Month: October 2021

Book Review: ‘Flashes of Creation, George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and the Great Big Bang Debate’ by Paul Halpern

The history of science may not be bloody, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had some memorable fights. Often the conflict is between a new idea and an entrenched opinion, such as the flight between Darwin and the creationists over evolution. Other times two opposing ideas can battle for decades or more before forming a synthesis. For example Newton thought that light was made of particles but Hyugens demonstrated that they were made of waves, only to have Einstein come along 200 years later and show that they were both, which you saw depended on their energy and what experiment you were performing.

Sometimes Light Waves behave like Particles while sometimes Electrons behave like Waves. Wave-Particle Duality is much of the basis for the weirdness of Quantum Mechanics. (Credit: Hyperphysics)

The book ‘Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and the Great Big Bang Debate’ by Paul Halpern is about another such battle that took place from the 1930s through the 1960s over the very nature of the Universe in which we live. In fact a religious debate over this issue had been going on for millennia. Was the Universe eternal as the Hindus and Buddhists maintained or was there a moment of creation as the religions of the book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam proclaim.

Cover Art for ‘Flashes of Creation’ by Paul Halpern. (Credit: Basic Books)

By the 20th century it was science’s turn to take up the issue but of course the ideas of science have to account for the observed facts about the Universe as discovered by astronomers. By 1935 the most important of these facts had been established by the work of astronomer Karl Hubble. Using the 100-inch Hale telescope on Mount Wilson outside of Los Angeles California Hubble had described a Universe that was unimaginably large and filled with millions of galaxies. One more thing, Hubble showed that the Universe was expanding, those galaxies were moving away from each other.

Hubble’s law, the velocity with which a galaxy is moving away from our Milky Way is proportional to its distance. (Credit: University of Cal Poly Pomona)

That expansion of the Universe fit in well with Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Indeed the great physicist had been having problems trying to use his equations to describe a static Universe, an expanding one worked much better. But if you run an expanding Universe backward in time you get a contracting one, you get a Universe where all of the galaxies are getting closer and closer until if you go far enough back in time all of the matter that exists is squeezed together into a big ‘Cosmic Egg’.

Many scientists had a problem with Lemaitre’s notion of a ‘Cosmic Egg’ as it smacked of Metaphysics. Some still have that problem. (Credit: Triple Moon Psychotherapy)

It was the Belgian physicist Georges Lemaître who first proposed this idea that the Universe had a dense, hot beginning that expanded into what we see today, an idea that would later be called ‘The Big Bang’. There was a problem with Lemaître’s model however for if you inserted Hubble’s values for the size of the Universe and the speed that it is expanding you obtained an age for the Universe of about three billion years. But radioactive dating of Earth’s rocks gave an age for our planet of more than four billion years. How could the Earth be more than a billion years older than the entire Universe?

A professor of Physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Paul Halpern is the author of several books on the history of science. (Credit: YouTube)

It’s at this point in the story that the two main actors in ‘Flashes of Creation’ take center stage. Russian physicist George Gamow would become the champion of the evolving Universe scheme of Lemaître while Fred Hoyle would become its greatest critic, co-developing an alternative Steady State / Continuous Creation theory. In the Continuous Creation theory as the Universe expanded new matter would be created to fill in the gaps and keep the Universe looking the same eternally. It was Hoyle who also first jokingly gave Lemaître’s model the name by which it is now famous ‘The Big Bang’.

George Gamow (l) and Fred Hoyle (r) were the two leading advocates for the Theories of ‘The Big Bang’ and ‘Continous Creation’ respectively. (Credit: Science News)

Halpern’s book is as much biography as science, beginning with the early life of these two scientists and relating details of their other scientific interests and achievements aside from the nature of the Universe. Halpern also gives a detailed and uncompromising personal portrait of two the men. Both were independent minded and often came into conflict with the institutions were they taught. Gamow was widely known as a joker and socializer, i.e. drinker who late in life acquired a reputation as a drunkard. Hoyle’s brand of humour was more sophisticated, but could often cross the line into meanness.

Gamow was the author of many books popularizing Science. Mister Tompkins is perhaps the best known. (Credit: Amazon)
While Hoyle also wrote non-fiction books about Science he wrote a few Science Fiction novels as well. I like ‘The Black Cloud’ the best. (Credit: Goodreads)

The crucial point in the story of Big Bang versus Continuous Creation happened in 1965 when radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) the leftover heat that erupted as the Big Bang. Gamow, along with his colleagues in Big Bang research Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman had predicted this leftover radiation but the Continuous Creation theory had no mechanism to account for it. The CMB is still considered to be the best, most conclusive evidence for the Big Bang.

Arno Penzias (r) and Robert Wilson (l) stand before the Horn Antenna with which they accidentally discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background. (Credit: JILA)

The endings for both Gamow and Hoyle were rather sad. Gamow died just a few years after Penzias and Wilson had proved him right but at the same time stolen his thunder as the champion of the Big Bang. Hoyle, who never accepted defeat vainly tried to fit the CMB into a quasi-Continuous Creation but as his ideas grew more outlandish his reputation suffered.

The Cosmic Microwave Background, our Universe’s baby picture as seen by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. (Credit: Research Gate)

‘Flashes of Creation’ tells this very important story in the fullest detail. Halpern has not only interviewed many of the surviving characters in the story, most especially the children of Gamow and Hoyle, but also uncovered letters and notes related to the conflict of ideas. By the way, Gamow and Hoyle only met once, and talked amicably. In fact there were never any ill feelings between these two giants of 20th century science; they just had different ideas. To bad all of our conflicts can’t be carried out in such a civilized fashion.

Einstein and Bohr argued for decades about the probabilistic nature of Quantum Mechanics, but remained friends throughout that time! (Credit: YouTube)

I must admit at this point that ‘Flashes of Creation’ does have a few flaws. Several times in the book Halpern praises Gamow for the illustrations that he made for his own popular books about physics, but ‘Flashes of Creation’ has none. As a firm supporter of the adage ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ I can only say that many of the difficult concepts Halpern describes would have been helped with a few illustrations. Also, the book could have benefited from a little more proofreading. Really there are quite a few typos spread throughout the text.

George Gamow drew many of the illustrations for his books on Science himself. ‘Flashes of Creation could have benefited from a few of Gamow’s drawings! (Credit: CSE – IIT Kanpur)

Nevertheless I certainly recommend ‘Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and the Great Big Bang Debate’ by Paul Halpern. This is one of the most important stories in the history of science and Halpern has penned the definitive book on the subject.

Space News for October 2021: Both Manned and Robotic Missions making news.

Over the last several months most of the big news from outer space has come for manned space missions but this month there are also several robotic missions making headlines along with the manned spaceflights. Let’s start with the manned missions.

Following last month’s Inspiration Four tourist spaceflight aboard Space X’s Dragon capsule, see my post of 2 October 2021, this month the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos launched the first film crew into space to the International Space Station (ISS). Taking off on October 5th aboard a Soyuz capsule were actress Yulia Peresild and producer Klim Shipenko along with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov.

