TYB
>>21404999 LB
780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber)
@780thC
CyberCX Intelligence has identified a network of at least 5,000 inauthentic X accounts | The system controlling the network is strongly associated with China https://cybercx.com.au/blog/cybercx-unmasks-china-linked-ai-disinformation-capability/
@CyberCX
From cybercx.com.au
3:54 AM · Aug 13, 2024
https://x.com/780thC/status/1823312214574477708
The Next Full Moon is a Supermoon Blue Moon
Aug 12, 2024
The Next Full Moon is a Supermoon, a Blue Moon; the Sturgeon Moon; the Red, Corn, Green Corn, Barley, Herb, Grain, or Dog Moon; Raksha Bandhan or Rakhi Purnima; and Tu B'Av.
The full Moon will be Monday afternoon, August 19, 2024, at 2:26 PM EDT.
This will be Tuesday morning from Nepal Standard Time eastward across the rest of Asia and Australia to the International Date Line.
The Moon will appear full for three days, from Sunday morning through early Wednesday morning.
This will be a supermoon. The term "supermoon" was coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979 as either a new or full Moon that occurs when the Moon is within 90% of its closest approach to Earth.
Since we don't really see new Moons, what has caught the public's attention are full supermoons as they are the biggest and brightest full Moons of the year.
This will be the first of four consecutive supermoons this year (with the full Moons in September and October virtually tied for the closest of the year).
Although it will not look blue, as the third full Moon in a season with four full Moons, this will be a Blue Moon.
The first recorded use of "Blue Moon" in English dates from 1528. Speculations on the origin of the term include an old English phrase that means "betrayer Moon" (because it led to mistakes in setting the dates for Lent and Easter).
Or it may be a comparison to rare events such as when dust in the atmosphere makes the Moon actually appear blue. Since the 1940's the term "Blue Moon" has also been used for the second full Moon in a month that has two full Moons.
The Maine Farmer's Almanac began publishing "Indian" names for full Moons in the 1930s and these names have become widely known and used.
According to this almanac, as the full Moon in August the Algonquin tribes in what is now the northeastern USA called this the Sturgeon Moon after the large fish that were more easily caught this time of year in the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water.
Other names reported for this Moon include the Red Moon, the Corn or Green Corn Moon, the Barley Moon, the Herb Moon, the Grain Moon, and the Dog Moon.
A quick note for my Southern Hemisphere readers (as I've heard from some recently).
Many lunar names and traditions are based on the Northern Hemisphere seasons (I'm interested in learning more about southern traditions).
I've noticed some publications shifting names like the Sturgeon Moon by 6 months (e.g., using the northern February names for August).
Also, for the detailed descriptions below, instead of looking south towards the Moon and planets you will be looking north, so what I describe will be upside down.
Finally, the seasons are reversed, so morning and evening twilight times, etc., will be very different.
This full Moon corresponds with the Hindu festival Raksha Bandhan, also called Rakhi Purnima, celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters.
One of the traditions is for sisters of all ages to tie a rakhi (a cotton bracelet) around their brother's wrist, receiving a gift from the brother in return as a sign of the continuing bond between them.
The term "Raksha Bandhan" translates as "the bond of protection, obligation, or care."
In many traditional Moon-based calendars the full Moons fall on or near the middle of each month.
This full Moon is near the middle of the seventh month of the Chinese year of the Dragon, Safar in the Islamic calendar, and Av in the Hebrew calendar.
Av corresponds with Tu B'Av, a holiday in modern Israel similar to Valentine's Day.
For Science Fiction fans, a note on the author Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) in honor of the Sturgeon Moon. Theodore Sturgeon wrote mostly science fiction but some horror and mystery stories.
For Star Trek fans, his scripts introduced important concepts although only "Shore Leave" and "Amok Time" were produced.
He introduced "pon far," the Vulcan hand symbol, "live long and prosper," and the "Prime Directive" (in a script that was not produced but that influenced later scripts).
As usual, the wearing of suitably celebratory celestial attire is encouraged in honor of the full Moon. In addition, enjoy the super blue Moon, keep in touch with your siblings, and consider reading some Theodore Sturgeon.
As for other celestial events between now and the full Moon after next (with specific times and angles based on the location of NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC):
As Northern Hemisphere summer nears its end the daily periods of sunlight continue shortening, changing at their fastest around the equinox on September 22.
cont.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/the-next-full-moon-is-a-supermoon-blue-moon/
I worked at NASA - here's the shocking truth about some of most iconic photos from space (they're NOT real!)
