They’ll occur during a new moon this month. I’ll probably be in Florida, so I may drive into the swamp to watch. In California, it’s usually pretty chilly at night in the desert.
Category Archives: General Science
Wildfires
No, this isn’t about CO2. Historically, drought is the norm for California, but people think that their own personal memories are more important than actual history.
Terraforming Mars
There’s not enough CO2 there. Doesn’t seem like a problem to me; just import carbon and oxygen (and hydrogen) from carbonaceous asteroids in the belt. And of course, they have to throw this in:
If you believe it’s possible to terraform Mars, you also must believe in human-caused climate change, because it’s the same process. Even if it’s impossible to terraform Mars, it’s clearly possible to areoform the mid-latitudes of Earth. Because people are doing it.
Ummmmm…no. We’re not.
Meanwhile, Tim Fernholz says we’re going to have to be careful to not contaminate the water there.
Natural Arguments For God
Mark Tapscott has what he thinks are the five best ones. I find none of them particularly compelling, and the third one is very weak.
As I note in comments (the discussion has been going on for a couple weeks), science is orthogonal to the issue of whether or not God exists, and (as I argued with Hugh Hewitt years ago) the desire of believers to misuse/misunderstand the nature of science to validate their religious beliefs is indicative of a certain lack of faith. And of course, the fallacy of the blind watchmaker appears, in which I have to point out that rolexes don’t replicate with random errors to improve the breed.
Jupiter
Has ten more moons, for a new total of seventy nine. I’m old enough to remember when there were only four.
Climate And Science
A weekly link roundup from Judith Curry.
The Andes
An interesting read: How to build a mountain range. I’ve always wanted to see them.
[Via Austin Bay]
Dinosaurs And Gravity
I saw an interesting postulation on Twitter that the reason the dinosaurs could grow so large was that there was less gravity during the Mesozoic. My response:
All I know is that, if earth’s gravity was really less for the dinosaurs, it’s one less excuse for them to have not had a space program that could have prevented them being wiped out.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) July 4, 2018
The Hockey Stick Emails
An appeals court is compelling the University of Arizona to (finally) release them.
The sixth anniversary of the blog post that launched Michael Mann’s lawsuit against me and Mark Steyn is coming up next week.
JWST
We expected this yesterday, but here it is:
Following an Independent Review Board report on the James Webb Space Telescope project, NASA has announced a further delay to the telescope’s anticipated launch. Coming just three months after a year-long delay to 2020, NASA now says the telescope will not be ready to launch until 2021 at the earliest and that the project will breach its $8.8 billion USD cost cap.
The cited mismanagement at NG and NASA is just staggering. The new overrun is about the amount that it was supposed to cost, in total, originally. What a programmatic disaster.
I hereby rename JWST the Jeebus Wept Sunkcost Trap
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) June 27, 2018
[Update after noon]
Here’s the story from Jeff Foust.
[Update a while later]
This can never be allowed to happen again…. The good news is that it does not have to. On Orbit Assembly transcends the limitations around building a big telescope on the ground, shaking the hell out of it for 10 minutes, then deploying it autonomously without fail. https://t.co/lPmq4UgdVi
— Dennis Wingo (@wingod) June 27, 2018
[Thursday-morning update]
Here‘s Marina Koren’s take:
A wiring error caused workers to apply too much voltage to the spacecraft’s pressure transducers, severely damaging them. And during an acoustics test, which examines whether hardware can survive the loud sounds of launch, the fasteners designed to hold the sun shield together came loose. The incident scattered 70 bolts, and engineers scrambled to find them. They’re still looking for a few. “We’re really close to finding every one of the pieces,” Zerbuchen said.
These three errors alone resulted in a schedule delay of about 1.5 years and $600 million, Young said.
I think that’s about Northrop Grumman’s annual net income. If I were NASA, I’d tell them that if they ever want another NASA contract, they’ll eat it themselves.
[Update a while later]
Alex Witze has more, over at Nature.