First Film Crew in Space. Russian Actor Yulia Peresild (l) along with her producer Klim Shipenko (r). Veteran Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov is in the center. (Credit: Space.com)

The two entertainers remained on the ISS for ten days filming scenes for a new movie that is entitled ‘Challenge’. The plot of the movie concerns a medical emergency aboard the ISS for which a doctor from Earth has to be rushed to the station, which actually sounds like a good story for the first movie to be made in space. After completing their filming aboard the ISS the two returned to Earth on the 16th along with the veteran Shkaplerov.

Return of the Russian Film Crew that made the first Movie in Space. Most of the Film will actually be shot here on Earth and the Scheduled Release date has not been Announced. (Credit: New York Post)

Going forward the commercialization of space will undoubtedly see movie production as a major component of its revenue. The American actor Tom Cruise has for several years now been trying to put together a location shoot that will put him aboard the ISS and other production companies will certainly follow. Time will only tell if box office receipts can justify the high cost of filming in space.

American Actor Tom Cruse had hoped to be the first to Film in Space. (Credit: Metro)

And China also made news with the launch of the Shenzhou 13 mission to their Tiangong space station. The launch took place a little after noon eastern time on the 15th with Taikonauts Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu aboard. Once in orbit the capsule successfully docked with the space station after a flight of about 6 hours. This second mission to China’s new station is expected to last six months.

Yes the Launch of China’s Shenzhou 13 mission to their Tiangong station was carried live on YouTube. (Credit: YouTube)

Speaking of going forward that appears to be one thing that Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule is not doing. Ever since its final unmanned mission to the ISS back on August 3rd was cancelled the aerospace giant has been attempting to fix a problem with 13 stuck valves in the capsule’s service module. Even though Boeing has identified what it considers the likely cause of the problem and is taking corrective measures testing of the fix will take weeks if not months. Because of that the capsule’s final unmanned test mission, designated as Orbital Test Flight 2 or OTF-2 has now been officially pushed back until sometime in early 2022.

Starliner continues to undergo an investigation into the problem that occurred with 13 valves shortly before it was scheduled to launch. Currently it is thought that the humidity in Florida was the cause of the problem. (Credit: Space News)

Starliner is already several years behind schedule and well behind Space X whose Dragon capsule has now successfully sent 14 people into space and is preparing to send another four later this month on the 31st of October. Because of all the delays with Starliner NASA has quietly reassigned the two astronauts who were scheduled to fly the capsule’s first manned mission to another mission aboard Dragon. According to NASA the space agency did not think it was fair to the two astronauts to make them wait any longer for a chance to go into space. I may be reading too much into that but it certainly doesn’t seem like a vote of confidence in Boeing.

Astronauts Josh Cassidy (l) and Sunita Williams (r) had been assigned to the first manned Starliner mission but now they have been reassigned to an upcoming flight aboard Space X’s Dragon. (Credit: WBUR News)

And before I leave manned spaceflight I must mention Captain Kirk’s finally getting into space. Yes I know it was really the actor William Shatner who on the morning of the 13th of October flew to a height of about 100 km aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule. The ten minute flight was only sub-orbital but upon returning to Earth Shatner was visibly emotional, claiming the experience to be “…the most profound in my life” and that “I hope I never recover from it.” Sentiments worthy of the Captain of the Starship Enterprise.

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) describes his brief trip into actual space. (Credit: The New York Times)

There is also a lot of news this month coming from beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) thanks to our robotic probes. The combined European-Japanese spacecraft BepiColombo has finally reached its destination of Mercury flying by the closest planet to the Sun on October second.

One of the first images of Mercury taken by BepiColombo as it flew by the innermost planet. The spacecraft has several more flybys to make before it settles into orbit around Mercury. (Credit: ESA)

Getting to Mercury has been no easy task; prior to BipiColombo only two spacecraft had managed to reach the innermost planet in the solar system. You see, because Mercury is nearest to the Sun it has to orbit at the greatest speed of any planet in order to balance out the enormous pull of the Sun’s gravity. And when it comes to interplanetary travel speed is just as important as distance so a trip to Mercury can be every bit as difficult as a trip to Neptune.

Nice animation of how the Voyager 1 Spacecraft got a gravity boost from Jupiter on its way to Saturn. (Credit: Wikipedia)

In order to make such difficult journeys space scientists make use of other planets, closer to the Earth, to give their spacecraft a gravity boost. Voyager 2, the only probe so far to reach Neptune first flew by Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, getting a gravity boost as it flew by each planet on its way to Neptune.

Still the only spacecraft to visit the outermost planet, Voyager 2 got gravity boosts from three other planets on it way to Neptune. (Credit: The Atlantic)

Since being launched in October of 2018, BipiColombo has already gotten several such gravity boosts, one from our own planet Earth and two from Venus, the planet between Earth and Mercury. And BipiColombo still isn’t finished, the Mercury encounter on the second was only a flyby, the spacecraft has to perform five more flybys of the planet before it can finally settle into orbit around Mercury becoming the first spacecraft to do so. Only then, in the year 2025 can its real mission of exploration, scheduled to last five years, begin.

Actually two space probes, once in orbit around Mercury BepiColombo will separate into the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetosphere Orbiter which will each carry out their own missions. (Credit: YouTube)

The Lucy spacecraft on the other hand, is only just beginning its long journey to visit the Trojan asteroids that lead or follow Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. Launched on the 16th of October Lucy will swing by Earth twice in order to get gravity boosts before even heading to it’s first destination. That first asteroid is designated as 52246 Donaldjohanson after the discoverer of the famous hominid fossil Lucy for which the space probe is named.

The Fossil named Lucy revolutionized our knowledge of human ancestors. It is hoped that the Lucy spacecraft will do the same for our knowledge of the Solar System. (Credit: Institute for Human Origins – Arizona State University)

The Trojan asteroids have long intrigued astronomers, captured from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter by the Giant planet’s gravity the Trojans occupy the stable Lagrangian L3 and L4 positions, (see my post of 6 January 2017 for a discussion of the Lagrangian positions). Since the first asteroids in these groups were named for characters from Homer’s Iliad the L3 and L4 positions have become known as the Trojan positions.

The five Lagrangian positions are the only known exact solutions to the ‘Three Body Problem’ in Physics. L1,2 and 3 are unstable but L3 and L4 are stable locations often called the Trojan positions. (Credit: Wikipedia)

After flying past three asteroids in the group leading Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun in 2027 Lucy will head back towards the inner solar system making yet a third flyby of Earth before visiting the asteroids following Jupiter 2033. Altogether Lucy will visit more different bodies in the solar system than any previous spacecraft while making what is surely the most complex space voyage to date.

Out to Jupiter space, then back to Earth before going out to Jupiter’s orbit again. A long trip but there will be plenty to see along the way! (Credit: NASA)

Unfortunately, when shortly after launch the space probe was order to deploy its two seven meter in diameter solar arrays only one array returned the proper signal that it had completely latched. The other array is producing power and exactly what the problem may be is unclear. At the present time NASA is trying to understand the problem before trying any fix and the space agency stresses that the probe is in no immediate danger. Still any spacecraft going as far from the Sun as Lucy is will need both its Arrays to be working properly.