15:25 EDT, 12 August 2024
Search the internet for an image of the Milky Way and you'll find dozens of pictures showcasing our home galaxy in its full spiraling glory.
But a former NASA space analyst has shared the 'truth' about the photographs, revealing they're not real.
Alexandra Doten explained that humans have only seen illustrations of what scientists believe the Milky Way looks like.
That's because snapping a photo of our galaxy in its entirety would mean sending a spacecraft beyond its edge - which might never even be possible, Doten said.
'There isn't a single full photo of the Milky Way, which is the galaxy we live in,' former NASA space analyst and science content creator Alexandra Doten revealed in a recent TikTok.
'Every full image you see of the Milky Way is an illustration. We cannot see the Milky Way like this, and I don't think humans ever will,' Doten said.
Doten is a science content creator and former NASA space analyst, whose job involved providing technical and policy support to the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) branch at NASA Headquarters.
This year, she made Forbes' 30 Under 30 list of social media influencers for her educational astronomy TikToks.
The Milky Way is a disk-shaped spiral galaxy that's a whopping 100,000 light-years wide - the equivalent of 600,000 trillion miles - and 1,000 light years thick.
Our planet sits in a solar system roughly halfway between the galaxy's center and its outer rim.
To photograph our home galaxy in its entirety, 'a spacecraft would have to travel either up or down from the disk of the Milky way - and travel so incredibly far,' Doten said.
That spacecraft would have to make it far beyond our galaxy's edge. That's distance of at least 500 light-years.
'But the farthest a spacecraft has ever traveled isn't even to the next closest star, Doten said.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft currently holds the record for the farthest distance ever traveled by a spacecraft.
But that distance is only 0.002 light-years away from Earth.
So it's highly unlikely that a spacecraft will be able to travel outside of our galaxy within your lifetime.
But astronomers can still create accurate illustrations of what the Milky Way galaxy should look like based on things we can see from Earth, Doten explained.
The first clue that our galaxy was shaped like a spiral disk came from simply looking up.
Astronomers surmised that the Milky Way is shaped like a flat disk from the bright band of stars that stretches across the sky - which is also where our galaxy gets its name.
You've probably seen it if you've ever looked up at the sky on a very dark, clear night.
The fact that we can see this band from inside the Milky Way tells us that our galaxy is basically flat. It's also strong evidence that we live in a spiral galaxy.
If we lived in an elliptical galaxy - which is shaped like an oval - we would see stars spread out all over the sky - not concentrated in a single band.
The shape of the Milky Way has also been confirmed through images taken by powerful telescopes, such as Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer and James Webb.
These telescopes capture images of our galaxy in many different wavelengths of light, and have allowed astronomers to peer into the very center of the Milky Way.
'We even have a photo of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way,' Doten said.
Astronomers can also track the motions of stars as they orbit this center and use our understanding of gravity to model what the core must look like.
This technique also revealed that we live in a 'barred' spiral galaxy, which means that it has a central bar of stars, gas and dust that connects the spiral arms to the nucleus - or centerpoint.
And we've learned a lot from imaging other galaxies too.
Telescope images of spiral galaxies like Andromeda, our nearest spiral neighbor, help illustrators approximate what the Milky Way probably looks like.
For example, these photos tell us that most disk galaxies host spiral arms and a dense central bulge, so it's safe to assume that ours probably does too.
Putting all these observations together is what allows us to create highly accurate depictions of our galaxy - even though humans have never seen it in its entirety.
'It's basically like sitting in a seat of a Ferris wheel and looking in and trying to draw the rest of the Ferris wheel,' Doten said.
'In general, you're gonna get it pretty right.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13736307/I-worked-NASA-heres-shocking-truth-iconic-photos-space-theyre-NOT-real.html
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-webb-telescope-further-deepens-the-biggest-controversy-in-cosmology-20240813/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.06153
The Webb Telescope Further Deepens the Biggest Controversy in Cosmology
August 13, 2024
Nearly a century ago, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is getting larger. Modern measurements of how fast it is expanding disagree, however, suggesting that our understanding of the laws of physics might be off.
Everyone expected the sharp vision of the James Webb Space Telescope to bring the answer into focus.
But a long-awaited analysis of the telescope’s observations released late Monday evening once again gleans conflicting expansion rates from different types of data, while homing in on possible sources of error at the heart of the conflict.
