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The Beijing Fangshan Satellite Laser Observatory has
a new method for finding space junk. CREDIT
Beijing Fangshan Satellite Laser Observatory.
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Science
Over the Edge
A
Roundup of Strange Science for the Month
Jan/Feb
2020
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In the
News:
Lasers Learn To Accurately Spot Space Junk - "The
possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field
is approximately 3,720 to one!" exclaimed C-3PO as Han Solo
directed the Millennium Falcon into an asteroid field in
"Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back." Earth's orbit is nowhere
near as dangerous, but after more than half a century of
space activity, collisions between jettisoned engines and
disintegrated spacecraft have formed a planetary scrapheap
that spacecraft need to evade. Scientists have developed
space junk identification systems, but it has proven tricky
to pinpoint the swift, small specks of space litter. A unique
set of algorithms for laser ranging telescopes, described
in the Journal of Laser Applications, by AIP Publishing,
has significantly improving the success rate of space debris
detection. "After improving the pointing accuracy of the
telescope through a neural network, space debris with a
cross sectional area of 1 meter squared and a distance of
1,500 kilometers can be detected," said Tianming Ma, from
the Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, Beijing and
Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin. Laser ranging technology
uses laser reflection from objects to measure their distance.
But the echo signal reflected from the surface of space
debris is very weak, reducing the accuracy. Previous methods
improved laser ranging pinpointing of debris but only to
a 1-kilometer level. Application of neural networks - algorithms
modeled on the human brain's sensory inputs, processing
and output levels - to laser ranging technologies has been
proposed previously. However, Ma's study is the first time
a neural network has significantly improved the pointing
accuracy of a laser-ranging telescope. Ma aims to further
refine the method. "Obtaining the precise orbit of space
debris can provide effective help for the safe operation
of spacecraft in orbit."
Closest-Ever
Approach To The Sun Gives New Insights Into The Solar Wind
- The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, which has flown
closer to the Sun than any mission before, has found new
evidence of the origins of the solar wind. NASA's Parker
Solar Probe was launched in August 2018. Its first results
are published today in a series of four papers in Nature,
with Imperial College London scientists among those interpreting
some of the key data to reveal how the solar wind is accelerated
away from the surface of the Sun. The solar wind is a stream
of charged particles released by the Sun that fills our
Solar System. It is responsible for the North and Southern
lights, but can also cause disruption during violent episodes
like solar flares and coronal mass ejections, knocking out
power grids and satellites. Now, an international team have
shown that bursty 'spikes' of solar wind originate in holes
in the Sun's outer atmosphere near its equator, and are
accelerated by magnetic phenomena as they flow away into
deep space and past the Earth. The new research suggests
that the spikes are generated by 'magnetic reconnection'
near the Sun, a process that pulls on the tense lines of
the Sun's magnetic field creates folds or 'switchbacks'.
These events last only a couple of minutes but release lots
of energy, accelerating the solar wind away in long tubes
that are approximately the diameter of the Earth. The finding
builds on data from the HELIOS missions, launched in the
1970s, the previous record-holders for the closest approach
to the Sun. Professor Tim Horbury from Imperial's Department
of Physics is a co-investigator on Parker Solar Probe's
FIELDS instrument, which is led by the University of California,
Berkeley. He said: "From HELIOS data we could see what might
be 'spikes' of faster solar wind, and now we have been able
to confirm their existence in striking detail with Parker
Solar Probe. "We usually think of the fast solar wind as
very smooth, but Parker Solar Probe saw surprisingly slow
wind with a large number of these little bursts and jets
of plasma, creating long tubes of fast wind containing plasma
with around twice the energy of the background solar wind."
Scientists
Uncover World's Oldest Forest - Scientists have discovered
remnants of the world's oldest fossil forest in a sandstone
quarry in Cairo, New York. It is believed the extensive
network of trees, which would have spread from New York
all the way into Pennsylvania and beyond, is around 386
million years old. This makes the Cairo forest around 2
or 3 million years older than what was thought to be the
world's oldest forest at Gilboa, also in New York State
and around 40 km away from the Cairo site. The new findings,
which have been published today in the journal Current Biology,
have thrown new light on the evolution of trees and the
transformative role they played in shaping the world we
live in today. A team led by scientists at Binghamton University,
New York State Museum and Cardiff University have mapped
over 3,000 square meters of the forest at the abandoned
quarry in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in the
Hudson Valley. Their investigations showed that the forest
was home to at least two types of trees: cladoxylopsids,
primitive tree-fern-like plants, which lacked flat green
leaves, and which also grew in vast numbers at Gilboa; and
Archaeopteris, which had a conifer-like woody trunk and
frond-like branches which had green flattened leaves. A
single example of a third type of tree was also uncovered,
which remained unidentified but could possibly have been
a lycopod. All these trees reproduced using only spores
rather than seeds. The team also reported a 'spectacular'
and extensive network of roots which were more than eleven
meters in length in some places which belonged to the Archaeopteris
trees. "It is surprising to see plants which were previously
thought to have had mutually exclusive habitat preferences
growing together on the ancient Catskill delta," said co-author
of the study Dr Chris Berry from Cardiff University's School
of Earth and Ocean Sciences. "This would have looked like
a fairly open forest with small to moderate sized coniferous-looking
trees with individual and clumped tree-fern like plants
of possibly smaller size growing between them." The research
team say that the Cairo forest is older than the one at
Gilboa because the fossils were lower down in the sequence
of rocks that occur in the Catskill mountains.
