[ThTh1] In the 2000’s, I spent many a night out at McDonald Observatory in West Texas. Here you can click through some photos of the 2.7 meter telescope, which has the distinction of being the only telescope in the world to survive an assassination attempt.
[ThTh2] I’ve mentioned the black hole at the center of our Galaxy a few times. It burped again this month, becoming the brightest we’ve ever seen in the infrared and then dropping abruptly over the course of minutes. What happened? Most likely, some disturbance in the disk of hot material swirling into the black hole caused a surge of material toward the center, which temporarily made it brighter.
Here's a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we've seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night! pic.twitter.com/MwXioZ7twV
— Tuan Do (@quantumpenguin) August 11, 2019
[ThTh3] This may turn out to be the science story of the year. A new treatment for Ebola, if administered early, can cut the fatality rate to 6%, a stunning reduction from the normal rate of 75%. The effect was so dramatic, they stopped giving patients the placebo and just treated everyone with the drug, a rare change in protocol. We now have this and a working vaccine. The main thing keeping the current outbreak going is war, social unrest and a distrust of outsiders.
[ThTh4] Life is everywhere. Microbes are thriving in dark caves by finding way to use very low wavelength light for photosynthesis.
[ThTh5] Exoplanet science is advancing faster than I could have imagined. We’re now able to detect clouds on Jupiter-like planets near their star. And here is a simulation of how Earth might look like to aliens using nothing but light curve data.
This is fantastic. If the only info you had on Earth was its brightness at different times and in different colours, you’d still be able to make a crude map of the continents and oceans. https://t.co/rm4wgdqYPv pic.twitter.com/KnKyvaY4x0
— Bryan Gaensler 📡🧲 (@SciBry) August 14, 2019
Within our lifetimes, it’s quite possible we will detect another planet with abundant life on it. In fact, with every day it becomes less possible and more inevitable.
[ThTh6] As the Jupiter Turns:
Hubble released a new portrait of Jupiter and I made it move! Look at Jupiter swirl! #Hubble #Jupiter #Pixaloop pic.twitter.com/i59qkbBvxl
— Kirsten Banks (@AstroKirsten) August 9, 2019
[ThTh7] Last week, Elon Musk suggested that we “nuke Mars” to try to terraform it. He later clarified that the idea was to use solar satellites to warm the ice at the poles and give Mars a thicker atmosphere. But, like a lot of things Musk suggests, it turns out that it wouldn’t work. All you’d do is eventually freeze the ice or it boil off into space.
Congratulations and immense thanks to the doctors, scientists, and technicians who made the Ebola treatment possible. Our thoughts and admiration go out, of course, to the patients who participated in the clinical trials; you are real heroes of humanity.
Interesting development history.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214273/?report=readerReport
During the previous outbreak, I seriously considered become a test subject for an Ebola vaccine, but I didn’t feel like driving all the way across town many times to be monitored.Report
Clearly all we need to do is ship all our excess CO2 to Mars!
Two birds, one big ass flotilla of tanker space ships.Report
I had the same thought!Report
Venus has about 4 Earth’s worth of atmospheric nitrogen. Our whole food chain depends on available nitrogen and that may be something generally lacking on planets that lost their atmosphere.
Another obvious source for nitrogen is ammonia clouds or ammonia ice on the outer planets.Report
ThTh3: I love when they find treatments that are so effective it’s unethical to keep on with the placebos. Renews my faith that things can work out.
ThTh5: What should we think if a hundred years from now we still haven’t found such a planet? Idle curiosity, it’s another of those things where I’m almost certainly not going to live long enough to find out if the negative answer is correct. I spent a chunk of my technical career doing predictions, but seldom more than ten years out. I seem to be making longer-term predictions these days, and it’s frustrating as hell that I won’t get to find out if I’m right.Report
Texas firm has holy grail of electric motors.
That’s so different that I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet, but it apparently blows all other electric motors out of the water, even without using any rare earth magnets. It provides double the torque density, three times the power density, and twice the power in a given size, and won’t need a gearbox to directly drive a car.Report