Two rival teams have led the effort to measure the cosmic expansion rate, which is known as the Hubble constant, or H0.
One of these teams, led by Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University, has consistently measured H0 to be about 8% higher than the theoretical prediction for how fast space should be expanding, based on the cosmos’s known ingredients and governing equations.
This discrepancy, known as the Hubble tension, suggests that the theoretical model of the cosmos might be missing something — some extra ingredient or effect that speeds up cosmic expansion.
Such an ingredient could be a clue to a more complete understanding of the universe.
Riess and his team released their latest measurement of H0 based on Webb data this spring, getting a value that agrees with their earlier estimates.
But for years a rival team led by Wendy Freedman of the University of Chicago has urged caution, arguing that cleaner measurements were needed.
Her team’s own measurements of H0 have invariably landed closer than Riess’ to the theoretical prediction, implying that the Hubble tension may not be real.
Since the Webb telescope started taking data in 2022, the astrophysics community has awaited Freedman’s multipronged analysis using the telescope’s observations of three types of stars.
Now, the results are in: Two types of stars yield H0 estimates that align with the theoretical prediction, while the third — the same type of star Riess uses — matches his team’s higher H0 value.
That the three methods disagree “is not telling us about fundamental physics,” Freedman said. “That’s telling us there’s some systematic [error] in one or more of the distance methods.”
Freedman’s results have been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal but have not yet undergone formal peer review, where outside researchers anonymously check the data and analysis.
Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel Prize-winning cosmologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was shown the team’s preprint prior to its release, told Quanta that the results suggest “we may have a Hubble tension just within the [star-based] measurements.
That’s the tension that we really have to be trying to figure out more than trying to invent new [cosmological] models.”
The results come after months of behind-the-scenes drama, as Freedman initially thought her analysis had killed the Hubble tension, only to see it come roaring back to life. “It’s been really … not dull, I’ll put it that way,” she said.
That’s business as usual. According to Perlmutter, “The Hubble constant has such a long and glorious tradition of being an impossible decades-long problem.”
A Clashing Universe
The hard part of gauging cosmic expansion is measuring distances to objects in space. The American astronomer Henrietta Leavitt first uncovered a way to do this in 1912 using pulsating stars called Cepheids.
These stars flicker at a rate that relates to (and can therefore reveal) their intrinsic luminosity. Once you know how luminous a Cepheid is, you can compare that to how bright or dim it appears to estimate how far away its galaxy is.
Edwin Hubble used Leavitt’s method to measure the distances to a handful of galaxies with Cepheids in them, discovering in 1929 that galaxies farther from us are moving away faster.
That means the universe is expanding. Hubble pegged the expansion rate at 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc), meaning that two galaxies separated by 1 Mpc, or about 3.2 million light-years, fly apart at 500 km/s.
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That was wildly off.
Measurements of H0 improved as astronomers got better at calibrating the relationship between Cepheids’ pulsation frequency and their luminosity.
Still, the whole approach was limited because Cepheids are only so bright. To measure the distance to galaxies across the vastness of the universe, scientists would need a new approach.
In the 1970s, researchers started using Cepheids to calibrate the distances to bright supernovas, enabling more accurate measurements of H0.
Then as now, two research teams led the way, using supernovas anchored to Cepheids and arriving at disagreeing values of 50 km/s/Mpc and 100 km/s/Mpc.
“There was no meeting of minds ever; they were just completely polarized,” said George Efstathiou, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge.
The 1990 launch of the Hubble Space Telescope gave astronomers a new, crisp view of the universe.
Freedman led a multiyear observing campaign using Hubble, and in 2001, she and her colleagues announced an expansion rate of 72 km/s/Mpc, estimating that this was at most 10% off.
Riess, who is one of the Nobel Prize-winning discoverers of dark energy, jumped into the cosmic expansion game a few years later. In 2011, his team published an H0 value of 73 with an estimated 3% uncertainty.
Soon after this, cosmologists pioneered another method entirely. In 2013, they used the Planck telescope’s observations of light left over from the early universe to determine the detailed shape and composition of the primordial cosmos.
They then plugged those ingredients into Einstein’s general theory of relativity and evolved the theoretical model forward nearly 14 billion years to predict the current state of the universe.
This extrapolation predicts that the cosmos should currently be expanding at a rate of 67.4 km/s/Mpc, with an uncertainty that’s less than 1%.
