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It’s already the end of the “work” week: Friday, November 22, 2024, and in a week I’ll be in Poland! It’s National Cranberry Relish Day, and I suppose one spoonful per year, ingested at Thanksgiving dinner, won’t hurt you, but the stuff is pretty dire.  Jellied cranberries are better. Here’s how they are grown, which requires lots of water:

It was on this day in 1963 that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. I remember the moment exactly: it was announced over our junior high-school public address system.  It was one of those incidents that never lets you forget how you learned about it. 

It’s also National Kimchi Day in South Korea, which must be a big celebration, and Humane Society Anniversary Day in the U.S.,

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I reported yesterday (or rather, stole from other people’s reports) about Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration as Attorney General. Here’s some more information from the NYT:

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said it was “pretty obvious” that Gaetz didn’t have the votes to be confirmed.

. . .Matt Gaetz told people close to him that he concluded after conversations with senators and their staffs that there were at least four Republican senators who were implacably opposed to his nomination: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Curtis of Utah.

Gaetz told confidants he did not want to get in a protracted confirmation battle and delay Trump from getting his attorney general in place immediately at the start of his administration.

. . . . Gaetz’s withdrawal creates a vacuum at the apex of the Justice Department but not necessarily instability, even if his replacement is not confirmed quickly. Trump has already tapped two of his personal lawyers — Todd Blanche and Emil Bove — to top operational posts; both are well-regarded department veterans whose appointments were welcomed by some career department staff.

Here are the candidates who remain, and it’s a pretty sad lot (from the NYT).  Noem, Rubio, Kennedy, and Hegseth. .  oh my!

*Speaking of Hegseth, the WSJ has an article titled, “Trump team blindsided by latest details of sexual-assault allegations against Hegseth.”

Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team were blindsided by the latest details to emerge about a 2017 sexual-assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, increasing their frustration with the man nominated to lead the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter.

The transition team, which hadn’t been told about the original allegation before announcing Hegseth, was surprised again late Wednesday night when the Monterey, Calif., city police released a report about the 2017 allegations. The heavily redacted report details a boozy night at a hotel in California, a poolside argument and two conflicting versions of what ultimately took place inside Hegseth’s hotel room.

The Monterey police said a redacted version of the report had been released to Hegseth on March 30, 2021. The transition team wasn’t told that a copy of the police report had been released to Hegseth previously, the people familiar with the discussions said.

“This is another instance of people being blindsided, so I think there’s rising frustration there,” said a person familiar with the transition. While the president-elect is still behind Hegseth for now, “if this continues to be a drumbeat and the press coverage continues to be bad, particularly on TV, then I think there is a real chance that he loses Trump’s confidence.”

Hegseth told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday after meetings with senators that “the matter was fully investigated and I was completely cleared.” Through his lawyer, he has acknowledged the sexual encounter but said it was consensual, while the woman who made the allegation hasn’t spoken publicly.

Officially, Trump’s transition team is standing by Hegseth. “This report corroborates what Mr. Hegseth’s attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated, and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, said in a statement.

The “blindsiding” is either because Hegseth hid stuff from the Trump team or they simply didn’t ask for a full account of every allegation against him. Hegseth admits he paid off one woman, but did so only to protect his career from a damaging lawsuit.  Now his career is endangered without a lawsuit. From NPR:

After the woman hired an attorney a couple of years later to consider a lawsuit, both parties reached an agreement. Parlatore noted in his statement to the Post that the MeToo movement was gaining momentum at the time, and he told CBS News that Hegseth would have faced “an immediate horror storm” had he been publicly accused of sexual assault, a quote that Parlatore confirmed to NPR.

My judgment: like Gaetz, he will have to withdraw.

*The Senate voted on a Bernie-Sanders-led measure to block the sale of weapons to Israel, but the vote failed.

The Senate on Wednesday voted down a measure, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders and a handful of Democrats, that sought to block the sale of some $20 billion in U.S.-made weapons to Israel, in a last-ditch effort to limit the carnage, suffering and destruction caused by its 13-month war in Gaza.

The measure failed, with none of the three resolutions it comprised garnering more than 19 supporting votes. But the effort — the first time Congress has voted on whether to block an arms sale to America’s closest Middle East ally — also served as a bellwether of the dissatisfaction within President Joe Biden’s own party about his handling of the Middle East crisis.

Wednesday’s vote, spurred by Sanders’s filing of rarely invoked joint resolutions of disapproval, follows the Biden administration’s determination a week ago that it would not take punitive action against Israel for failing to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza. The administration in October warned Israel that absent “concrete measures” to surge food, medicine and other basic supplies into the ravaged Palestinian territory within 30 days, it could risk losing some U.S. military assistance.

