominated animated film. It was written and directed by Konstantin Bronzit, and tells the tale of two men, constant friends, who apply for the Russian cosmonaut program.
The story is lovely, and I found myself laughing delightedly at the sheer joy unabashedly radiating from the two friends. That to me sets it apart from other stories of its kind.
I won’t spoil the ending. Just watch.
The story strikes me as being very Russian; it reminds me of several folk tales I read about years ago, when I became entranced by Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Understand the cruelty of the mindless Universe, accept it, but also find the joy and friendship in life. It’s not a stereotypical American way of seeing things, necessarily (overcome the obstacles, ingenuity and stick-to-itiveness will prevail!), but it’s one that still resonates with me.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1Sd0SJE
via IFTTT
2016年3月25日 星期五
Close Comet and the Milky Way
ISS Daily Summary Report – 03/25/16
March 25, 2016 at 11:39PM
from NASA http://ift.tt/21KW5nE
via IFTTT
Hillary Clintons Wants Area 51 Transparency (Slow News Day)
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1SaXIpN
via IFTTT
A Giant Martian Cone Defies the Wind
Mars is seriously pretty.
That shot, taken by the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows a towering cone-shaped hill in a sand dune field.
First of all, just take a moment to think about that. This is a photo of a weird geological feature in the middle of a field of blowing dunes on another planet.
That never, ever gets old.
I love the feel of this photo. The wind blows from the left, and flows around the unnamed dome. As it does, sand piles up on the windward side, and wraps around both sides of the dome. Because the wind is focused by the shape of the hill, it blows with some force behind it, strong enough to clear the sand away and reveal the rocky surface below. The craters and other features look sharp compared to the dunes themselves, which are sculpted into fantastic flowing shapes by the aeolian forces.
So just what is that dome? My first thought is that it was volcanic. That’s possible, but it’s hard to say. I talked to Ross Beyer, a planetary scientist who also writes captions for HiRISE images, including this one. He mentioned that there are other features poking up nearby, and none exhibit the dome’s striking circular symmetry.
Over time, hills poking up tend to be eroded by winds, and obviously winds are at work here. But the shape would be unusual; I’d expect it to be more teardrop-shaped, like a sandbar. That’s more typical of erosion from winds that come persistently from one direction. If you look at the dome’s flanks, you’ll see lots of striations, which indicate “mass wasting”: landslides. That makes it hard to say what the original shape of this hill was.
Beyer also said a lot of the features in this region are sedimentary sandstone. This is in a spot called Ganges Chasma, a deep canyon off one end of the monstrous Valles Marineris. Long ago, this whole area was under water — Ganges Chasma probably formed from catastrophic flooding — and the floor is deposited sandstone (where I live in Colorado has a similar but somewhat more gentle history). Then the water dried up, the winds picked up, and erosion began.
Beyer noted the dome seems to have a cap on it; that could be tougher rock that resists erosion, which may have helped shaped this feature. That reminds me of hoodoos, those weird cylindrical spires in Arizona you’ve seen pictures of a million times in (think any background in a Road Runner cartoon).
Whatever it is, it’s pretty old. It has craters on its flanks, which means it’s been around long enough to get hit a few times by small asteroids. Tens of millions of years, I’d wager, at the very least. Probably a whole lot older than that.
This image has quickly become one of my favorites, just for its sheer beauty. I love the contrast of liquid softness and literally imposing rock. The theme of symmetry runs strong as well.
Oh, Mars. We may never know what this feature is until we go there and poke at it with a geologist’s hammer. The list of Martian geologic formations that need such treatment is long indeed. I wonder if, generations hence, some young person will stand on the apex of this hill, look around, and wonder when this view was first discovered…
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1RpP9aV
via IFTTT
Hubble Looks Into a Cosmic Kaleidoscope
ISS Daily Summary Report – 03/24/16
March 25, 2016 at 12:50AM
from NASA http://ift.tt/1UNkJ89
via IFTTT
2016年3月24日 星期四
Hickson 91 in Piscis Austrinus
Media Invited to See NASA's Green Propulsion Spacecraft
March 24, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1MoaCUE
via IFTTT
Photos of Commercial Launches From CCAFS Are Forbidden Without Written Permission
from NASA Watch http://ift.tt/1UKOM0l
via IFTTT
Russian Space Station Cargo Ship Launch, Docking to Air on NASA TV
March 24, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/22yrRKl
via IFTTT
Alluvial Fans in Saheki Crater, Mars
Clouds and haze and dust, oh my!
from Planetary Society Blog http://ift.tt/1pK7EjE
via IFTTT
NASA Highlights Array of Experiments Launching on Next SpaceX Cargo Mission
March 24, 2016
from NASA http://ift.tt/1S8JXYH
via IFTTT
ISS Daily Summary Report – 03/23/16
March 24, 2016 at 12:36AM
from NASA http://ift.tt/1pA5anh
via IFTTT
Red Canaries
I recently posted some very pretty natural color images taken by the new Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-3A, a European bird designed to watch over our changing climate and environment.
But its fleet of detectors also takes data in parts of the electromagnetic spectrum our eyes cannot see, like infrared. Check out the image at the top of this post: It shows the Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco, verdant jungle islands that are vividly green.
… except here they look red! Why?
Displaying color images is fun. In general, you start with three images taken using three filters — say, one each that lets through blue, green, and red light — and then add them together using software. You can choose how to display each filtered image; to make a “natural color” photo (like the way our eye would see the scene) you make green look green (pick the green channel in the software), blue blue, and red red.
But when you have an image that uses infrared or some other “invisible” color, you can pick how you want to show it. Usually the images are displayed in chromatic order, so the one with the longest wavelengths is shown as red, the shortest as blue, and the one in the middle green.
That’s how the Canary Islands image above was displayed. As it happens, in the near-infrared, vegetation is highly reflective, way more even than for green light. So when you add in the near-IR image, plants look very red. Water red and IR light, so it looks darker and bluer than usual. Sand is more reflective at redder wavelengths but still reflects well in the green, so it looks yellowish. Clouds reflect everything, so they just look white.
Neat, eh? You may think Canaries are yellow, but clearly they can also be red. Or green*.
But there’s more! North of the Canaries is Madeira, another volcanic island which can be seen in the original, full-size image from Sentinel-3A. Madeira rises just under 2000 meters above the ocean surface, enough to affect air flow. Winds from the northeast blew past it during the time Sentinel-3B took this shot, creating a bow wave around the island and a clear spot downwind, and lovely if broken-up von Kármán vortices (fish-tail disturbances in the flow; seriously, click that link because they are so very, very cool), too.
Images like these are important so scientists can keep track of vegetation growth and die-off, of course. But I can use them to show you a world you literally can’t sen otherwise, something I love to do. I like it when everyone wins.
* I’m making a pun here. Canary birds are yellow, but the island group is actually named after dogs, the Latin for which is Canis.
from Bad Astronomy http://ift.tt/1LJqp0n
via IFTTT