Riess’ team’s measurement, even as its precision improved, stayed at 73. This higher value implies that galaxies today are flying apart faster than they should be according to theory.
The Hubble tension was born. “If it’s a real feature of the universe, then it’s telling us that we’re missing something in the cosmological model,” Riess said.
This missing something would be the first new ingredient of the cosmos to be discovered since dark energy.
Theorists have speculated about its identity: Perhaps it is an additional form of repulsive energy that lasted for a brief time in the early universe? Or maybe it’s primordial magnetic fields generated during the Big Bang?
Or maybe the something that’s missing has more to do with us than the universe.
2/2
cont.
First Human Spaceflight to Fly Over Earth’s Polar Regions
August 12, 2024
In the past four years, SpaceX has launched thirteen human spaceflight missions, safely flying 50 crewmembers to and from Earth’s orbit and creating new opportunities for humanity to live, work, and explore what is possible in space.
Dragon’s 46 missions overall to orbit have delivered critical supplies, scientific research, and astronauts to the International Space Station, while also opening the door for commercial astronauts to explore Earth’s orbit.
As early as this year, Falcon 9 will launch Dragon’s sixth commercial astronaut mission, Fram2, which will be the first human spaceflight mission to explore Earth from a polar orbit and fly over the Earth’s polar regions for the first time.
Named in honor of the ship that helped explorers first reach Earth’s Arctic and Antarctic regions, Fram2 will be commanded by Chun Wang, an entrepreneur and adventurer from Malta.
Wang aims to use the mission to highlight the crew’s explorational spirit, bring a sense of wonder and curiosity to the larger public, and highlight how technology can help push the boundaries of exploration of Earth and through the mission’s research.
Joining Wang on the mission is a crew of international adventurers: Norway’s Jannicke Mikkelsen, vehicle commander; Australia’s Eric Philips, vehicle pilot; and Germany’s Rabea Rogge, mission specialist.
This will be the first spaceflight for each of the crewmembers.
Throughout the 3-to-5-day mission, the crew plans to observe Earth’s polar regions through Dragon’s cupola at an altitude of 425 – 450 km, leveraging insight from space physicists and citizen scientists to study unusual light emissions resembling auroras.
The crew will study green fragments and mauve ribbons of continuous emissions comparable to the phenomenon known as STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), which has been measured at an altitude of approximately 400 - 500 km above Earth’s atmosphere.
The crew will also work with SpaceX to conduct a variety of research to better understand the effects of spaceflight on the human body, which includes capturing the first human x-ray images in space, Just-in-Time training tools, and studying the effects of spaceflight on behavioral health, all of which will help in the development of tools needed to prepare humanity for future long-duration spaceflight.
Falcon 9 will launch Fram2 to a polar orbit from Florida no earlier than late 2024.
https://www.spacex.com/updates/
https://www.space.com/rosetta-probe-esa-mission
Scientists hail scientific legacy of comet-chasing Rosetta probe on 10th anniversary
August 12, 2024
A decade ago, scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) had just wrapped up the yearslong process of building a comet-chasing spacecraft named after the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The scientists hoped the Rosetta mission would similarly reveal new clues about how our pocket of the universe assembled itself roughly 4.5 billion years ago.
To do so, the mission's goal was to study an otherwise-unremarkable comet called Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a 2.5-mile-wide (4 kilometers) frozen rock left over from the formation of the solar system.
Following a decade-long journey, Rosetta arrived at its target in August 2014.
Just a few hours after the spacecraft arrived, scientists celebrated the first close-up photos of the comet radioed home by Rosetta and its lander, Philae. Mark McCaughrean, a senior scientific adviser at ESA, called those first snapshots "a scientific Disneyland."
Exploring that cosmic wonder led to so many notable Rosetta discoveries that scientists find it difficult to pick the best one.
From revealing the comet's rubber-ducky shape and unique auroras up close to discovering Earth-like gases streaming from the comet, Rosetta's data contained precious information about how the cosmic fossil — and the solar system — took shape billions of years ago, which thrilled scientists and fueled many careers.
"Rosetta is one of the most ambitious and challenging missions, also from a human perspective," Claire Vallat, who was involved in planning the mission, said in a statement.
"It was a long project involving people spread all over the world, sometimes belonging to different generations, all learning to work together towards a common scientific goal."
