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Sungrazer C/2024 S1 ATLAS broke apart at perihelion.

Alas, a ‘Great Halloween Comet’ was not to be. The Universe teased us just a bit this month, with the potential promise of a second naked eye comet in October: C/2024 S1 ATLAS. Discovered on the night of September 27th by the Asteroid Terrestrial Last-alert impact System (ATLAS) all-sky survey, this inbound comet was surprisingly bright and active for its relative distance from the Sun at the time of discovery. This gave the comet the potential to do what few sungrazers have done: survive a blisteringly close perihelion passage near the Sun.

S1 ATLAS on final solar approach. NASA/ESA/SOHO Perishing at Perihelion

But as perihelion day approached yesterday on October 28th, things started to look grim. S1 ATLAS began to resemble a garden variety Kreutz sungrazer more and more. Little more than an icy rumble pile on final approach, the comet went in the inner field of view of the Solar Heliospheric Observatory’s (SOHO) LASCO C2 imager and behind the central occulting disk yesterday morning… and failed to exit.

Comet S1 ATLAS ends its days, as seen via SOHO’s LASCO C2 imager. NASA/SOHO

Perihelion distance (and time of expiry) for the comet was 330,600 miles/532,000 kilometers from the surface of the Sun yesterday, at around 7:30 AM EDT/11:30 Universal Time. Curiously, the final estimates for the comet put its orbital period at 953 years, suggesting that this may not have been its first passage through the inner solar system.

The finale for Comet S1 ATLAS, just hours prior to perihelion. ESA/NASA/SOHO/NRL

The comet gave us a few tell-tale signs that it was under-performing leading up to perihelion. After a brief outburst around its discovery 1.094 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun, the comet then faded considerably in early October. The lackluster performance was confirmed as it entered the field of view of SOHO’s LASCO C3 viewer this weekend. Still, its final solar dive put on a good show.

As I’m sure you’re aware, little comet ATLAS didn’t make it. ? It was clearly already a pile of rubble by the time it reached the LASCO field of view, and solar radiation took care of the clean-up for us. ???? pic.twitter.com/s8HrchtWnF

— Karl Battams (@SungrazerComets) October 28, 2024

A Brief History of Sungrazers

The demise of Comet S1 ATLAS yesterday brought to mind memories from early on in my Universe Today writing career of another great comet that wasn’t: C/2012 S1 ISON. That particular comet met its end on U.S. Thanksgiving Day 2013. The last great surprise for sungrazers was Comet W3 Lovejoy in 2011-2012, which survived a perihelion just 87,000 miles/140,000 kilometers from the surface of the Sun (!), and went on to become a great comet. Another example showing us what is possible was Comet Ikeya-Seki, which survived perihelion 280,000 miles/450,000 miles from the Sun in 1965 and became one of the great comets of the 20th century.

Light curve magnitude comparisons of comets Ikeya-Seki, W3 Lovejoy and S1 ATLAS in the lead up to their respective perihelia. Credit: Jakub Cerný

Astronomer Heinrich Kreutz discovered the existence on the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets in the 1890s. The earliest documented report of a sungrazer was from Greece by Aristotle and contemporary historian Ephorus in 371 BC. Prior to 1979, only nine confirmed sungrazers were known of… the launch of the joint NASA European Space Agency’s SOHO mission in 1995 changed the game considerably. Now, SOHO’s sungrazer tally after over a quarter of a century in space is 5,065 comets and counting. It turns out, we were still missing lots of what was passing through the inner solar system, all this time.

More in Store?

Last week, the NOAA revealed the successor for SOHO’s coronagraph aboard its GOES-19 satellite. The CCOR-1 (Compact Coronagraph) should start releasing public images in early 2025.

This comes as the ‘other’ October comet, C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS fades from view. A3 T-ATLAS is now outbound at +6th magnitude in the constellation Ophiuchus. The comet had a decent evening apparition post perihelion a few weeks ago. The spiky ‘anti-tail’ provided an amazing view.

Are there any great comets on tap for 2025? Well, as of writing this, there’s only one comet with real potential to reach naked eye visibility in 2025: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS. This comet reaches perihelion 0.094 AU from the Sun on January 13th. G3 ATLAS and ‘may’ top -1st magnitude or brighter.

S1 ATLAS may have joined the ranks of comets that failed to live up to expectations… but you just never know. Its fast-paced story from discovery to demise shows us just how quickly the next bright comet could make itself known. Keep watching the skies: its only a matter of time.

The post Death of a Comet: S1 Didn’t Survive its Sungrazing Plummet appeared first on Universe Today.