Archaeologists
Find Bronze Age Tombs Lined With Gold - Archaeologists
with the University of Cincinnati have discovered two Bronze
Age tombs containing a trove of engraved jewelry and artifacts
that promise to unlock secrets about life in ancient Greece.
Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, archaeologists in UC's classics
department, found the two beehive-shaped tombs in Pylos,
Greece, last year while investigating the area around the
grave of an individual they have called the "Griffin Warrior,"
a Greek man whose final resting place they discovered nearby
in 2015. Like the Griffin Warrior's tomb, the princely tombs
overlooking the Mediterranean Sea also contained a wealth
of cultural artifacts and delicate jewelry that could help
historians fill in gaps in our knowledge of early Greek
civilization. UC's team spent more than 18 months excavating
and documenting the find. The tombs were littered with flakes
of gold leaf that once papered the walls. "Like with the
Griffin Warrior grave, by the end of the first week we knew
we had something that was really important," said Stocker,
who supervised the excavation. "It soon became clear to
us that lightning had struck again," said Davis, head of
UC's classics department. The Griffin Warrior is named for
the mythological creature -- part eagle, part lion -- engraved
on an ivory plaque in his tomb, which also contained armor,
weaponry and gold jewelry. Among the priceless objects of
art was an agate sealstone depicting mortal combat with
such fine detail that Archaeology magazine hailed it as
a "Bronze Age masterpiece." Artifacts found in the princely
tombs tell similar stories about life along the Mediterranean
3,500 years ago, Davis said. A gold ring depicted two bulls
flanked by sheaves of grain, identified as barley by a paleobotanist
who consulted on the project.
Paving
The Way For Spintronic Rams: A Deeper Look Into A Powerful
Spin Phenomenon - Scientists
at Tokyo Institute of Technology(Tokyo Tech) explore a new
material combination that sets the stage for magnetic random
access memories, which rely on spin--an intrinsic property
of electrons-- and could outperform current storage devices.
Their breakthrough published in a new study describes a
novel strategy to exploit spin-related phenomena in topological
materials, which could spur several advances in the field
of spin electronics. Moreover, this study provides additional
insight into the underlying mechanism of spin-related phenomena.
Spintronics is a modern technological field where the "spin"
or the angular momentum of electrons takes a primary role
in the functioning of electronic devices. In fact, collective
spin arrangements are the reason for the curious properties
of magnetic materials, which are popularly used in modern
electronics. Researchers globally have been trying to manipulate
spin-related properties in certain materials, owing to a
myriad of applications in devices that work on this phenomenon,
especially in non-volatile memories. These magnetic non-volatile
memories, called MRAM, have the potential to outperform
current semiconductor memories in terms of power consumption
and speed. A team of researchers from Tokyo Tech, led by
Assoc. Prof. Pham Nam Hai, recently published a study in
Journal of Applied Physics on unidirectional spin Hall magnetoresistance
(USMR), a spin-related phenomenon that could be used to
develop MRAM cells with an extremely simple structure. The
spin Hall effect leads to the accumulation of electrons
with a certain spin on the lateral sides of a material.
The motivation behind this study was that the spin Hall
effect, which is particularly strong in materials known
as "topological insulators", can results in a giant USMR
by combining a topological insulator with a ferromagnetic
semiconductor.
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Science
Quote of the Month - "I
seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore,
and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." - Isaac
Newton
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What's
New at the Museum:
Bomarzo:
Grove of the Monsters - Gardens come in many varieties.
Some are minimalist like the famous Zen garden at the Ryoan-ji
temple in Kayoto, Japan. Others have fantastically intricate
designs, like the French formal gardens at the Palace of
Versailles in France. Perhaps the weirdest garden, however,
is located just outside the small village of Bomarzo, in
Italy. It contains some of the most horrific statuary that
one can imagine. >Full Story
Mysterious
Picture of the Month - What
is this?
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Ask
the Curator:
Vallée
and Bostrom - Is the idea that we are all just
living in a big computer simulation related to what
Jacques Vallée and people like that are talking about
when they try to explain UFO's as not extraterrestrial
craft but "control devices" and so on? That is, do
they mean that the ones behind the UFO's are the programmers
of this big simulation we're living in, who are doing
experiments on us by sending these weird, anomalous
phenomena and seeing how we deal with them? I never
really understood what Vallée was getting at till
I read the article on the world as a computer simulation
in the current edition of the Museum of Unnatural
Mystery. Thanks. - Alan Meyers
Dr.