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Rosetta's arrival at Comet 67P — the first comet that a spacecraft orbited and landed on — scientists who were involved with the mission recalled what it was like to see those first images arrive, notable scientific findings and other behind-the-scenes looks at the mission.
A "rubber duck" rock
Shortly before Rosetta arrived at Comet 67P, its onboard cameras saw the distant dot it was hurtling toward transform into a 2.5-mile-wide rock, which the mission team quickly parsed into a short video.
"It suddenly became very real," Nick Thomas, who was on the mission's camera team, said in an ESA recent statement.
Those first detailed images showed Comet 67P to be nothing like the potato-shaped rock the scientists had long expected.
Instead, the comet was a two-lobed "rubber ducky" — the result of two full-fledged comets colliding at low speeds in an infant solar system — with "goose bump" rocks that were the comet's building blocks.
"That was staggering," Thomas said. "It told us we were there and we were going to find something special."
The images are special to many scientists involved with the mission, but they are especially memorable for two who were on vacation when the close-ups radioed in.
"I had no internet access," recalled Geraint Jones, who is now a project scientist for the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. "So I actually saw the shape of the comet for the first time on a newspaper stand in Germany!"
"This was a very exciting moment, since the nucleus shape did not look at all like how we envisaged it until then," added Vallat, who also was on vacation and remembers frantically checking her phone for any new images Rosetta might have sent home.
Comet 67P was headed toward the inner solar system during the Rosetta mission. So the probe was tasked with rendezvousing with the comet when it was still in the frigid pockets of our solar system and with watching how the icy rock transformed as regions cast in darkness for years became flooded with sunlight.
"We see comets in the sky and know they're our nearest neighbors," Thomas said.
"We're naturally nosy; we want to meet our neighbors and have a look at what they're doing."
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Over the year, Rosetta recorded up to two bathtubs' worth of water vapor and 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of dust escaping the comet's surface every second, all of which formed its signature, 62-million-mile-long (100 million km) tail. "It's like throwing paint into a stream and the paint mixes with the water," Jones said. "Rosetta sitting in this flow was a very important part of the mission; it informed our understanding of how comet plasma tails form."
In that stream, Rosetta found lots of organic material and other data that revealed that a few noble gases in Earth's atmosphere come from comets, leading to the hypothesis that a flux of comet impacts may have graced Earth with life-boosting ingredients.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the probe found the composition of the water vapor on Comet 67P was significantly different from Earth's, leaving scientists none the wiser about how our planet's oceans flourished.
Scientists have also puzzled over why the comet's interaction with the solar wind, particularly via a powerful outburst, created a larger-than-expected void of the solar magnetic field.
The only other time such a phenomenon was seen was in 1986, around another comet.
"It actually became the focus of my Ph.D. to analyze the Rosetta data and find out why this 'cavity' was so much bigger than expected," said Charlotte Götz, a scientist at Northumbria University in England who was involved with the discovery.
Another unexpected finding was how much the comet's activity dimmed when ejected dust returned to the surface.
"There are places that you would expect to have been affected by the same heat and radiation from the sun, but the surface texture is totally different," Thomas said.
After more than a decade in space and two years of studying Comet 67P, the Rosetta spacecraft smashed into its cosmic companion on Sept. 30, 2016, as intended, in an epic mission finale. Heading in, the probe sent home increasingly close-up images of the comet (and heartbreaking goodbye tweets), offering scientists rare front-row views of the comet's surface and an ancient pit that would become Rosetta's final resting spot.
Rosetta's final image — a blurry snapshot of its impact site, named Sais after an ancient town where the Rosetta Stone was originally located — lives in the digital archives as a testament to the engineers and scientists who successfully built and operated the mission for over 20 years.
"We were part of an intense, exciting adventure which was not only achieving a series of firsts but also realizing the dreams of many people whose entire careers were for the most part dedicated to Rosetta," said Patrick Martin, who was the mission manager and is now part of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission.
In 2021, Comet 67P made its closest approach to Earth in 200 years. The space rock may be speeding away from our planet ferrying two defunct robotic passengers, but its historic cruise alongside the comet provided scientists with enough data to scout for years. In fact, one of the most exciting discoveries from the mission, a unique type of ultraviolet aurora seen for the first time on a comet, came four years after the mission ended.
"This leads to discoveries that are not immediately obvious," Götz said.
"For me the post-mission phase never ends. We're always trying to improve things, and the really exciting science happens in the years after. There's still so much data that we haven't really looked at."