Engineers are confident that they will solve the problem with one of Lucy’s solar arrays not latching. Hope they’re right! (Credit: Spaceflight Now)

So there you have it, a little bit of manned spaceflight and a bit of robotic probes. Working together they are exploring our solar system in ways unimagined just a few decades ago.

Book Review: ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Somewhere in the Multiverse two ideologies are at war, The Agency is a Techno-hierarchy while The Garden is an organic consciousness. Each organization sends out agents who travel up and down time streams, back and forth across dimensions altering the future here, deleting a bit of the past there in their efforts to bring themselves into existence. Red is the top agent for The Agency while Blue is her counterpart for The Garden.

Cover of ‘This is How You Lose the Time war’ by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. (Credit: Amazon)

Such is the background for ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ by authors Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. As the story begins Red has emerged victorious in a large battle in some corner of reality when she spies a piece of paper with the words “Burn before Reading” written upon it. Although they have never met Red immediately knows that the message is from her enemy Blue and guesses that the message could be either a trap or an attempt to turn her to Blue’s side. Knowing that even reading the message could be a betrayal to her side she burns the paper and in the fading ashes she reads the first in a series of letters passed surreptitiously between the two time warriors.

Authors Max Gladstone (l) and Amal el-Mohtar (r). (Credit: Uncanny Magazine)

As you have probably guessed by now ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ is a different kind of Science Fiction novel, written in a technique as much poetry as prose, with world building that is both abstract and minimalist. The rules of plausibility, so often broken in Science Fiction are here gleefully ignored. This is a story that is more about style than plot and indeed its plot is really a very familiar one.

I like this drawing showing the two protagonists Red and Blue of ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’. Notice that, like the ying yang symbol there’s a bit of red in Blue and a bit of blue in Red. (Credit: Laya Rose Art)

The two agents are soon passing notes back and forth and of course they soon fall in love, both are female by the way. To be honest I didn’t see the parallels to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ until Shakespeare’s play was explicitly mentioned. “Two houses alike in dignity…From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.” and “Two star crossed lovers” but it was pretty easy to see where the plot was going. As I said ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ is more about style than plot.

First date I ever went on was the Franco Zeffirelli version of R & J. (Credit: TV Tropes)

After about a dozen messages between Red and Blue I was starting to find the story becoming repetitious but the authors must have also realized that because at this point the two agent’s superiors begin to suspect that something is going on and Red and Blue are soon put in a situation reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet’s in Act 4. The ending is quite different however and I was pleased that I managed to figure it out ahead of time.

Just like in Romeo and Juliet the two houses cause all the problems for the two lovers Red and Blue. The ending however is quite different. (Credit: No Sweat Shakespeare)

As I said ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ doesn’t have a very intriguing plot, and if you really like the details of world building you’ll be disappointed. However the writing of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is very clever and interesting, again something like poetry.

Of Course Time Wars are right up The Doctor’s alley. But Aml el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone have done a pretty good job with ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’. (Credit: Wikipedia)

And another thing, it’s a quick read. It took me less than two days to finish the novel. So if you’re looking for a light desert after a heavy meal like Dune or GOT maybe you should try ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’.  While it may not be memorable it is nevertheless certainly enjoyable.   

Paleontology News for October 2021: Three stories from the Mesozoic Period.

The ‘Age of the Dinosaurs’ is technically known as the Mesozoic or middle period of multi-cellular life here on Earth. So much of the research into this era of Earth’s history deals with dinosaurs that it’s almost surprising to come across stories about other kinds of life forms from the Mesozoic. Here are a couple.

The Mesozoic or middle period of multicellular life is often called the age of Dinosaurs, meaning other life forms don’t get the attention they deserve. (Credit: The Secrets of the Universe)

The first discovery concerns the fossils preserved in four chunks of 99 million year old amber recently unearthed in the country of Myanmar. Now, I have already discussed some of the extraordinary finds preserved in the amber that has been mined in that troubled country, see my posts of 16 December 2016 and 1 June 2019. Even before the military coup that swept away the democratically elected government in February of 2021 scientists had been wary of obtaining fossilized amber from Myanmar for fear that the money could help to support the military, or criminal smugglers or both.

Back in 2016 the feathered tail of a small dinosaur was found in Burmese amber. Many such extraordinary finds have been found the that troubled country. (Credit: Science)

All of the political nonsense surrounding Burmese amber is keeping scientists from being able to properly study one of the most important fossil sites known while at the same time allowing valuable specimens to fall into the hands of unscrupulous dealers. Fortunately the four specimens in the latest study were obtained back in 2017 and the results of their study are only now being published. What the pieces of amber have revealed are spiders, in fact an entire family of spiders.

You didn’t know that spiders lived as families, well there are actually many species of spider where the mother provides a considerable amount of maternal care to her offspring while they’re young and that is exactly what the specimens preserved in amber illustrate. Based upon the mother spider’s facial appendages, spineless legs and ‘sensing hairs’ or trichobothria she belonged to a now extinct family of spiders called Lagonomegopidae.

A spider of the family Lagonomegopidae guarding her eggs even as she was encased in tree sap. (Credit: CNN)

The female was positioned directly above her egg sack, the spiderlings clearly visible inside. Her stance strongly suggests that she is protecting her offspring in a way identical to female spiders today. That such behavior has a long history has been suspected but according to study co-author Paul Selden of the University of Kansas Department of Geology, “it’s lovely to have actual physical evidence through these little snapshots in the fossil record.”

Spiders are of course one of the groups of animals that managed to survive the extinction event that killed all of the dinosaurs. And now a new study is revealing how another well-known group, the snakes, barely endured that cataclysm.

Snake Taxonomy, the three families in bold possess venomous fangs! (Credit: The Reptile Database)

Today there are more than 4000 species of snake living in all but the very coldest of climates. The new study, published in the journal Nature Communications by scientists at the University of Bath in collaboration with researchers from Bristol, Cambridge and Germany have used fossil specimens and DNA samples from living species to outline the evolutionary history of all snakes. What they found was that, after the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs there were only a very few species of snake remaining in the world, and possibly only in the southern hemisphere.

There are over 4000 species of snakes in the world. Did they all evolve from just a few survivors of the extinction of the dinosaurs? (Credit: Reptile Fact)
Did any of the dinosaurs actually see the asteroid as it struck? Of course none could understand what was going to happen to them when it did! (Credit: The Independent)

In the several million years after the asteroid snakes not only spread throughout the planet but also diversified into the many types that we see today. The ability of snakes to live underground and go long periods of time without eating were no doubt crucial factors in their survival but their rapid diversification also demonstrates how quickly species can evolve and change after major disasters when a large number of ecological niches open up.

When a few finches managed to reach the Galapagos Islands they found an entire ecosystem waiting to be exploited. They quickly evolved into a number of different species. It now appears that the few snakes that survived the asteroid did much the same thing. (Credit: Galapagos Conservation Trust)

As described by lead author Dr. Catherine Klein, “It’s remarkable because not only are they surviving an extinction that wipes out so many other animals but within a few million years they are innovating, using their habitats in new ways.” By wiping out so many species the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs actually played a creative role in the evolution of many new species, including us of course.

