TYB
Morning Anons
grilled cheese on head is tastier than shoe on head
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
January 6, 2026
Jupiter's Clouds in High Definition from Juno
How complex is Jupiter? NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter's magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth's simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated network more convoluted in the north than the south. Further, Juno's radio measurements show that Jupiter's atmosphere shows structure well below the upper cloud deck – even hundreds of kilometers deep. Jupiter's newfound complexity is evident also in southern clouds, as shown in the texture and color enhanced featured image taken last month. There, planet-circling zones and belts that dominate near the equator decay into a complex miasma of continent-sized storm swirls. Juno continues in its looping elliptical orbit, swooping near the huge planet every month and exploring a slightly different sector each time around.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Solar Watch, Ancient Pole Shifts, Nova Atoms | S0 News and frens
Jan.6.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJjHtV8W7A
https://colombiaone.com/2026/01/06/solar-maximum-2025-space-weather-auroras/
https://interestingengineering.com/space/solar-orbiter-performs-longest-ever-observation
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sun-outer-boundary-map-nasa-solar-probe
https://www.space.com/live/aurora-forecast-northern-lights-possible-tonight-jan-6
https://x.com/SunWeatherMan/status/2008174875907690736
https://x.com/MrMBB333/status/2008514588967309501
https://x.com/MrMBB333/status/2008276810081960435
https://x.com/SchumannBotDE/status/2008539334023004227/photo/1
https://x.com/SolarObserverX/status/2008530263253700948
https://x.com/SolarObserverX/status/2008469061265490010
https://x.com/SolarObserverX/status/2008325001317925107
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhbN1aFuWoQ (Stefan Burns: DOOMSDAY FISH Washes Ashore in California ⚠️ All Signs Point to a BIG EARTHQUAKE Striking Soon) (BTW WTH is Dutchsinse?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sd3ZOFcwog (Massive Structures Discovered in Earth's DEEP ABYSS that Science Can't Explain 🛸)
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/if-3i-atlas-is-a-comet-why-would-the-cia-neither-deny-nor-confirm-the-existence-of-records-on-897a8cb5f6bd
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/breakthrough-listen-3i-atlas-observations
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/is-interstellar-object-3i/atlas-older-than-our-sun-heres-what-it-might-reveal-about-the-origins-and-observations/articleshow/126349189.cms
https://x.com/theblackvault/status/2008267999535571027
https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/
https://x.com/drew4worldruler/status/2008384826940792976
https://x.com/PhdBrandenburg/status/2008268535672586636
https://x.com/Mavmetax/status/2008378603470250105
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79WfqtMI954
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2M2XGv5sBA (Dobsonian Power: LIVE 3I/ATLAS WITH A BIG TELESCOPE!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rLmt2uUiQc (L.A. Marzulli Interviews Avi Loeb!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPEGCnb2qpY (John Lenard Walson: Interstellar ready)
If 3I/ATLAS is a Comet, Why Would the CIA “Neither Deny, Nor Confirm” the Existence of Records on It?
January 5, 2026
So far, 3I/ATLAS displayed a number of unexplained features relative to familiar comets — as I listed here.
One could have hoped that these puzzles would trigger a healthy scientific debate about the nature of 3I/ATLAS. Instead, the case was officially closed by NASA officials without any discussion on the puzzling nature of these anomalies.
The anomalous features include the existence of a prominent anti-tail jet directed at the Sun both before and after perihelion, the geometric alignment to within 8 degrees between the rotation axis of 3I/ATLAS at large distances and the sunward direction, the alignment to within 5 degrees of the orbital plane of 3I/ATLAS with the ecliptic plane, as well as the prominence of nickel relative to iron in the gas that 3I/ATLAS sheds — reminiscent of industrially-produced nickel alloys.
On December 31, 2025, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) replied to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry by John Greenewald Jr., that it can “neither deny nor confirm the existence or nonexistence of records” related to 3I/ATLAS. The response was tweeted here.
That this information is treated as sensitive enough to be classified by the CIA is surprising, given that NASA officials stated decisively at a press conference on November 19, 2025 (posted here), that 3I/ATLAS is definitely a comet of natural origin.
If this conclusion was clear all along to everyone within government and academia — as NASA officials presented the case, then why would the CIA treat the possible existence of records dealing with a natural comet as sensitive enough to be classified?