2/2
Newly found star 30 times the size of the sun has an unexpected chemical composition
August 13, 2024
Astronomers have discovered a new star that is 30 times larger than the sun and could force a major rethink of stellar evolution theories.
The star, designated J0524-0336 and located around 30,000 light-years from Earth, has a shockingly high concentration of the element lithium when compared to the sun at its current age or other stars of similarly advanced ages.
This is an issue for our understanding of how stars forge heavier elements via nuclear fusion because lithium is a light element; current models suggest light elements are lost through this process in favor of heavier elements like carbon and oxygen.
Not only is J0524-0336 rich in lithium, but it also has a corresponding lack of heavy elements.
Astronomers discovered J0524-0336 while hunting for older stars in the Milky Way.
The star is in the latter stages of its life, meaning it is classed as an "evolved star," and is swelling up, with the increase in size also making it brighter.
Following the discovery of this star, researchers set about revealing its chemical composition using a method called spectroscopy.
Because different elements emit and absorb light at characteristic wavelengths, looking at a star's light output, or "spectra," can reveal its composition and the ratio of elements it contains.
"We found that J0524-0336 contains 100,000 times more lithium than the sun does at its current age," team leader and University of Florida researcher Rana Ezzeddine said in a statement.
"This amount challenges the prevailing models of how stars evolve and may suggest a previously unknown mechanism for lithium production or retention in stars."
The team isn't completely in the dark about this star's usual chemical composition.
They have a few potential hypotheses to explain why J0524-0336 is so unusual.
One possibility is that the star may be in a stage of stellar evolution that has never been observed before.
Alternatively, when the star swelled up, it may have enveloped an orbiting planet or even a nearby star.
If that celestial body was rich in lithium, it may have infused J0524-0336 with the element. And, if such absorption happened relatively recently, J0524-0336 may not had the time needed to fuse that lithium to heavier elements.
Ezzeddine suggested that the lithium content of J0524-0336 is so great that both mechanisms may have been at play.
The team will need to continue to observe the star to determine which mechanism is behind this unusual result, or whether it is indeed both — or if the culprit is something else entirely.
Ezzeddine and colleagues now intend to continue studying J0524-0336, hoping to conduct a continuous monitoring program to see if and how its composition changes.
"If we find a build-up of dust in the star’s circumstellar disk, or the ring of debris and materials being ejected from the star, this would clearly indicate a mass loss event, such as a stellar interaction," Ezzeddine concluded.
"If we don’t observe such a disk, we could conclude that the lithium enrichment is happening due to a process, still to be discovered, taking place inside the star instead."
The team's research is published on the research repository arXiv and is set to be featured in The Astrophysical Journal.
https://www.space.com/large-star-discovery-stellar-evolution
https://news.clas.ufl.edu/newly-discovered-star-could-provide-new-insights-into-the-evolution-of-stars/
Weapons in space: Study suggests path forward for arms control
Aug 13, 2024
Amid widespread skepticism among policymakers about space arms control treaties, a fresh approach is needed to overcome historical obstacles to such agreements, according to a new study by the Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy.
The report addresses one of the central challenges in space arms control: the difficulty of monitoring compliance with potential agreements.
This issue is compounded by the ambiguity surrounding what constitutes a “space weapon” given the dual-use nature of many space technologies.
“Many U.S. policymakers are deeply skeptical that a space arms control agreement can be effectively verified,” writes Aerospace’s national security policy analyst Michael Gleason.
However, he suggests that verification concerns have often been used as a pretext when other political and strategic factors were the true impediments to progress.
Gleason argues that recent technological advancements have improved the capabilities of the United States and its allies to monitor space activities, potentially making verification more feasible than in the past.
The study proposes leveraging new space situational awareness technologies and data collection methods to enhance verification capabilities.
This approach would involve integrating data from commercial and academic sources with government monitoring systems, potentially building broader trust and redundancy in space verification information.
Gleason also recommends more robust information-sharing on space activities among nations.
“Although there is still room for improvement in potential space arms control verification technologies, in recent years the United States has acquired significant capability improvements that have apparently reduced the problem of distinction and could make verification more feasible,” he notes.
The report comes at a time of increasing concern about the militarization of space and the use of anti-satellite weapons.
While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits placing weapons of mass destruction in orbit, it does not comprehensively ban other types of space-based systems that could be used to disrupt or damage satellites.
