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late February 2017 |
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Watch the 2/26/17 annular solar eclipse (SLOOH) live-streamed here (from 7 am EST to about 4 pm EST) The color of the sun: Revelation (Science 2.0) it's not yellow part II Mission to alpha Centauri (Scientific American, March 2017 issue) Pluto: staging a comeback? (Nature) and it's not alone... 100 others want to be a planet too free Pluto e-book (Astronomy) for download Hypothetical Europa lander report intended to persuade NASA (JPL) to land, that is Organics found on Ceres (Sky and Telescope) non-aromatics, and they don't appear to have been delivered, e.g., by comets Greenland: Meltdown (Science) faster than ever A huge Antarctic glacier loses another chunk (Washington Post) Pine Island glacier The warmest February day in 100 years? (New York) is it wrong for those concerned about global warming to feel good about a nice day? |
A supernova for the ages (Physics Today) SN 1987A, 30 years later A celebration of Supernova 1987A (Harvard Smithsonian) with an image set, including 3-D |
7-Earthlike-exoplanet system found nearby (NY Times) with at least 1 in the habitable zone 7 alien worlds may help explain how planets form (Nature) Nature research article All 7 are potentially habitable (Science) An ultracool star and its 7 planets (ESO) with transit curves, size and orbit diagrams to scale |
Einstein's ' greatest blunder' (Physics Today) the 100th anniversary..... and perhaps the wrong blunder has been assumed? and the longer adult version (arXiv) What's lighting up the Mammoth nebula at the center of a galaxy protocluster? (UC-Santa Cruz) Cosmic Controversy (NY Times) Planck disagrees with GAIA/H0LiCOW: new physics or ? |
How to avoid quantum weirdness (Quanta) using balloon animals.... includes a contest... and a prize Old 'bootstrap theory' enables discoveries about geometry (Quanta) underlying quantum mechanics |
Deporting Melania Trump (Salon) would have been a priority 20 years ago if Trump's new order were in effect then March for Science (on 4/22/17) getting major support from science organizations (Science) Bee brains -- surprisingly innovative (Science) they'll push a ball for a treat -- and they learned it by watching others do it The image of scientists in the 'Big Bang Theory' (Physics Today) diverse cast, yes, but an 'affectionate' portrait? hmm On free speech (Washington Post) it's not free from dissent A history of race and racism in America (NY Times) 2 readings from every decade of US history economics in the 21st century This century is broken (NY Times) declining economic growth to cause nastier and bumpier future Our miserable 21st century (Commentary) the year 2000 marked the start of a distressing era for the US ------------------- the media Donald Trump and the enemies of the American people (New Yorker) they are not the media Building global community (Facebook) by MZ himself What Zuckerberg's manifesto didn't say (Guardian) the meaning behind the words The Zuckerberg manifesto (Atlantic) aka, the plot to destroy journalism What Facebook owes journalism (NY Times) with a cavalier attitude toward real news, yet Facebook has contributed NOTHING to real journalism Facebook: with great power comes apparently no responsibility? (NPR) ------------------- Aztecs killed off by salmonella? (Nature) How to navigate the Trump era (Vox) Obama's science advisor speaks at the AAAS in Boston The 5 Trump administrations (NY Times) Trump Entertainment, Trump Clean-up, Trump Crazy..... Trump is most dangerous when he's losing (Vox) |
School vouchers receive a dismal report (NY Times) students do worse in math and reading An elegy for the library (NY Times) Google brings you 100,000 answers... a library brings you the right one Stop humiliating teachers (New Yorker) raise professionalism; get rid of: high-stakes testing, charters, & vouchers; leave teacher tenure, incentives for extra education, & collective bargaining in place... recognize that poverty, hunger, & lack of a positive home environment may not be overcome-able by the greatest teachers in the world What America ignores about Finland's school success (Atlantic) |
early February 2017 |
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A view of Jupiter no seen in textbooks (Atlantic) from Juno Lifetime of the solar nebula constrained by meteorites (Sky and Telescope) it lasted 3 - 4 MY The darkest sky in America (538) Gerlach, NV Keeping Mt. Wilson alive (LA Times) 100 years ago, the top telescope in the world No, you will not notice the penumbral eclipse on Friday, 2/10/17 (Sky and Telescope) despite what this article say and it will NOT look like this New Juno pictures (Sky and Telescope) at Jupiter Mars paradox (Astrobiology) no carbonates, so no CO2 (in early Mars), so no greenhouse heating, so no liquid water... but there is evidence of early liquid H2O Earth's water: made from 'scratch' in the mantle? (Phys.org) by compression of fluid hydrogen within silica Mars rover steps up hunt for signs of molecular life (Science) 10+ years after landing, the clock is ticking Every Earth-orbiting satellite (Quartz) displayed in one interactive graphic An annular solar eclipse on 2/26/17 (NASA) mostly over Africa and southern Chile and Argentina climate Arctic ice at lowest level ever (NSIDC) a steady continual decline since 1980 ditto for Antarctic ice, despite a maximum in 2015 (but Antarctic ice miniscule compared to Antarctic land ice) Arctic temperatures climb.......again (Washington Post) 20F warmer than usual What happens after all the ice goes? (Nature) in the Arctic Data flowing in from NASA's OMG: Oceans Melting Greenland (Washington Post) its glaciers appear to be more vulnerable than thought Finally, conservatives propose a solution to mitigate global warming (NY Times) a carbon tax, which their legislators opposed during the Obama administration Crack in Antarctic ice sheet grows more quickly (NY Times) Beyond extreme (Washington Post) non-natural warmth in the Arctic |