Jacques F. Vallée, a computer scientist, venture capitalist
and former astronomer, has long been one of the "deep
thinkers" in the arena of Ufology. Born in France
in 1939 he became interested in the subject when he
observed a UFO in 1955. At first Vallée was convinced
that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft and published
his ideas in his book Anatomy of a phenomenon:
unidentified objects in space--a scientific appraisal.
By 1969, however, his thinking had changed and he
began to see UFOs and alien abduction reports as part
of a much larger phenomenon that included other paranormal
events. He outlined his thinking for this in his book
Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers.
Vallée suggested in his book that flying saucers and
alien visitors might not be from other planets, but
from other dimensions or even different time periods.
These ideas did not sit well with many UFO enthusiasts
and Vallée soon found himself an outcast among their
ranks, or as he put it a "heretic among heretics".
Vallée
sees one possible explanation of the UFO phenomenon
as that of a "control mechanism " with incidents as
deceptions created to manipulate people and society.
Sometimes this is done by other humans. For example,
we know the US Air Force encouraged UFO reports to
hide the flights of SR-71 Blackbird spy aircraft in
the 80's. The Soviet Union also did the same thing
to cover the launch of rockets that were not in compliance
with the SALT treaty they had signed.
Much
of the social manipulation caused by UFOs reports,
however, Vallée suggests are done by non-human entities
who have an agenda of which we are totally unaware.
Vallée's initial thinking was that these entities
were from another dimension, and were not operators
of a simulated world that we are living in (See last
month article on Living
in a Video Game). "There is a distinction to be
made between a Matrix-like virtual world and what
I first proposed in 'Messengers,' [Messengers of
Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults his 1979 book]
namely an information multiverse with fully physical
manifestations" said Vallée, in an interview with
SUB ROSA online magazine.
The
multiverse he is thinking about is related to some
of the interpretations of quantum theory which suggest
that reality consists of many nearly parallel universes.
If beings from one universe successfully figured out
how to cross to another universe we might interpret
them as extra terrestrials. A visitor moving from
one quantum parallel universe to another also might
be jumping in time also leading to the suggestion
that flying saucers are our ancestors' attempts to
manipulate their past.
Even
though Vallée initial ideas with control mechanisms
didn't involve our living in a simulated universe,
in my opinion the idea that UFO incidents (and other
paranormal experiences) are attempts by those outside
the simulation to influence our society seem to make
just as much sense as the multi-dimensional approach.
Remember Vallée's initial thinking on this subject
was published in 1979 long before Bostrom's 2002 paper
on the simulation argument came out. Perhaps Vallée,
after pondering Bostrom's thinking, will address this
possibility directly in some future book.
Have a question?
Click here to send it to us.
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In
History:
First Northern Light Photo Made - On January 5th in
1892, the first successful auroral (the northern lights)
photograph was captured by the German physicist Martin Brendel.
Though it was a blurred, low-contrast picture, it did convey
some sense of the nature of the aurora. Photographing the
aurora in those days was a difficult task as the light is
generally feeble and flickering and photographic materials
of the time required a long exposures.
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In
the Sky:
January
Meteor Shower - The early morning of 1/4/2020 will feature
a brief but sometimes spectacular meteor shower named after
the northern constellation Quadrans Muralis. The Quadrantids
can sometimes produce more than 100 meteors per hour. It
appears that viewing conditions this year will be good as
the first-quarter Moon sets around 1 a.m. local time and
the shower will peak near 2-3 AM. You should be able to
see them anywhere in the sky.
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Observed:
Pilot
that Recorded a UFO Speaks - Chad Underwood a Navy pilot
who recorded an UFO object in 2004 incident talked about
the encounter in an interview with New York magazine last
week, but he said that he didn't want his name attached
to speculation about it being an alien spaceship. Instead
he insisted that he just thought of the object as a UFO
(Unknown Flying Object). The incident occurs on November
10, 2004 and Underwood recorded the encounter using an infrared
camera. David Fravor, his commanding officer, spotted the
unusual shape during a flight-training exercise. For over
a decade, Underwood has refused to speak about the encounter,
however, in an interview with New York magazine, he exposed
what it was like to capture the UFO on video. "At no point
did I want to speculate as to what I thought this thing
was - or be associated with, you know, 'alien beings' and
'alien aircraft' and all that stuff," Underwood told the
magazine. "It is just what we call a UFO. I couldn't identify
it. It was flying. And it was an object. It's as simple
as that." His encounter is only one of three known instances
in which Navy pilots caught an unknown aerial object (the
Navy prefers that term over UFO) on camera.
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LGM:
Zeep
and Meep are on a well deserved vacation. In their place
we feature highlights from their past adventures.
LGM
Archive 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009,
2010, 2011,
2012,
2013,
2014
Copyright Lee Krystek 2020. All Rights Reserved.
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