Attempts to establish more comprehensive space arms control agreements have so far been unsuccessful, due in part to verification challenges.
https://spacenews.com/weapons-in-space-study-suggests-path-forward-for-arms-control/
FAA postpones hearings on Starship environmental review
August 13, 2024
The Federal Aviation Administration has postponed a set of public hearings on an environmental review linked to SpaceX’s plans to increase the number of Starship launches from its South Texas facility.
The FAA announced Aug. 12 that it has called off a set of public hearings scheduled for two communities near SpaceX’s Starbase facility at Boca Chica, Texas, as well as online.
The public hearings were intended gather input on a draft environmental assessment prepared for the FAA on increasing Starship launches from Starbase.
Two hearings were scheduled for Aug. 13 in South Padre Island, Texas, and two more Aug. 15 in Port Isabel, Texas, the two towns closest to Starbase.
An additional virtual public meeting, scheduled for Aug. 20, has also been called off. The FAA said it will reschedule the meetings but did not offer a timeframe for doing so.
The FAA did not initially explain why it postponed the meetings. “The FAA is seeking additional information from SpaceX before rescheduling the public meetings,” the agency said late Aug. 12 in response to a SpaceNews inquiry.
The FAA published in July a draft of a “tiered” environmental assessment for Starship launches from Boca Chica.
The report is an update of a 2022 assessment, which at the time examined the impacts of five Starship/Super Heavy launches and landings annually.
The revised assessment examined increasing the number of launches and landings to 25 per year, as well as other upgrades to the vehicle like increased thrust.
The report did not make any recommendations on allowing the increase in launches or any environmental mitigations that would be required.
Previous studies had not identified any significant environmental consequences but a 2022 assessment did require SpaceX to perform dozens of relatively minor mitigations to allow launches to take place.
The FAA’s announcement that it was postponing the public hearings coincided with a report by CNBC Aug. 12 that regulators had concluded that SpaceX was discharging industrial wastewater at Starbase without a permit.
Those discharges were linked to the deluge system installed on the Starship launch pad after the vehicle’s first flight in April 2023 caused significant damage to the pad.
According to the report, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) issued a “notice of violation” to SpaceX last week about the wastewater discharges.
That came after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its own notice of violation in March, just before the third Starship/Super Heavy test flight.
“CNBC’s story on Starship’s launch operations in South Texas is factually inaccurate,” SpaceX said in a lengthy post on social media after the article’s publication.
It said that TCEQ personnel had observed tests of the deluge system and that the system is covered by the “Texas Multi-Sector General Permit.”
The company recently applied for an individual permit for the deluge system after consultation with the EPA after its notice of violation.
“Throughout our ongoing coordination with both TCEQ and the EPA, we have explicitly asked if operation of the deluge system needed to stop and we were informed that operations could continue,” the company stated, a sentence published in bold text in its post.
The CNBC article also stated that SpaceX, in its permit application to Texas regulators, said that mercury concentrations in one outfall location were more than 50 times limits set by the state for “acute aquatic toxicity.”
The company, in its post, instead claimed that “all samples to-date have in fact shown either no detectable levels of mercury whatsoever or found in very few cases levels significantly below the limit the EPA maintains for drinking water.”
It is not clear what impact this will have on plans for SpaceX’s next Starship/Super Heavy test flight, the fifth for the vehicle.
The company said Aug. 8 that both the booster and Starship upper stage are “ready to fly, pending regulatory approval.”
SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said in a comment on social media Aug. 10 that the next Starship launch would be in “about 3 weeks.”
However, Musk said in a July 5 post that the launch would take place “in 4 weeks,” or early August.
https://spacenews.com/faa-postpones-hearings-on-starship-environmental-review/
CSO, CMSSF emphasize development and reoptimization during Guardian Conference
Aug. 13, 2024
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman and Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John Bentivegna spoke with Guardians about the critical roles they play in developing the service at the 2024 Space Force Guardian Conference in Houston, Aug. 10-11.
The conference was focused on professional development for enlisted Guardians, updates about reoptimizing for Great Power Competition, as well as senior leader perspectives on the mindset required for future success.
Bentivegna emphasized how the technical expertise and operational mindset of the enlisted corps define the Space Force and how the service must adapt today for tomorrow’s dynamic environment.
"Enlisted Guardians are the primary warfighters within the service, serving as subject matter experts in their respective weapon systems and taking charge of training and readiness," Bentivegna explained.
"Maintaining an operational mindset is crucial every day when you come to work in this role.