Some people think that if they asteroid hadn’t killed them all by now an intelligent species of dinosaur would have evolved. Of course the Universe doesn’t allow do overs! (Credit: The Intelligence of Troodon)

But I can’t write a post about animals from the Mesozoic without at least mentioning one species of dinosaur. The species I’ll talk about is little known, in fact only one fossil specimen has ever been discovered but that single fossil was so well preserved that paleontologists have even been able to learn a great deal about the animal’s skin.

The dino is question is called Carnotaurus sastrei and is an 8 meter long carnivorous theropod dinosaur related to the famous Tyrannosaurus rex. Unearthed in 1984 in Patagonia the fact that the fossil included exquisite impressions of the animals skin caused quite a stir at the time. A full-scale examination of those impressions was never carried out however and it’s only now that the details are being revealed.

Carnotaurus sastrei was a big meat eater closely related to the better known T rex. (Credit: Deviant Art)

The new study details how the animal’s skin was a complex tapestry containing not only reptilian scales but also bumps, wrinkles and even thorns. Indeed for a reptile the number of scales was quite small and for the most part the skin reminded the researchers more of the hide of an elephant than a modern lizard or crocodile. The big news however is that from head to tail there was not a sign of anything resembling a feather on Carnotaurus.

The fossilized skin of C sastrei. Although containing an assortment of bumps, scales and thorns there is no sign of anything like feathers. (Credit: ScienceDirect.com)

In the last few decades of course there has been growing amount of evidence that our modern birds are closely related to the theropod dinosaurs. Indeed some fossils have shown that a few of the smaller species of dinosaurs may have had at least portions of their body covered with feathers in order to keep them warm. Some paleontologists have even gone so far as to suggest that T rex himself may have had a light covering of feathers on its head and legs.

Over the last few decades the line between Dinosaurs and Birds is getting pretty blurred. But at least the evidence from C sastrei indicates that its relative T rex was all dino! (Credit: National Audubon Society)

Well, if the evidence of C sastrei is any indication then we can spare T rex the humiliation of suggesting it was covered by pretty feathers. That makes sense to, larger animals have an easier job of regulating their body temperature, it just takes them longer to either cool down or warm up. That’s why elephants have so little hair.

In some ways the skin of C sastrei closely resembles that of our modern elephant. Another example of convergent evolution where unrelated species resemble each other because they live very similar lives. (Credit: BCC)

So there you have it. Three stories from the Mesozoic that illustrate something of the ways that living things evolve.

Astronomers seem to have finally solved a 900 year old mystery, and discovered a brand new one.

It really wasn’t so long ago that everything in the nighttime sky was a complete mystery. What were the stars and how did they differ from the planets, whatever the planets were? What was the Milky Way, or meteors, or comets? Only about 600 years ago nobody knew what any of the things were. Today however thanks to advances in astronomy there are entire books, brimming with measurements and data described in detail each of those classes of object.

It’s hard to believe but just 600 years ago nobody had any idea what the stars, planets, comets or meteors were. Now there are many children’s books to explain them. (Credit: Los Angeles Times)

Nevertheless until recently there was one small mystery remaining from the years before Copernicus. In the year 1181 CE Chinese astronomers spotted and recorded the location in the sky of a new or guest star. This new star shined as brightly as the planet Saturn and lasted a full six months before fading away. Even with all the progress in astronomy since then no one had ever been able to identify exactly what object in the sky had been that guest star.

The location in the sky of supernova SN1181 as recorded by Chinese astronomers. For hundreds of years astronomers have searched in vain for the corpse of that cosmic death. (Credit: Science Times)

Now supernovas as a class are no longer a mystery, I have written several posts about them (see 26 May 2021 and 18 Jan 2020). Of the supernovas that were spotted and recorded before the age of the telescope astronomers have succeeded in identifying the corpses for several, such as the Crab Nebula which is the remnants of a supernova spotted in 1006. But astronomers failed in all their attempts to identify the remains of the supernova of 1181.

The Crab Nebula, also known as Messier 1, is the remains of a type 2 Supernova that was recorded by Chinese astronomers in the year 1006. At the center of the expanding gas cloud is a pulsating neutron star, the corpse of a once mighty star. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Until now, now an international group of astronomers from Hong Kong, the UK, France and Hungary think they’ve found it in a nebula known as Pa30 that surrounds one of the hottest stars in the galaxy called Parker’s star. And in so doing they may have discovered the first in a totally new class of supernovas, a Type Iax.

Parker’s star, seen here in both visible and radio waves, is mainly hidden in a rapidly expanding gas cloud but is considered to be one of the hottest objects know to astronomy. Could this be the remains of SN1181? (Credit: Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalusa)

Before I go any further let me take a minute to describe the two classes of supernovas already recognized by astronomers. Type two supernovas happen when a huge star, say ten times the mass of our Sun, has used up all of its hydrogen fuel as well as its helium and even carbon and oxygen, having fused them into iron. Once a star reaches that point however it’s at a dead end because you can’t get energy from iron by either fusion or fission. Without the energy produced by nuclear fusion the star begins to collapse and then rebound. The rebound is a massive explosion that we see as a Type 2 supernova.

Huge massive stars, at least 10 times the mass of out Sun, end their lives as Type 2 Supernova. (Credit: Futurism)

A Type 1 supernova on the other hand starts out as a more normal star, say 2-3 times as massive as the Sun. Once such a star has also used up all of its nuclear fuel it goes into ‘retirement’ as a white dwarf, an incredibly dense object as massive as our Sun but only the size of the Earth. The old description of white dwarf material is that a matchbox full would weigh as much as a ton of normal matter.

Now if a white dwarf star has a companion star it can steal some material from the companion, gaining mass in the process. There’s a limit to how much mass the dwarf can steal however because if it exceeds a value known as Chandrasekhar’s mass, which about equal to 1.4 solar masses, then the white dwarf will collapse into a neutron star, throwing off a portion of it’s mass as a Type 1 supernova.

The mechanism of a Type 1 Supernova. A white dwarf star can gobble mass from a companion star but if it goes too far it explodes! (Credit: Phys.Org)

Now Pa30 is certainly not the remnants of a Type 2 supernova but it also differs is several ways from the remains of a Type 1 supernova as well. Based upon the observations they’ve made of the object the astronomers think they may have found the first known example of a kind of supernova that has been postulated but never before seen.

The idea is this, what if two white dwarfs collided and merged, exceeding Chandrasekhar’s mass that way. Would that result in a supernova and what would that supernova look like? Well, based upon the measurements made of Pa30 and Parker’s star they fit this new class of supernovas Type Iax. So if the assertions made by the astronomers holds up they may have solved one of the last remaining astronomical mysteries from before the age of the telescope, and found the evidence for a whole new class of supernova.

The collision of two white dwarfs has been discussed by astrophysicists for some time. Could the remenants of SN1181 be from such an event. (Credit: YouTube)

But even as astronomers solve one of the mysteries of the Universe it always seems like they discover another. In my lifetime quasars, pulsars and active galactic nuclei have all been discovered and solved while other mysteries like dark energy remain to be completely understood.

One of the hottest topics in astronomy right now are radio transients, that is sudden and very short-lived bursts of radio energy that appear somewhere in the sky and then disappear as quickly as they came. One particular type of these objects have been spotted in the vicinity of the center of our galaxy and been given the name Galactic Center Radio Transients or GCRTs and have also been given the nickname of Burpers.