Biden’s decision not to act — after international aid groups and the United Nations said the crisis in northern Gaza had reached catastrophic levels over the past month — infuriated liberals, who have called on him repeatedly to hold Israel accountable for a war that has killed roughly 2 percent of Gaza’s population, according to local health authorities. The International Criminal Court, meanwhile, has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes, charges he strenuously denies.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, was slow in the first few months of the war to join other liberals’ calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, even after thousands of Palestinian civilians had been killed under Israeli bombardment. That reticence drew a backlash from his progressive supporters. He has since been among the most vocal critics of the administration’s approach to Netanyahu.

As far as I can learn, the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza is manufactured. While some people may not get enough to eat on some days, nobody is starving to death, though Hamas and the UN pretends that there are.  And remember that 100 food trucks going into Gaza the other day were hijacked, and it’s probable that the hijackers were from Hamas (who else would have that power?). Finally, there are 14 field hospitals in Gaza as well as some of the larger hospitals are still working.

Here is the list of Senators who voted against Israeli aid include Elizabeth Warren (expected) but also Dick Durbin, my own Senator. I have written him asking for an explanation.

*The International Criminal Court issued two arrest warrants for war crimes: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

In a massive legal bombshell, the International Criminal Court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza, an unprecedented step that put the two at risk of being detained in much of the world.

The three judges of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I issued the warrants unanimously on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, which the court’s top prosecutor Karim Khan alleges were committed during the ongoing war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

The decision marked the first time the ICC has ever issued arrest warrants against leaders of a democratic country.

In a massive legal bombshell, the International Criminal Court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza, an unprecedented step that put the two at risk of being detained in much of the world.

The three judges of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I issued the warrants unanimously on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, which the court’s top prosecutor Karim Khan alleges were committed during the ongoing war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

The decision marked the first time the ICC has ever issued arrest warrants against leaders of a democratic country.

The court also issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed by an IDF strike in Gaza in July. Khan had sought arrest warrants for Deif and slain Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar for the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.

Since neither Israel nor the US have accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC, it doesn’t really affect our relationships, but both men are subject to arrest if they set foot in 120 other countries, though other countries often don’t bother to carry out what the ICC wants.  Countries who said they would arrest either man include Italy, France, Canada (of course), Jordan, and the UK. The US has rejected the warrants, and Argentina, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

The United States rejected a decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief, a White House National Security Council spokesperson said.

“The United States fundamentally rejects the Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials. We remain deeply concerned by the Prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” the spokesperson said, adding the US is discussing next steps with its partners.

I don’t know if this case will be argued out before the ICC, or whether Israel will send lawyers to defend Netanyahu and Gallant.  Better call Natasha Hausdorff! Here she is on the allegations, speaking yesterday for ten minutes on Radio Times about the charges:

*The Washington Post’s op-ed columnis Jennifer Rubin says that conventional news in papers, social media, and on television is dying, but one venue is burgeoning, and should be a model of how the news is conveyed: ProPublica, a nonprofit funded by philanthropists and foundations. It was the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, and has won several more, as well as other awards.

The plight of the news business has gotten steadily worse over the past decade. Cable TV networks are shedding audience share at an alarming rate. Increasingly, they seemed to have forgotten who their audience even is. The hosts of “Morning Joe” visiting Mar-a-Lago was the sort of move, judging from the backlash, that is likely to increase its progressive audience’s flight from MSNBC. CNN, in its effort to be all things to all people, is also hemorrhaging viewers. Many national newspapers are losing subscribers (and hollowing out their coverage), and local media has been shriveling for years. (The Post’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate unleashed an exodus of hundreds of thousands of readers who had expected a clarion voice in defense of democracy.)

It is not merely this shrinkage in conventional news consumption that should be alarming. The preponderance of voters who get no news whatsoever suggests the very notion of an “informed electorate” might become a thing of the past.

However, there is a part of the news ecosystem that seems to be growing by leaps and bounds: nonprofit news, especially the juggernaut ProPublica, which has been responsible for buckets of scoops that for-profit media have missed.

ProPublica has reported on everything from the actual tax rates paid by billionaires to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s financial scandals to the story of a Georgia woman whose death resulted from the state’s abortion law. It has run stories on everything from how “Opponents of Missouri Abortion Rights Amendment Turn to Anti-Trans Messaging and Misinformation” to how “Tribal College Campuses Are Falling Apart. The U.S. Hasn’t Fulfilled Its Promise to Fund the Schools.” One of its most recent investigations revealed, “Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs.” (You come away wondering what else you are missing relying on for-profit media.)