The importance of having an operational mindset cannot be overstated, as the service has entrusted us with this significant responsibility.
"We must seize it, take ownership of it, and fully embrace it - that is the essence of having an operational mindset," Bentivegna added.
Saltzman emphasized that the success of the Space Force relies on Guardians continuing to modernize to keep pace in an era of GPC.
Bentivegna underscored the significance of leveraging resources to retain the most qualified Guardians and is proactively seeking strategies to foster their professional growth and development within the organization.
"We are on a journey to recognize and reward the talent and hard work that you exhibit every single day, from training and leadership to meeting challenges and making sacrifices," Bentivegna said.
"This is not about buying numbers to maintain team size; it's about acknowledging the contributions of team members who are committed to the mission and meeting the demands of our nation."
Saltzman pointed out the service needs to “carve the time out to do the training” so Guardians stay prepared for conflict with a near-peer adversary, which is the purpose of the Space Force Generation model.
This model allows the service to balance presenting forces in support of global combatant command mission requirements while maintaining the highest possible level of Guardians’ overall readiness.
As the Space Force evolves to reoptimize for GPC, senior leaders acknowledge the risk of change fatigue and the importance of gaining Guardian buy-in. Guardian Conference attendees were asked to help members in their units understand the “why” behind these critical changes.
Bentivegna also fielded questions ranging from how the Space Force continues to define its culture as joint forces assimilate into the Space Force from other services to what it means to Amplify the Guardian Spirit.
"It's about warfighters at the tactical level being dissatisfied with the status quo and proactively seeking ways to improve," Bentivegna said.
"This mindset of continuous improvement, of never being satisfied with the current state, is what defines Guardians.
We are always striving to do better, to be smarter, faster, and more integrated in our approach to our mission."
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3870641/cso-cmssf-emphasize-development-and-reoptimization-during-guardian-conference/
Airplane pilots record multiple UFOs ‘dancing’ in the sky: ‘It wasn’t on our radar’
Updated Aug. 13, 2024, 10:34 a.m. ET
Pilots witnessed and filmed in detail several UFOs maneuvering across the night sky in ways impossible for a manmade plane.
Captain Ruud Van Pangemanan, who is also a vlogger, was flying a Boeing 747 from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to Abuja, Nigeria at 5 a.m. recently when the stunning act crossed his view and that of his colleagues in the cockpit.
He described the extremely vivid, star-like object — there was also a sudden streak seen across the sky far below it — as “dancing.”
The free-moving unidentified aerial pneumonia plunges quickly before shooting back to around its original altitude.
“Is it falling down?” Van Pangemanan says while witnessing the aerial phenomena in motion on the right wing side of his aircraft.
It also aggressively broke off in other directions at random and with no indication of directional change, eerily similar to a UFO depicted in the hit show “The X Files.”
“The light of the UFO in front of us moves freely. Sometimes forward, sometimes backward, sometimes left, right, or vice versa,” the pilot added.
The object’s bright light was also seen flickering at times and fully disappeared during moments as well. A Reddit user reuploaded the footage with visual enhancements to make the object easier to spot.
Later on in the clip, multiple similar-looking bright objects are observed in the sky as the pilots are overheard describing them as UFOs.
Footage taken by Van Pangemanan shows that at least three of the shining dots — Van Pangemanan said he saw as many as four — aligned in a way similar to the Phoenix Lights, a widely viewed 1997 phenomenon over Arizona that is still without explanation.
The pilot also ruled out any Earthly possibilities.
“We thought the light was a plane but it wasn’t on our radar,” he said. “Then we thought maybe it was a star but the stars twinkled quickly and the stars didn’t move.”
Van Pangemanan dismissed the potential it could be a satellite, especially considering how many of Elon Musk’s Starlink launches are typically mistaken for UFOs.
“It is impossible for a satellite to move like that,” he said.
Adding to the hysteria, several people commented on the pilot’s YouTube vlog and said they had seen similar.
“I am Brazilian. Yesterday 08/10/24 I saw an object EXACTLY like this! It was hovering and came in my home direction,” one person wrote.
“My wife and I sit in our garden here in the UK. Every single night, if we have a clear sky, you will see lights travel across the sky that will suddenly grow bright, exactly what you see in this video,” added another.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/13/lifestyle/boeing-747-pilots-record-multiple-ufos-dancing-in-ways-planes-cant/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86L3UYZAeys