Something is transmitting burst of radio waves from the center of our galaxy. Right now astronomers can only guess as to the cause! (Credit: Phys.Org)

GCRT J1745-3009 is a typical member of its class. The object was discovered back in the fall of 2002 when a group of astronomers from Sweet Briar College were listening to the region around the center of the Milky Way at a frequency of 330 Megahertz or 1meter in wavelength. In a seven hour period over the night of September30-October1 they received five bursts of radio energy, all of the same signal strength, all lasting about ten minutes and all occurring 77 minutes apart with no signal in between. Upon checking their data the astronomers discovered another identical burst had been recorded three days earlier on September 28 and a weaker burst was later received on March 20th of 2004. No other observations of GCRT J1745-3009 have been observed since nor was the object observed in any other form of EM radiation such as visible light or X-rays. GCRT J1745-3009 is one of three such mysterious objects that astronomers have observed to date.

Some of the data taken from GCRT J1745-3009 in 2002. Whatever it was that produced these radio signals it hasn’t been heard from since March of 2004. (Credit: ResearchGate)

You can understand how trying to figure out the mechanism behind a phenomenon that only appears seven times in seven months, never for longer than ten minutes and then vanishes completely can be a difficult task. Astrophysicists are clever guys however and several theories have already been proposed for the nature of the burpers. These include pairs of orbiting neutron stars, radio emitting white dwarfs along with a pulsar precessing at a period of 77 minutes.

One guess, and it is just a guess at present, is that GCRT J1745-3009 could be a precessing pulsar. Astronomers are looking for evidence to either prove or disprove this theory. (Credit: Semantic Scholar)

That’s the way of science in general, even as we solve one mystery there are always plenty more waiting to be figured out. To anyone who likes solving puzzles it means that you’ll certainly never be bored.  

The 2021 Nobel Prizes for Physiology, Physics and Chemistry are Awarded.

It’s that time of year again when the folks in the news media actually take a little bit of time away from politics, crime and celebrities to mention some of the work done by scientists. That’s right it’s Nobel Prize week and the awards for Physiology, Physics and Chemistry have been announced.

You don’t get to see the reverse side of the actual Nobel Prize very often. This is apparently the one awarded to Linus Pauling in 1954 for Chemistry. (Credit: The Conversation)

On Monday the 4th of October the first prize to be awarded was for physiology or medicine and this year the honour went to research into how the nerve cells in our bodies are able to translate physical sensations like pressure or temperature into the electro-chemical signals that our brain can understand. The 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology was shared by Doctor David Julius of the University of California at San Francisco along with Doctor Ardem Patapoutian, a researcher at the Scripps Institute at La Jolla California.

The recipients of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology are David Julius (l) and Ardem Patapoutian (r) for their work on how nerve cells transmit sensory impressions to the brain. (Credit: YouTube)

Dr. Julius conducted his research using capsaicin, the chemical in hot chili peppers that cause us to feel the sensation of heat whenever we eat them. By studying how a nerve cell reacts to that chemical Julius was able identify the sensors on the cells that respond to heat.

Chili Peppers aren’t actually hot of course, but the chemical capsaicin tricks our nerve cells into thinking that they are hot. (Credit: Food Network)

Continuing with his research Dr. Julius has since been able to collect a library of DNA segments that are used in nerve cells to express pain, heat, cold and touch. Dr. Patapoutian meanwhile has carried out his studies concentrating on the ion pathways and other metabolic processes that allow cells to convert physical stimuli into those chemical signals.

Together the work of these two scientists have brought a greater understanding of how our nervous system translates the impressions of the world around us into the kind of electrochemical signals that our brain can comprehend. It is hoped that in the near future this research may lead to new techniques to help reduce chronic and acute pain from disease and injury without the need for dangerous and addictive narcotics.

Pain is supposed to warn us that we’ve been injured in some way but chronic pain can become more of a medical problem than the injury causing the pain. (Credit: Twitter)

Tuesday the 5th saw the announcement of the Physics prize and this year’s recipients were honoured for their pioneering work in describing the long term behavior of complex systems. The 2021 Physics prize was shared by three scientists, Syukuro Manabe at Princeton University in New Jersey, Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg Germany along with Giorgio Parisi at Sapienza University in Rome Italy.

The 2021 Nobel for Physics honoured Giorgio Parisi (r) for his work on complex systems along with Syukuro Manabe (l) and Klaus Hasselmann for their work on models for predicting climate change. (Credit: CNN)

While the work of Doctor Parisi can be applied to any complex system from atoms to solar systems the work of both Drs. Manabe and Hasselmann concentrated on one very important complex system, Earth’s climate. Beginning in the 1960s Syukuro Manabe developed a series of models of the Earth’s climate and was the first to study the relation between the radiation balance of sunlight striking the Earth minus the Earth’s infrared emissions to the vertical transport of heat in the atmosphere. Earlier models had simply looked at the atmosphere but Manabe’s model expanded the climate to include both the oceans and land surface.

If you want to develop a model of Earth’s climate you have to divide the planet into a huge number of individual volumes and then determine how each tiny volume interacts with all of the other ones. If that sounds like a big problem it certainly is! (Credit: SERC – Carleton)

Not long thereafter Doctor Hasselmann used a series of computer simulations to show how long term climate models could be accurate despite the large, erratic fluctuations to which weather systems are subjected. Together the work of these three physicists served to place climate prediction on a strong quantitative basis and thereby provided the evidence for climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels. This year’s prize represents the first time that scientific research directly linked to global warming has been honoured by the Nobel committee.

Thanks to the work of Drs. Manabe, Hasselmann and Parisi we can predict how global warming will effect such weather events as rainfall in various parts of the world. (Credit: EGU Blogs)

On Wednesday it was chemistry’s turn and this year’s prize was shared by David W. C. MacMillan of Princeton University and Benjamin List of the Max Planck Institute who were honoured for independently developing a new variety of catalysts that MacMillan named organocatalysts. Much of the science of chemistry involves catalysts; those elements or compounds that can speed up a chemical reaction without being either used up in or altered by the reaction. For many years chemists thought that there were only two kinds of catalysts, simple metals or complex proteins called enzymes. What Drs. MacMillan and List found was a class of small organic molecules that could serve as catalysts for a wide variety of reactions.

The Recipients of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry are Bemjamin List (l) and David MacMillan (r) who pioneered the development of oragnocatalysis. (Credit: Reuters)

In the twenty years since their discovery organocatalysts have been used in the production of pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, food additives, plastics and even the clean energy industry. Organocatalysts are also useful in the production of ‘mirror image’ compounds, that is chemical substances that have the exact same chemical formula but whose arrangement of their atoms are mirror images, like your left and right hands.

Many molecules come in left and right handed versions of each other, a property known as Chirality. (Credit: Creation Moments)

While no one doubts that the achievements of this year’s prizewinners make them worthy of the Nobel nevertheless the selections have also come with a bit of criticism. You see all of the seven scientists awarded the Nobel Prize this year are men, once again women have shut out.