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I’ve always longed to go to Zion National Park in Utah, as it’s renowned for its beauty. My friend Phil Ward and I drove there for most of the day yesterday. First, a bit about its geology from Wikipedia:

The nine known exposed geologic formations in Zion National Park are part of a super-sequence of rock units called the Grand Staircase. Together, these formations represent about 150 million years of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation in that part of North America. The formations exposed in the Zion area were deposited as sediment in very different environments:

• The warm, shallow (sometimes advancing or retreating) sea of the Kaibab and Moenkopi formations
• Streams, ponds, and lakes of the Chinle, Moenave, and Kayenta formations
• The vast desert of the Navajo and Temple Cap formations
• The dry near-shore environment of the Carmel Formation

Uplift affected the entire region, known as the Colorado Plateaus, by slowly raising these formations more than 10,000 feet (3,000 m) higher than where they were deposited.[54] This steepened the stream gradient of the ancestral Virgin and other rivers on the plateau.

Click the photos to enlarge them. You will find that there are more pictures of chipmunks and people feeding them than there are of the landscapes. Shoot me–I love chipmunks (and all animals).

First, I affirm my credentials as a Zionist. I’m wearing a hat that someone gave me, and it reads, à la the Larry David show, “Curb Your Antisemitism”:

The landscape is stunning, so let’s just look at some photos.

Sandstone cliffs, red but topped with some white sediments:

Even though it’s dry here, plants and even trees manage to eke out a living on the bare rock:

Some of the cliffs are topped with plateaus:

A panoramic view. Definitely click once or several times to enlarge:

There are all kinds of wave patterns in the sedimentary layers:

We had a mild hike up Canyon Overlook Trail (1 mile long) to get to this stunning viewpoint looking down into Zion Canyon.

Below, my friend Phil Ward at the overlook. He’s a Professor of Entomology at the University of California at Davis, and I’ve known him since he arrived there in the early 1980s.  His speciality is ants, and although one is not allowed to collect in National Parks without a permit (I used to get one to collect flies in Death Valley), he never leaves home without his ant-collecting kit, which includes ant bait, and that includes cookie crumbs.  It turns out that although we couldn’t collect ants, we used the bait to collect chipmunks (see below).

There were at least four species of flowers along the trail. This one is a California fuchsia (Epilobium canum):

Life is ubiquitous and tenacious, even in environments as dry and hostile as Zion.  Where water seeps through the rocks, plants and mosses about, and I think this is maidenhair fern (Adiantun pedatum aleuticum).

A great treat awaited us at the overlook. Because many tourists linger there for the view, the local chipmunks have learned to hang out there to beg for noms. They are lovely, tame, as fast as quicksilver, and will even dive into your backpack if you leave it open.  Phil gave me some ant bait (crumbled cookies), and, sure enough, the chipmunks went all over me to get them. (This reminds me of the Botany Pond Squirrels climbing up m leg for nuts.)

There are three species of chipmunk in Zion; I believe this one is the Uinta chipmunk (Neotamias umbrinus). It’s related to the East’s common Eastern chipmunk  (Tamias striatus), and used to be considered the same species, but now it’s been placed in a different genus.

The visitors were entranced by these rodents (they are as light as a feather, and when they climb upon you, it’s barely detectable). And so people pulled out their hiking food and gave some to the ‘munks. Sometimes three or four chipmunks would climb on a person at once. This woman is obviously delighted.

I love people being happy when interacting with animals.

A close-up of a nomming chipmunk:

This woman was part of a group of visiting British tourists. Since chipmunks are exclusively North American, it’s likely that this is her first close encounter with one. Like everyone, she was delighted when they took food. (And yes, I know you’re not supposed to feed the wildlife, but seriously, how can you resist?)

A two-fisted feed:

Look how happy she is! (And, I’m sure, so were the chipmunks.)

A closeup.  Phil and I discussed the evolutionary significance of the striping pattern; Phil thought it may be camouflage, but it seemed to me to not yield a very cryptic pattern. Perhaps, I thought, it was for members of the species to recognize each other, but I’ve always been wary of “species recognition” traits because it’s hard to see how they’d evolve (the trait and recognition of the trait must evolve simultaniously). In the end, we decided, “Well, we’re evolutionary biologists, and we could make up a hundred explanations, but how would we test them?”

Look at these little beauties, with their racing stripes, fluffy tails, and huge black eyes!

And a top view. As I said, they are so light—Uitna chipmunks weigh about 67 g, or 2.4 ounces—that you can barely feel them when they climb on you. And, like squirrels, when they take a tidbit from your hand you can feel their tiny claws.

Today, we go to Bryce Canyon National Park, famous for its geological “hoodoes“, tall and thin pillars of rock very different from what you see in Zion. Here’s a picture from Wikipedia:

Attribution: I, Luca Galuzzi; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

Peaks in appetite and metabolism driven by our body's inbuilt clocks mean that eating at the wrong time can have consequences for our health and waistline

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is preoccupied:

A: Can you have a look at this article?
Hili: Not now.

Ja: Czy możesz spojrzeć na ten artykuł?
Hili: Nie teraz

Seven creepy stories from seven listeners, and seven guesses by me.

In May 2023, the ESA’s Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), currently in orbit around Mars, sent a signal to Earth to simulate a possible extraterrestrial transmission. As part of the multidisciplinary art project “A Sign in Space,” the purpose was to engage citizen scientists in helping to decode it. The campaign was inspired by Cosmicomics by Italian writer/journalist Italo Calvino, a series of short stories exploring various scientific principles. The project is partnered with the SETI Institute, the Green Bank Observatory, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF).