The simplest interpretation of the CIA response to the FOIA request is that some government officials wished to verify that 3I/ATLAS is not a black swan event, posing a potential threat to society even as comet experts regard such a possibility as highly unlikely.
By multiplying a small probability for the existence of a threat with its high impact factor on society, the sober conclusion is that such events must be taken seriously and monitored.
This lesson, akin to Pascal’s Wager, was learned the hard way by the residents of the City of Troy after they welcomed the Trojan Horse, as well as by intelligence agencies like the CIA after their miscalculations in gauging the risk from the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001 and October 7, 2023.
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Under such circumstances, NASA officials were encouraged to deliver the likely scientific interpretation, while at the same time — the serious consideration of a black swan event by the CIA was hidden from public view in order to prevent panic from taking hold for no good reason.
This is a wise policy for mitigating societal unrest or instability of financial markets at a time when the reality of a black swan event is still regarded as highly unlikely.
In order to maintain the public’s trust, the CIA would prefer not to raise a false alarm — like the shepherd who repeatedly shouted “Wolf!” — so when a real wolf came, no one believed him.
The “neither deny nor confirm” response is the best way to keep the investigation of black swan events hidden from view.
If the above interpretation is correct, 3I/ATLAS represents the first case of an astronomical object for which the “neither deny nor confirm” response was adopted purposely by the intelligence agencies.
During the summer months of 2025, I proposed the “Loeb Classification Scale” for the threat level of interstellar objects as alien tech. The scale was quantified in three peer-reviewed papers that I co-authored with Omer Eldadi, Gershon Tennenbaum and Oem Trivedi, which were first posted here, here and here. During the same time, I alerted policy makers to the possibility that 3I/ATLAS might be a black swan event, as mentioned here. Perhaps someone was listening to my request.
Today, several reporters asked me for comments on the latest report (accessible here) on limits of technological radio transmission by 3I/ATLAS, based on data from the Green Bank Telescope.
I clarified to the reporters that I encouraged the research team of the Breakthrough Listen Initiative to check for radio signals from 3I/ATLAS, because the arrival direction of 3I/ATLAS into the solar system aligned with the direction of the “Wow! Signal” from 1977 to within 9 degrees — with a chance probability of 0.6% as discussed here.
The new data rules out a technological signal in the radio frequency band of 1–12 GHz towards Earth over a period of 5 hours between 04:15–09:15 UTC on December 18, 2025.
It is unclear whether one should expect a technological object to transmit radio signals to its senders.
Such signals would take several tens of thousands of years to cross the Milky-Way galaxy, whereas the time that 3I/ATLAS spends inside the solar system — all the way from and to the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, is only 16,000 years.
Interstellar objects are unlikely to continuously transmit to their senders, because they do not have enough time to benefit from a two-way dialog. Given that their journey takes billions of years, the chance of a transmission on any particular 5-hour interval is minuscule.
Moreover, such a signal may not be transmitted in the direction of Earth or at the frequency band that was monitored. To save energy, an efficient signaling would be beamed and compressed into a short burst with a small duty cycle.
A proper observing program would have monitored 3I/ATLAS from many directions for a long period of time and not just over a 5-hour window.
The data collection on 3I/ATLAS will not be over until it passes near the Hill radius of Jupiter.
Hopefully, the curious community of government officials will be swayed by the dogmatic community of comet experts so as to check whether 3I/ATLAS deploys any small probes as new satellites of Jupiter.
Unless we check, we might never know if this swan is white or black.
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NASA’s IXPE Measures White Dwarf Star for First Time
Jan 05, 2026
For the first time, scientists have used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer) to study a white dwarf star.
Using IXPE’s unique X-ray polarization capability, astronomers examined a star called the intermediate polar EX Hydrae, unlocking the geometry of energetic binary systems.
In 2024, IXPE spent nearly one week focused on EX Hydrae, a white dwarf star system located in the constellation Hydra, approximately 200 light-years from Earth.
A paper about the results published in the Astrophysical Journal. Astrophysics research scientists based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge led the study, along with co-authors at the University of Iowa, East Tennessee State University, University of Liége, and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
A white dwarf star occurs after a star runs out of hydrogen fuel to fuse in its core but is not massive enough to explode as core-collapse supernovae. What remains is very dense, roughly the same diameter as Earth with as much mass as our Sun.
EX Hydrae is in a binary system with a main sequence companion star, from which gas is continuously falling onto the white dwarf.
How exactly the white dwarf is accumulating, or accreting, this matter and where it arrives on the white dwarf depends on the strength of the white dwarf star’s magnetic field.