When I was young Marie Curie was considered to be something of a one off, ‘Look even a Woman can win a Nobel”. Thankfully we’ve made some progress since. (Credit: Literary Club)

This is a problem that is going to be hard to solve. You see even today women are underrepresented in the scientific world. And since Nobel Prizes are generally awarded for work that was conducted more than 20 years ago, when there were even fewer women in science, it’s not a problem that is going to be solved anytime soon.

Girls are every bit as curious about science and technology as boys are. In today’s world we cannot afford not to educate ever person to their fullest capacity. (Credit: Change.org)

The Nobel Prize is awarded for the very best scientific work and certainly we don’t want to compromise that just to make the award more gender neutral. But the only other choice is to continue to encourage young girls to enter scientific fields so that one day there is a better gender balance in science, and scientific awards.

I hope I live long enough to see that day.

The Politics, and Entertainment of Climate Change.

I know that the majority of Scientists in general would prefer to just stay as far away from politics as they can. Think about it, when was the last time you heard of a scientist or engineer running for office? I’ll bet you’ve noticed how many lawyers run for public office along with some businessmen. That’s all rounded out by the occasional entertainer and even a few athletes, but not scientists. The whole political process of ‘creating a message that will resonate with the voters’, in other words lying, just goes against everything that science stands for.

Actor or President, you decide! Sometimes it just seems as if the governing of a country is nothing but a popularity contest. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Scientists don’t make good politicians, when the state of Israel was founded they asked Albert Einstein to be their first president. He turned them down. (Credit: Phys.org)

I fact I didn’t even want to write this post. The whole question of Climate Change has been answered time and time again. It’s real and we need to deal with it. But in the face of steadily rising temperatures, the melting of glaciers along with the rapid increase in both wildfires and severe weather all the global warming deniers have done is to change their tactics and so now they talk about living with climate change, not stopping it.

Some politicians are now talking about ‘living with’ Climate Change. Yea, that’ll work! (Credit: NOAA)

It was when I saw one add from the American Petroleum Institute, based on those new tactics that was simply so deceitful, so devious that I decided I would write a post about the politics of climate change. Maybe you’ve seen the ad as well.

America can’t depend on foreign, possibly hostile governments for our energy resources, and we don’t. This is a problem that doesn’t exist. (Credit: API)

The ad begins by reminding us how important energy is to America’s economic strength and national security. It then asks whether we should rely on unfriendly counties, like Iran and Venezuela, for our oil and natural gas. Of course the answer the ad gives is ‘NO’, America should develop it’s own sources of oil and natural gas instead of being dependent on unreliable foreign regimes.

This is the answer that the petroleum industry wants us to have so they can keep on drilling and destroying our country. (Credit: API)

The whole ad is like a magician’s misdirection. The question isn’t whether America should get it oil and natural gas from unfriendly foreign countries but whether we should be getting our energy from oil and natural gas at all! The issue of Climate Change due to the burning of fossil fuels is completely ignored in the ad because the petroleum industry knows that they can’t talk about it anymore. Throughout the ad, which is all about energy production, solar arrays and wind turbines are never shown or mentioned.

At least to non-existent problems. The solutions to the real problem of fossil fuel emissions are completely ignored! (Credit: API)

By the way America already gets very little of its energy from foreign nations. We import less than 8% of our energy and Canada, hardly an unfriendly, unreliable nation accounts for more than half of that. In fact the US exports more petroleum products than it imports so the entire issue of our relying on foreign governments for our energy just doesn’t exist. The ad was a deceitful attempt to drum up support for the petroleum industry by arguing a false problem without mentioning the real issues, the environmental issues caused by the burning of fossil fuels!

This is the problem Big Oil doesn’t want to talk about. So like a magician they just distract us with another issue they made up! (Credit: NASA)

Having decided to write a post about the politics of Climate Change it didn’t take me long to find a sample poll conducted by the University of Bath in the UK that surveyed 10,000 young people from ten countries aged 18-25 about their views concerning the future. Faced with the harm that their parents have done to our world 77% of those surveyed considered the future to be ‘frightening’ and fully 56% thought that humanity was ‘doomed’.

Numerous polls have found that young people are very concerned about their future because of Climate Change. The folks at Fox think that the best way of dealing with that concern is to laugh at the ‘stupid kids’. (Credit: The Washingtom Post)

And if the results of such polls weren’t depressing enough the day after I read those results I was watching my local news and when an ad came on I decided to see what the other channels were showing. I ended up at ‘The Five’ on Fox news network where the hosts were laughing at all the stupid kids, 56% of whom thought humanity was doomed because of Climate Change. Seriously, the pundits on Fox thought it was just hilarious that young people would be worried about sea level rise making the coastal areas of the planet uninhabitable or droughts causing a food shortage or just the very idea that we are poisoning the only planet we have to live on.

Unlike his associates on Fox who spew hatred at everyone who disagrees with them Greg Gutfeld prefers to laugh at them. At least he’s a bit different! (Credit: YouTube)

However there are members of the media and entertainment worlds who recognize the growing danger of fossil fuel emissions and are willing to do what they can to raise public awareness of the issue, though to be honest I have to wonder how anyone today could be unaware of Climate Change. Nevertheless on the evening of the 22nd of September the hosts of eight late-night television shows, on eight different networks, all devoted their programs for a united effort to save mother Earth. The list of who joined in reads like the nominees for a Hollywood award, Steven Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, James Corden, Trevor Noah, Andy Cohen and Samantha Bee.

On the night of September 22nd eight late night programs joined together to publicize climate change. My only problem with that is the fact that climate change needed to be publicized. (Credit: Yahoo News)

“Don’t even think about switching to another show,” announced ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel at the beginning of his show. “We’re all focused on this topic tonight. You can’t escape. It’s basically an intervention. Our future is in jeopardy.”

Kids explaining Climate Change to Donald Trump was one segment on Kimmel’s show. I doubt it worked however. (Credit: YouTube)

The guests on the various shows included such environmental activists as Jane Goodall, John Kerry, Bill Gates and a host of climate scientists. Topics included the effects of temperature rise on sea turtle sex, raw sewage from homes mixing with the runoff from increasingly severe storms and the increasing risk of diseases like Covid-19 because of rising temperatures.

Jimmy Fallon had the best guest! (Credit: YouTube)

Unfortunately Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t quite correct about viewers not being able to escape because once again Fox news network was a place of refuge for the climate deniers. On the Greg Gutfeld show the host and his guests enjoyed themselves by mocking his competitors while touting the virtues of fossil fuels. Again it seems as if Fox’s way of dealing with environmental issues is to treat them as a joke in the hope that their viewers won’t take them seriously.

So I guess that’s an overview of the current state of the politics of Climate Change. By far the majority of people, even here in the US now recognize the coming catastrophe but the climate deniers have closed ranks and will do everything they can to keep making money off of cheap oil and natural gas. And that’s the real issue here, money, because any attempt to reduce carbon emissions will be taking money away from a rich and powerful, well established group of people while at the same time requiring tax increases to generate the huge amount of money needed to even begin fixing all of the environmental problems we’ve caused.