After three radio astronomy observatories on Earth intercepted the message, the challenge was to extract the message from the raw data of the radio signal and then decode it. After ten days, more than 5000 citizen scientists worldwide gathered online and used their combined resources to extract the signal. After a year of attempts, two U.S. citizens – the father-daughter team of Ken and Keli Chaffin – managed to crack the code after days of simulations. They discovered that the message consisted of five clusters of white dots and lattices against a black background, suggesting cellular formation and life!

The project was founded by Daniela de Paulis, a media artist and licensed radio operator currently serving as the Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and the Green Bank Observatory. Daniela and a small group of astronomers and computer scientists crafted the message with support from the ESA, the SETI Institute, and the Green Bank Observatory. On June 7th, 2024, she received the decoded image, which depicted five amino acids—the very building blocks of life—in a retro-like format.

Ken Chaffin included the following message with the solution he and his daughter submitted:

“My decoded message is a simple image with 5 amino acids displayed in a universal (hopefully) organic molecular diagram notation and a few single pixel points that appear between the clusters and molecular diagrams. I used a Margolus reversible 2×2 block cellular automata (BCA) with the simplest reversible rule, which is called ‘single point (CCW) rotation,’ acting only on 2×2 cells that contain only a single point or pixel per the header instructions, conserving pixel or point count, 625 pixels in and 625 out. The starmap image appears to have the molecular forms encoded in a 3D local degree of freedom set of basis vectors (also shown in the header).

“The CA effectively transforms and projects this 3D info onto a 2D plane. I can run my Unity game engine based simulator forwards (CCW rotation) and backwards (CW rotation) in time and transform the starmap representation to the amino acid diagrams in 6625 generations and reverse the rotation process to transform the amino acid diagrams back to the starmap image in 6625 generations. I say starmap but I really read from the binary message file each run. The decoded image is only visible for 1 frame lasting about 1/10th of a second, but I can pause and manually step as well as reverse my CA engine…Here is a screen capture of my decoded image [see below].

“The ‘blocks’ have 1, 6, 7, or 8 ‘pixels’ representing the atomic number of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Single and double bonds are designated as single and double lines. C-H bond angle is indicated with a caret ^ sign. These signs were produced by the CA. I have not edited the image in any way. It’s absolutely obvious to me what this is, as well as to my chemist friend I ran this by. It is amazing to watch all of the CA gliders or spaceships carry the binary bits of the message all over the ‘galaxy’ and then suddenly come together in coherence and meaning…”

The image shows the Chaffis solution. Credit: A Sign in Space

Now that the tasks of extracting and decoding the message are complete, Daniela and her colleagues are taking a step back to observe how citizen scientists are shaping the challenge. The next step is to interpret the message and determine what it was meant to convey, a task that currently remains open. According to the project team, there are several ways for the public to engage, which include using the description and solution provided by the Chaffins to conduct independent analysis and post the results on the project’s Discord channel.

Participants must include a description of the method they used so that their approach can be replicated and verified. The possibilities are endless, ranging from an attempt at communication, cultural exchange, or a threat of invasion. Ultimately, this exercise aims to determine whether or not humanity is ready to make first contact with an alien civilization.

Further Reading: ESA

The post Remember that “Alien Signal” Sent by the ExoMars Orbiter Last Year? It’s Just Been Decoded appeared first on Universe Today.

China's carbon emissions may have peaked in 2023, as figures suggest its output has plateaued so far in 2024

Inspired by large language models, researchers developed a training technique that pools diverse data to teach robots new skills.

Inspired by large language models, researchers developed a training technique that pools diverse data to teach robots new skills.

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Researchers have invented a new solvent-free polymer for digital light printing (DLP), a type of 3D printing that essentially pulls solid objects out of a shallow pool of resin one layer at a time. Besides eliminating a well-known issue of finished objects shrinking after printing, the lack of solvent also results in improved mechanical properties of the part while maintaining the ability to degrade in the body.

Researchers have invented a new solvent-free polymer for digital light printing (DLP), a type of 3D printing that essentially pulls solid objects out of a shallow pool of resin one layer at a time. Besides eliminating a well-known issue of finished objects shrinking after printing, the lack of solvent also results in improved mechanical properties of the part while maintaining the ability to degrade in the body.

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Materials scientists are exploring the physical properties of MXenes, a fast-growing family of two-dimensional materials with potential for many nanotechnology applications.

Engineers found a way to help airplanes avoid stall with lightweight plastic flaps that flutter with pressure changes. The flaps mimick a class of feathers that are key to birds' most daring aerial maneuvers.

Wearable electronic devices are potential tools to monitor blood glucose levels (BGLs) among people with diabetes, but their limited size and power lead to noticeable measurement errors. In a recent study, researchers developed a screening technique that can filter out low-quality data in a preprocessing step, enhancing the accuracy of BGL estimations. Their findings could pave the way to convenient glucose monitoring using consumer electronics, eliminating the need for finger pricks.