In the case of EX Hydrae, its magnetic field is not strong enough to focus matter completely at the star’s poles. But, it is still rapidly adding mass to the accretion disk, earning the classification “intermediate polars.
In an intermediate polar system, material forms an accretion disk while also being pulled towards its magnetic poles.
During this phenomenon, matter reaches tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit, bouncing off other material bound to the white dwarf star, creating large columns of gas that emit high-energy X-rays – a cosmic situation perfect for IXPE to study.
“NASA IXPE’s one-of-a-kind polarimetry capability allowed us to measure the height of the accreting column from the white dwarf star to be almost 2,000 miles high – without as many assumptions required as past calculations,” said Sean Gunderson, MIT scientist and lead author on the paper.
“The X-rays we observed likely scattered off the white dwarf’s surface itself. These features are far smaller than we could hope to image directly and clearly show the power of polarimetry to ‘see’ these sources in detail never before possible.”
Information from IXPE’s polarization data of EX Hydrae will help scientists understand other highly energetic binary systems.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/ixpe/nasas-ixpe-measures-white-dwarf-star-for-first-time/
Expedition 74 Gears Up for First Spacewalk of 2026
January 5, 2026
The Expedition 74 crew is gearing up for the first spacewalk of 2026 this week that will see two astronauts prepare the International Space Station for a new set of roll-out solar arrays.
The orbital residents also had time on Monday to conduct microgravity research, pack a U.S. cargo craft, and maintain communications and life support systems.
NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman are scheduled to exit the orbital outpost’s Quest airlock at 8 a.m. EST on Thursday for a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk.
The duo will install a modification kit and route cables setting up the station’s port side truss structure for a new roll-out solar array that will be delivered on an upcoming cargo mission.
Other tasks include installing jumper cables, photographing station hardware, and swabbing external station surfaces to collect potential microorganism samples.
Managers will preview Thursday’s spacewalk and a second spacewalk scheduled for Jan. 15 on NASA’s YouTube channel beginning at 2 p.m. on Tuesday.
Fincke and Cardman were joined by Chris Williams of NASA and Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) on Monday reviewing Thursday’s spacewalk procedures and confirming their readiness with mission controllers on the ground.
Williams and Yui will assist the duo in and out of their spacesuits, pressurize and depressurize the Quest airlock, and monitor the spacewalkers as they work on their tasks in the external environment of space.
Fincke and Cardman also checked out their spacesuit emergency jetpacks that enable a spacewalker to safely maneuver back to the orbital outpost in the unlikely event they become untethered.
Yui and Williams also partnered together at the end of the day on Monday installing cassettes containing protein crystal samples inside the Advanced Sample Experiment Processor-4 and photographing the research activities.
The science work took place in the Destiny laboratory module and was done in support of the Pharmaceutical In-Space Laboratory set of experiments that is exploring developing and manufacturing medicines in space.
Earlier, Yui worked inside SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft transferring items as it nears its departure planned for later this month.
Williams had begun his day with Cardman inside the Tranquility module packing hardware for stowage inside the NanoRacks Bishop airlock.
Roscosmos Flight Engineer Oleg Platonov started his day wearing an acoustic monitor around his neck that recorded him as he exhaled forcefully for a study researching lung function in weightlessness. Afterward, he inventoried medical kits ensuring pharmaceuticals and hardware were up to date.
Cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev familiarized themselves with the same lung function study Platonov participated in and learned about the acoustic characteristics of the trachea, monitoring the respiratory system, and early diagnosis of potential space-caused breathing disorders.
Earlier, Mikaev worked inside the Zarya module searching for and documenting the location of a variety of hardware.
Kud-Sverchkov also worked inside Zarya inventorying video hardware before replacing filters and cleaning life support gear in the Rassvet module.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/01/05/expedition-74-gears-up-for-first-spacewalk-of-2026/
Happy Birthday to you
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-examines-cloud-9-first-of-new-type-of-object/
https://science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/cloud-9-starless-gas-cloud-video/
NASA’s Hubble Examines Cloud-9, First of New Type of Object
Jan 05, 2026
A team using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a new type of astronomical object — a starless, gas-rich, dark-matter cloud considered a “relic” or remnant of early galaxy formation.
Nicknamed “Cloud-9,” this is the first confirmed detection of such an object in the universe — a finding that furthers the understanding of galaxy formation, the early universe, and the nature of dark matter itself.