Oil and Water might not mix but Oil and Money certainly do. Remember we’ve fought several wars over this stuff! (Credit: ATDM CO.LTD)

So the politicians will delay and dither, and do nothing until they’re forced to. Think about it, most politicians, Mitch McConnell is an excellent example, are so old now that they know the worst of Climate Change will only occur long after they are safely dead. The same is true of Fox’s CEO Roger Murdoch. Climate Change won’t hurt him but any efforts to prevent it would raise his taxes and he simply doesn’t care if it hurts anyone else. So he orders his underlings to make fun of the possible extinction of the human race.

Just by looking at them you know that some people are incapable of changing in any way. (Credit: CNN)

All we can do is to keep pushing, to vote for those politicians who not only accept Climate Change but are also willing to do something about it, to write letters and emails, especially to those who oppose environmental solutions. It may not seem like much but the weight of evidence is in our favour and it’s growing. As conditions get worse more people will recognize the danger and demand action. Eventually even the politicians will have to do something.

You have to admit it is a good one. Unfortunately the joke may be on us! (Credit: Rotherham Politics)

We can only hope it’ll be in time.

Have the remains of the legendary cities of Sodom and Gomorrah been discovered? Archaeologists from Veritas International University in Santa Ana California and Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque New Mexico in cooperation with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities think they’ve got the smoking gun and it’s an asteroid!

One of the best known and most debated stories from the bible concerns the destruction of the ‘evil cities’ of Sodom and Gomorrah. As related in genesis chapter 18 verses 16-33 and Chapter 19 verses 1-29 two angels of god, after visiting with Abraham go to the cities of sin where they meet Abraham’s nephew Lot who lived in Sodom. The other inhabitants of Sodom threaten violence, usually interpreted as sexual violence against the two angels, which causes the lord to make them all to go blind. Lot and his wife and daughters then escape the city before it is destroyed by fire and brimstone. Before escaping Lot and his family were warned not to look back at the cities being destroyed but Lot’s wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt.

Was the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah a real event. People have wondered that for thousands of years. (Credit: Pinterest)

(By the way, one thing that has always puzzled me is Gomorrah. I mean none of the action takes place there, it’s never even mentioned except in conjunction with Sodom as in ‘Sodom and Gomorrah. But it was destroyed along with Sodom. Why?)

 So that’s the story and for centuries people, especially armchair archaeologists have wondered about what disaster could have given birth to the legend. The consensus opinion for many years has been that an Earthquake destroyed a Bronze Age city somewhere to the east of the central highlands region of Canaan. After all the Dead Sea Rift is a major fault line going right through the area, Earthquakes are fairly common in the lands of the bible.

The Dead Sea Rift is a series of faults that basically follow the course of the Riven Jordan. The rift makes the lands of the bible an earthquake zone. (Credit: Earth Magazine)

A minority opinion was that the city was destroyed by a volcano like the Roman city of Pompeii, which would account for the ‘Fire and Brimstone’ part. But there are no suitable volcanoes nearby in Israel or Jordan. Of course the city may have actually been further away and its location was brought closer by the authors of genesis as they adapted to story to suit their theological ideas.

O’k so tell me! Were the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by a natural calamity and then the authors of the bible just assumed it was because they sinned in order to make the destruction fit in with their moralistic views? (Credit: Got Questions)

   Now a paper in the journal Scientific Reports from a large group of archaeologists associated with nineteen institutions has raised the possibility that they have not only discovered the remains of Sodom, but know how it was destroyed. The archaeological site is question is known today as Tall el-Hammam and lies at the southern end of the valley of the Jordan River just northeast of the Dead Sea. Based upon artifacts collected during excavations that began in 2005 the Tall, which is an Arabic word for a mound, was the site of a large and prosperous walled city dating back to the Copper Age about (4,300 BCE).

The mound or Tall -el-Hammam in western Jordan lies just north of the Dead Sea on the east side of the Jordan River. Could this be the ancient city of Sodom, some archaeologists think so. (Credit: Biblical Archaeological Society)

In the middle Bronze Age the city, whose name is unknown, was one of the biggest population centers in the Middle East, its enclosed area of 85 acres making it about eight times the size of Jerusalem at that time. Then, about the year 1650 BCE the city was suddenly and completely destroyed, a destruction so complete that the area around the mound remained mainly deserted for the next 500-600 years.

A reconstruction of what the city at Tall el-Hammam looked like in the middle Bronze Age. (Credit: Elizabeth City State University)

The archaeologists found the evidence for that destruction in a layer of sediment about 1.5 meters thick in the mound and were astounded by the degree of the devastation, far worse than could have been due to war or even an Earthquake. Broken pieces of pottery have been found in that layer that were partially melted while bricks from the city wall show signs of ‘bubbling’ on their surface, both indicating exposure to heat greater than 2,000º Celsius. There was also evidence of more physical damage, including that fact that the upper 12 meters of the city’s palace was completely toppled, as were large sections of the city wall.

Tall el-Hammam as it is today. The destruction layer that may have been caused by an asteroid strike is within the dotted lines. (Credit: Money Training Club)

Even more telling was the discovery of shocked quartz, tiny grains of sand that have subjected to such enormous pressure that cracks have formed in them. So great was the pressure that small pieces of carbon dust were also found that have been converted into diamonoids.

Analysis of one of the tiny diamonoids found in association with Tall el-Hammam. Great pressure is required to turn a flake of carbon into a diamondoid so was that pressure produced by a meteor strike? (Credit: The Girl Sun)

The scale of the destruction was so great that the researchers are certain that only an extraterrestrial source could cause it. They theorize that an asteroid airburst similar to if not slightly more powerful than the one that destroyed the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1905 struck the city like a nuclear explosion of approximately 12 megatons.

Some of the destruction caused by the Tunguska asteroid strike in 1908. Did a similar event destroy the city on Tall el-Hammam? (Credit: The Conversation)

All of the evidence presented by the archaeologists is very suggestive. The city is located in a region of Canaan that corresponds to where Sodom could have been and the carbon 14 dating of 1650 BCE for the city’s destruction is about right for the period when Abraham is thought to have lived. The suddenness and scale of the destruction are so great that they certainly resemble the destruction of Sodom as related in the bible. The possibility that this unknown city, forgotten for 3500 years could actually be the source of the story of Sodom must be considered.

This is the last few seconds of the city of Sodom? And will we ever know for certain? (Credit: Artnet News)

Still, the evidence is only suggestive, there are several other middle Bronze Age sites that have also been proposed for the ‘city of sin’ and of course there’s always the possibility that the entire story of Sodom and Gomorrah could be entirely fictitious. There are even some scholars who consider the bible to be factually inerrant who argue that Tall el-Hammam’s destruction did not take place at precisely the right time by their chronology.

So how could the identification of Tall el-Hammam as Sodom ever been proven? Well the best way of course would be a contemporary written record, preferably from the city itself. Just imagine if the archaeologists working at Tall el-Hammam succeeded in finding the royal archive of the city as they have for the Assyrian empire, the Hittite empire and Pharaoh Akhenaten of Egypt. If those records could be translated and it was discovered that the inhabitants of the city called it something akin to Sodom, that would be a spectacular discovery. Second best would be a written record from an outside source like Mesopotamia or Egypt that referred to the city.