Red giant in process of ejecting a planetary nebula (ESA) a stunning image of the Calabash Nebula A white-dwarf pulsar! (Warwick) first ever published Nature article Pulsars: blowing (in the) wind (Sky and Telescope) neutron-star ones, this time |
Discover your own exoplanet (Carnegie) Carnegie-Lick catalog has too much data for its scientists to analyze.... help them out.... tutorial and software included The wild plan to visit the nearest exoplanet (Nature) getting to Proxima Centauri in 20 years |
Best evidence for intermediate- mass black hole (Sky and Telescope) 2200 solar masses, in the globular cluster 47 Tuc Pop goes the universe (Scientific American February 2017 issue) big-name authors claim inflationary early universe idea is dead & that we need ideas/physics A Dipole Repeller? (Sky and Telescope) is a cosmic void pushing the Local Group toward the Shapley Attractor? and the Nature published article both include a helpful video More on the H0 discrepancy (Sky and Telescope) see last month for Astronomy Magazine's take Why are Vera Rubin obits only appearing now? (5 weeks late) in Nature in Science (and why do both have the exact same photo?) |
The universe is spookier than thought (Quanta) is the entire universe predetermined? A cosmic test of quantum non-locality (Phys Rev Lett) non-locality wins again Phys Rev Lett paper Black holes as dark matter? (Science) debate heats up Dark matter remains elusive (Nature) still no evidence for WIMPS, despite impressive sensitivity LIGO releases gravitational-wave discovery movie (New Scientist) more music than science? IceCube: closing in on a neutrino mystery? (Scientific American) is the 3rd neutrino species half muon and half tauon? and why should it be half and half? |
How America began its empire (NY Books) Teddy R, Cuba, Manila, and more technology The AI threat isn't Skynet.... it's the end of the middle class (Wired) Coming technology will likely destroy millions of jobs (Washington Post) is Trump (or Congress) ready? Why doesn't Trump tweet about automation? (Harvard Business Review) he knows nothing about technology, for a start Rise of the machines (CNN) fear robots... not China, not Mexico Erasing yourself from the Internet? (Washington Post) not quite impossible.... here's how to try ---------------------------- how to protest A low-tech guide to becoming more politically active (NY Times) Indivisible (Indivisible) A practical guide to resisting the Trump agenda Tracking Congress in the age of Trump (538) -------------------------- Mother Jones: 2017 magazine of the year (Mother Jones) other winners here Using Big Tobacco's anti-science playbook to gut pollution rules (Intercept) Grading Obamacare (NY Times) successes, failures, and incompletes The speed of evolution (NY Times) as informed by bird beaks Why 'fake news' succeeds with conservatives far more than with liberals (Atlantic) they're hyper-attuned to danger according to a paper submitted to Psychological Science (isn't that a tautology?) Immigrant dreams vs. nativist nightmares (Financial Times) Trumpian pronouncements Why no one cares if Trump is lying (NY Times) 'no one' = conservatives? A boy in man clothes (Washington Post) A running total of Trump's lies as president (Toronto Star) updated (and increasing) daily but not every Trump action is an outrage (Washington Post) chill America --------------------------------- things that the non-voting post-millenial generation apparently won't miss when their children come of age A safe America (Atlantic) An end to torture (New Yorker) and black-prison renditions by our government Refugees and immigrants (Washington Post) keep your tired, your poor, your huddled masses Clear streams and rivers (Alternet) Trump revokes Obama's Stream Protection Rule An atmosphere mostly free of methane (Time) a Valentine's-day gift for gas/oil companies? Ice in the Arctic and polar bears Uncensored expression of EPA and FDA scientific information (AAAS) Cheap broadband service (NYMag) (actually, let's hope that they're just too busy with Facebook to reproduce) |
Master's degree valuable for teachers in NC? (Raleigh N&O) once upon a time, but not now Are you college ready? (NY Times) 9 questions from Accuplacer 60% of community- college students need remedial math (NY Times) and 40% of public- college students |
late January 2017 |
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Trump administration backtracks on removing EPA's climate-change pages (Scientific American) temporarily? The dark fallback of Enceladus's geysers (Astronomy) and what it tells us about the ocean below Meteorites: the result of 'recent' asteroid collisions (Nature) and not those of long ago and a summary by Discover Mudcracks on Mars? (Earth & Sky) hints of a past warmer, wetter Mars How/when the Moon formed (Sky and Telescope) with links to 4 new articles Moon older than previously thought (Astronomy) by 40 - 140 MY Find the asteroid Vesta in evening sky (Sky and Telescope) it's at its brightest, but you'll still need binocs A gravity wave in Venus's atmosphere (Discover) NOT a gravitational wave... caused by wind interaction with surface features NASA's $2.4-billion plan to steal a rock from Mars (Nature) Earth has hottest year, 3rd in a row (NY Times) for the first time ever How it happened (NY Times) and where temps rose the most Global warming reduces number of mild-temp days (NOAA) Consequences of 1.5 - 2°C global warming for the US (PLOS) |
