Thursday Throughput: Dark Matter Edition
Dark energy, which comprises a whopping 70% of the universe, is something we are only beginning to formulate questions about, let alone understand.
Dark energy, which comprises a whopping 70% of the universe, is something we are only beginning to formulate questions about, let alone understand.
What happened here was that the team got a signal that can’t be easily ruled out as interference. That doesn’t mean it’s aliens.
Enjoy the “Christmas Star”. The ancients thought such conjunctions were portent. Let’s hope this one portends a better 2021.
If everything pans out-and I caution the ice still a bit precarious-Dec 8, 2020 will go down as one of the great dates in human history.
“Sitting at control in Arecibo, watching that behemoth move around and thinking, “You know…this wouldn’t be a bad way to make a living.”
They have been doing this garbage for almost a year now: cherry-picking single weak studies that support their point and ignoring the massive swaths of studies that dispute them.
An interesting revelation and a reminder that our understanding of even our nearest neighbor is incomplete.
The Barrington approach won’t bring back lost jobs. It won’t restore failed businesses. It probably won’t even achieve herd immunity.
The Space Age has brought us miracles. Losing those abilities would be devastating. And losing a future of lunar bases, asteroid exploration and deep space missions would be a tragic cap on human ambition.
We are in the early days of an exciting phase of astrophysics: an age of exploration of planets outside our solar system. The science has been moving fast. It’s going to start moving even faster.
The Sun has just entered a new solar cycle…In other words, the clock continues to tick. And it’s about time we did something about it.
This week the internets exploded with reports of a possible detection of life on Venus. Well … kinda.
This isn’t just a matter of a winnah and new champeen though. We’re learning how massive black holes are built.
Remember, a vaccine doesn’t have to give “sterilizing immunity”, in which you can’t catch the virus ever again. If it simply builds our resistance to the virus so that COVID-19 infections are mild, that will be enough.
Sagittarius is not being “obliterated”. It’s finishing the process of joining our big happy Galaxy a little faster than we thought.
There are 200 teams around the world contributing to the one of the biggest and most dramatic scientific efforts in human history: a COVID-19 vaccine
It may be decades before we see another one like NEOWISE. Or it may be next year. Who will I be when the next one comes? Or where?
I can see why it is being made. Both climate change and COVID-19 are science-heavy global problems. But the comparison doesn’t work…
That’s why studying the Sun matters. That’s why SDO matters. The more we know about the Sun, the better our chances of avoiding a disaster.
So have we finally detected dark matter? It’s not clear. As the group themselves note, even a tiny amount of contamination could produce the signal they are seeing.