The city at Tall el-Hammam should have been known to its neighbors the Assyrians or Hittites or Egyptians. Is the final evidence of the existence of Sodom waiting to be discovered in the letters of those ancient peoples? (Credit: Amazon.com)

Let’s think about that second possibility for a moment, because there are hundreds, if not thousands of untranslated tablets from Egypt and Mesopotamia currently being stored in museums around the world. There’s a real possibility that one of them may mention the city buried at Tall el-Hammam. So the final proof of the story of Sodom may already have been discovered, it just hasn’t been recognized.

There are thousands of ancient tablets excavated from sites in the Middle East that have not yet been translated. Has that evidence of Sodom already been found but not recognized? (Credit: BBC)

And if Tall el-Hammam is Sodom, then where’s Gomorrah?

Space news for September 2021: First Tourist flight into Orbit is a Complete Success.

In manned spaceflight uneventful and even boring are synonyms for successful and that’s exactly the way the ‘Inspiration Four’ mission of the Space X Dragon capsule went this past weekend. Billed as the first all-civilian space mission the tourist flight was paid for by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who with considerable experience as a pilot including time in high performance jets served as commander. Iassacman intended the mission to be a fundraising event for St. Jude’s children’s hospital and it did in fact succeed in raising $100 million dollars for the charity, which Iassacman then matched with $100 million of his own.

The Inspiration 4 crew in their Dragon capsule ready for launch. Left to right are Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Haley Arceneux. (Credit: Business Insider)

The four person crew of Inspiration Four also included Sian Procotor a Doctor of Geology who had unsuccessfully tried out for the astronaut corp and a Lockheed Martin engineer named Chris Sembroski. The final crewmember was Haley Arceneux who is a physician’s assistant at St. Jude’s and is herself a childhood cancer survivor.

Launch of the Inspiration 4 mission. (Credit: Times of India)

The launch took place at two minutes after eight P.M. EDT on the 15th of September and the assent into orbit went perfectly. Space X even succeeded in recovering the rocket’s first stage, a once impossible achievement that has now become routine for them. Once in orbit the passengers had three days of floating in zero-gee and enjoying the sights of the Earth below, the Dragon capsule having been modified with a transparent cupola to allow the crew a panoramic view of our planet.

Since the Inspiration 4 mission wasn’t going to the International Space Station it’s docking hatch was modified to give the crew an awesome view of the Earth. (Credit: The New York Times.)

Splashdown came at about seven P.M. on the 18th and within an hour all four passengers were out of the capsule and waving from the deck of Space X’s recovery ship. The entire mission had gone without incident or problem of any kind, in other words it was a complete success.

Splashdown of the Inspiration 4 mission. Space X is getting so good at the mechanics of spaceflight that all this is becoming routine, which will allow NASA to go on to do bolder explorations. (Credit: The New York Times)

The whole trip was entirely arranged and conducted by Space X Corporation itself, the crew training; flight path and even the food selections were all made without any assistance or even input from NASA. If the Inspiration Four mission represents any kind of progress it is simply that, space travel is now no longer the monopoly of governments, instead it now resembles something like air travel in the 1920s as the first airline companies were being formed.

Pan Am’s Fleet of Clippers introduced the world to the concept of international air travel. Space X hopes to do much the same in space. (Credit: Midway Island)

And the four passengers aboard the Space X Dragon also helped set another record, the most people in space at the same time. You see there are currently seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Three are from NASA, two from the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos and one each from the Japanese Space Agency and the European Space Agency.

And for the first day of the Inspiration Four mission there were also three Chinese Taikonauts aboard their under construction space station the Tiangong. In fact the three Chinese space travelers were packing up and getting ready to end their three month long mission as the Space X rocket was launched. The trio of taikonauts landed their Shenzhou 12 capsule in the Gobi Desert on the morning of the 17th of September. While the members of the Shenzhou 12 may have been the first occupants of the Tiangong space station they will not be the last, China plans at least three more manned missions to Tiangong in the next few years.

The first crew of China’s Tiangong space station spent 3 months in orbit making it China’s longest space mission to date. (Credit: Space.com)

So at least for one day there were a total of 14 human beings in orbit at the same time in three different spacecraft. Hopefully this is an omen of the future as newer, perhaps larger space stations are built and more commercial launch vehicles become available. And hopefully within the next decade human beings will return to the Moon as well, this time to stay.

The Three crew members of the Shenzhou 12 mission to the Tiangong space station landed safely in the Gobi desert while the Inspiration 4 crew were in orbit. (Credit: Space News)

So for the next few decades space travel will continue to be reserved for those with deep pockets, whether government of private, just as air travel was 100 years ago. But things are finally starting to speed up, before too many years go by space launches will become routine, just like an airplane taking off from an airport.

NASA is already preparing for that day. Currently the space agency is considering about twelve proposals for space stations submitted under its new program Commercial Low-Earth-Orbit Destinations. The idea is similar to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program that developed Space X’s Dragon capsule.

Mock up of Bigelow Aerospace’s planned space station. (Credit: The New York Times)

The plan is for NASA to help fund, not totally fund the development of private space stations and then rent space on them as needed. The corporation that owns the station can then rent the rest of the station to other countries, or corporations or individuals, exactly as Space X did with Inspiration Four.

Axion Aerospace plans to build an addition to the current ISS and then, when the ISS is retired, use it as the foundation for their own station. (Credit: Space.com)

By year’s end NASA hopes to select two to four of the proposals and distribute funding totaling $400 million. Indeed NASA has already funded Axiom Aerospace Corporation to the tune of $140 million for modules that will be attached to the ISS beginning in 2024 and which Axiom hopes to use as a basis for its own space station once the ISS is retired.

Before I go I would like to mention one of NASA’s recent robotic missions that has also turned out to be a real success, the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. The original plans for the little helicopter, the first man-made aircraft to fly on another world, was to have it carry out three experimental test flights simply to see if flight of any kind was possible on Mars, where the atmosphere is only about 1.5% as dense as Earth’s.

Having already carried out four times as many flights as were originally planned the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars is another example of NASA not only doing the impossible but doing it better than even they thought they could! (Credit: SpaceNews)

Ingenuity passed those initial tests with ease and so the helicopter’s mission was expanded to allow the little flyer to act as a scout for it’s parent the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity has since made another 10 flights, checking out the terrain ahead of the rover while looking for anything interesting that the scientists back on Earth might want Perseverance to look over.

Like something out of a Hollywood movie the little Ingenuity helicopter (l) is stealing attention from the main attraction the Perseverance rover (r). (Credit: NASA’s Mars Exploration Program)

However conditions on Mars can change with the seasons and that includes the density of the atmosphere. Over the last few weeks the density in Jezero crater has dropped making it harder for Ingenuity’s rotors to develop enough thrust to get the helicopter off the ground.

In response the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Labouratory have had to speed up the rotational speed of Ingenuity’s rotors. So far this workaround has been successful but if the air density gets much lower increasing the speed even further might not work, or it might damage the helicopter’s motors.

Before long we may all feel that way! (Credit: The Week)

So how much longer Ingenuity will be capable of flying is questionable, still it has more than proven that not only can aircraft operate on Mars, but that there’s a lot to be gained by them doing so. The real proof of that may be that the Chinese space agency is already considering adding a helicopter to their next Mars lander!