The three eras of planetary exploration (Nature Astronomy) our solar-system experience is proving inadequate to understanding exoplanets An Earth-like atmosphere on GJ1132b? (Scientific American) containing methane and water Proxima Centauri b likely a desert world (Sky and Telescope) |
H0 value from gravitational lensing agrees with HST value (Astronomy) but disagrees with Planck value New estimate for Milky Way's mass (Sky and Telescope) based on globular cluster motions, lower (by 30%) than previously thought |
Has dark matter's new predictions vanquished MOND? (Science) The Multiverse: physics, philosophy, or worse? (Astronomy) if it's not falsifiable, it's not science Time is now entangled? (Quanta) yikes |
Where America's terrorists actually come from (Atlantic) murders by terrorists from the 7 countries Trump banned: 0 murders by terrorists from UAW, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt = 3025 (for 1975 - 2015) How to build an autocracy (Atlantic) a scary American future with Trump 'Dividing droplets': explaining the origin of life? (Quanta) chemically active droplets expand to size of cells and then divide An upcoming Scientists' march on Washington? (Vox) is in the works Hydrogen, now in metallic form? (Science) and why many physicists remain skeptical (Nature) Trump to-do list Learn the difference between 'facts' and 'alternative facts' (NY Times) Fix a world in disarray (Guardian) Stop denying global warming (Scientific American) and take steps to lessen its effects Protect workers, not jobs (NY Times) Don't put Supreme Court justice at risk (Prospect) Build/repair infrastructure (NY Post) what the rest of us can do Sign 'We the People' petitions (White House) Call/write your Senator/Representative don't forget local state reps and senators Support Politifact and FactCheck ditch Facebook & other aggregator 'news' Watch PBS and listen to NPR, especially the 1A and OnPoint along with American Prospect, The Nation, & Mother Jones Don't let your brain give up (Politico) lies' effect on the brain ---------------------------- Self-driving cars, blue LEDs, .... are killing observatories (Science) 5 conservative articles to read for the inauguration (Guardian) bursting the bubble How Trump won: the Midwest (Real Clear Politics) with maps and charts galore 5 mysteries about CRISPR's origins (Nature) how did it start? how does it avoid self-destruction? what else can it do? Thousands of years from now, what will we do with our nuclear waste? (PBS, Independent Lens) watch Containment, free until February 17 |
Trump and academia have a lot in common (Washington Post) maybe only for whiny academia Astronomy Days at Raleigh's Museum of Natural Sciences (NC MoNS) is Jan 28-29... Saturday schedule Sunday schedule America's great working class colleges (NY Times) are getting less and less state support |
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early January 2017 |
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Earth & Moon, seen from Mars (NASA JPL) A new year's comet? (Skyhound) need binoculars and a clear western-horizon skyline The sky in January (Astronomy) Venus blazes after sunset.... Mars, less so... Jupiter after midnight The most vulnerable NASA missions under Trump (Atlantic) What a real climate debate looks like (Atlantic) is the Atlantic ocean current driver unstable? How to convert a climate skeptic (Washington Post) with evidence New study confirms recent global warming (Washington Post) based on adjusted ocean temperatures ditto from Atlantic research paper (Science Advances) |
A binary star en route to a merger (Sky and Telescope) to nova in 2022! A split-personality neutron star? (Astronomy) sometimes pulsar, sometimes magnetar 2 pulsars with an 'off' switch (Astronomy) Witnessing the birth of today's stars (Earth & Sky) 10 billion years ago |
Exocomets take the plunge into a new star (Hubble) Neptune-mass planets: the most common in outer parts of stellar systems (Earth & Sky) and this is a surprise? |
Milky Way's SMBH ejecting planet- sized spitballs (Harvard CfA) 1000 black holes (?) in a moon-sized sky portion (Sky and Telescope) more accurately, 1000 x-ray sources, in a 7 Msec exposure 1st determination of fast radio burster location (Nature) in a dwarf galaxy (link to research article within) An image, and more details (Sky and Telescope) |
Quantum computers: ready for prime time? (Nature) Google. Microsoft, et al battle it out Vera Rubin, Mother of Dark Matter (Sky and Telescope) passed away and why she deserved a Nobel prize (NY Times) |
What's ahead for spaceflight in 2017 (Sky and Telescope) an exoplanet finder, an x-ray telescope, & a lunar return sampler... sadly, that's about it 2017 science sneak peak (Nature) imaging an event horizon, finding Planet 9 already forgotten what happened in 2016? highlights here |
Leave your computer at the classroom door (NY Times) The war on public schools ramps up? (Prospect) vouchers, charter schools, and disposable teachers The plague of 'Early Decision' (NY Times) |