“This is a tale of a failed galaxy,” said the program’s principal investigator, Alejandro Benitez-Llambay of the Milano-Bicocca University in Milan, Italy. “In science, we usually learn more from the failures than from the successes.
In this case, seeing no stars is what proves the theory right. It tells us that we have found in the local universe a primordial building block of a galaxy that hasn't formed.”
The results, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, were presented at a press conference Monday at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix.
“This cloud is a window into the dark universe,” said team member Andrew Fox of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy/Space Telescope Science Institute (AURA/STScI) for the European Space Agency.
“We know from theory that most of the mass in the universe is expected to be dark matter, but it’s difficult to detect this dark material because it doesn’t emit light. Cloud-9 gives us a rare look at a dark-matter-dominated cloud.”
The object is called a Reionization-Limited H I Cloud, or "RELHIC.” The term “H I” refers to neutral hydrogen, and “RELHIC” describes a natal hydrogen cloud from the universe’s early days, a fossil leftover that has not formed stars.
For years, scientists have looked for evidence of such a theoretical phantom object. It wasn’t until they turned Hubble toward the cloud, confirming that it is indeed starless, that they found support for the theory.
“Before we used Hubble, you could argue that this is a faint dwarf galaxy that we could not see with ground-based telescopes.
They just didn't go deep enough in sensitivity to uncover stars,” said lead author Gagandeep Anand of STScI. “But with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, we're able to nail down that there's nothing there.”
The discovery of this relic cloud was a surprise. “Among our galactic neighbors, there might be a few abandoned houses out there,” said STScI’s Rachael Beaton, who is also on the research team.
Astronomers think RELHICs are dark matter clouds that couldn’t accumulate enough gas to form stars. They represent a window into the early stages of galaxy formation.
Cloud-9 suggests the existence of many other small, dark matter-dominated structures in the universe — other failed galaxies.
This discovery provides new insights into the dark components of the universe that are difficult to study through traditional observations, which focus on bright objects like stars and galaxies.
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Scientists have studied hydrogen clouds near the Milky Way for many years, but these clouds tend to be much bigger and more irregular than Cloud-9.
Compared with other observed hydrogen clouds, Cloud-9 is smaller, more compact, and highly spherical, making it look very different from the others.
The core of this object is composed of neutral hydrogen and is about 4,900 light-years in diameter. Researchers measured the hydrogen gas in Cloud-9 by the radio waves it emits, measuring it to be approximately one million times the mass of the Sun.
Assuming that the gas pressure is balancing the dark matter cloud’s gravity, which appears to be the case, researchers calculated Cloud-9’s dark matter must be about five billion solar masses.
Cloud-9 is an example of structures and mysteries that don't involve stars. Just looking at stars doesn’t give the full picture.
Studying the gas and dark matter helps provide a more complete understanding of what's going on in these systems that would otherwise be unknown.
Observationally, identifying these failed galaxies is challenging because nearby objects outshine them.
Such systems are also vulnerable to environmental effects like ram-pressure stripping, which can remove gas as the cloud moves through intergalactic space. These factors further reduce their expected numbers.
The starless relic was discovered three years ago as part of a radio survey by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Guizhou, China, a finding later confirmed by the Green Bank Telescope and the Very Large Array facilities in the United States.
But only with Hubble could researchers definitively determine that the failed galaxy contains no stars.
Cloud-9 was simply named sequentially, having been the ninth gas cloud identified on the outskirts of a nearby spiral galaxy, Messier 94 (M94).
The cloud is close to M94 and appears to have a physical association with the galaxy. High-resolution radio data shows slight gas distortions, possibly indicating interaction between the cloud and galaxy.
The cloud may eventually form a galaxy in the future, provided it grows more massive — although how that would occur is under speculation.
If it were much bigger, say, more than 5 billion times the mass of our Sun, it would have collapsed, formed stars, and become a galaxy that would be no different than any other galaxy we see.
If it were much smaller than that, the gas could have been dispersed and ionized and there wouldn't be much left. But it’s in a sweet spot where it could remain as a RELHIC.
The lack of stars in this object provides a unique window into the intrinsic properties of dark matter clouds.
The rarity of such objects and the potential for future surveys is expected to enhance the discovery of more of these “failed galaxies” or “relics,” resulting in insights into the early universe and the physics of dark matter.
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>POTUS - We have a fake press
Would explain why nobody knows what is going on for the last 100 years or so.