I recently spoke with Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor. He described the extraordinary expansion of an experiment that began in 2008 with a $10 million budget. Since then, its national coverage and staff (now about 150) have boomed, its budget has increased to $50 million, and it has created hubs across the country to fill the gap in regional and state news. It went from 36,000 donors in 2022 to 55,000 today.

Starting with a single hub in Illinois, it has added others in the South, Southwest, Northwest, Midwest, Texas (in collaboration with the Texas Tribune) and New York. It has received seven Pulitzer Prizes, five Peabody Awards, eight Emmy Awards and 15 George Polk Awards in the short time it has operated

Moreover, ProPublica has pioneered an inventive partnership with local papers all over the country. ProPublica provides an enterprising investigative reporter with salary for a year plus the infrastructure necessary to report the story, including editors, research assistance and lawyers.

I have never read this site before, but will start doing so. One problem is that we need more than one nonprofit news site if there’s to be competition, yet grant and foundation dollars are limited, so this can’t completely replace the for-profit news. Further, I don’t know if the site has any biases at all; readers who look at it should weigh in below. Finally, it is an investigative reporting site, and so if you want breaking news you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili thinks the fallen leaves are rubbish (Malgorzata says that, in Poland, Trump is held responsible for everything bad that America does):

Hili: Autumn has made a terrible mess. Andrzej: It’s all Trump’s fault. Hili: You have been listening to the BBC again. In Polish: Hili: Jesień strasznie naśmieciła. Ja: Wszystko przez Trumpa. Hili: Znowu słuchałeś BBC.

*******************

From Jesus of the Day. Ah, the good old days! I never had this female-attracting collar. What an outfit!

From Things with Faces: a weirdly-marked tuxedo cat:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy, a lovely doormat:

Masih didn’t tweet anything new today, but here’s something from J. K. Rowling, who’s decided to publicize those people who threaten her online:

In which both the upside and the downside of the new block function are summed up perfectly. pic.twitter.com/fiVwd2fAgq

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 21, 2024

One I retweeted, and I may have posted it before:

I love this, especially “Fraaaaaaance!” https://t.co/r5TvbHWu88

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 21, 2024

x

I’ll be at this meeting along with Luana on a panel on censorship in science, but there are a gazillion other to see, as Lukianoff notes:

Looking forward to @USCDornsife‘s Censorship in the Sciences conf in Jan where I’ll be presenting alongside @jon_rauch @Musa_alGharbi @LKrauss1 @PsychRabble @ImHardcory @JMchangama & many more!https://t.co/e09oCbmh3k

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) November 20, 2024

I am pretty sure this is for real, but it’s horrible.  It’s religion, Jake!

Sorry, but if your religion allows old men to marry young girls like this, maybe it’s time to have a conversation with yourself and realize your religion is not a religion of peace.

It’s pure evil! pic.twitter.com/P6hGOy3uXR

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) November 20, 2024

One from my feed that I retweeted with a comment:

This is a fantastic commercial. If you don’t tear up, you’re made of stone. https://t.co/XXzcJEBFLw

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 21, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Apparently too old to live, this Dutch man was gassed at 63 upon arrival at Auschwitz. https://t.co/kbla6SITWW

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 22, 2024

Two posts from Professor Cobb. I want this brick badly!

Dramatic paws.Norwich.#WallsOnWednesday

— Duncan Mackay (@theduncanmackay.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T09:29:35.883Z

Living groups of animals originated quickly:

Our latest, by Emily Carlisle, Zongjun Yin, Davide Pisani and myself: Ediacaran origin and Ediacaran-Cambrian diversification of Metazoa http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

— Philip Donoghue (@phil-donoghue.bsky.social) 2024-11-15T17:53:30.375Z

New technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are growing in scale –though their effect on the climate remains negligible

Kazuo Ishiguro’s heartbreaking dystopian novel of young love and organ donation has been superbly adapted for the stage

Kelly Weinersmith, co-author of A City on Mars, the latest pick for our New Scientist Book Club, and Cat Bohannon lay out the reasons why it might not be such a great idea to be pregnant on another planet

There is no evidence that advertisers use covert recordings of conversations to target people with adverts, an accusation widely denied by the industry, and yet this belief persists

Had laptop class doctors been willing to listen to doctors who worked on COVID units, they wouldn't have said so many absurd things.

The post Laptop Class Doctors Think Doctors Who Treat Patients Are Lazy, Dumb, Cowardly, Sheep first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Creatine is commonly associated with athletes and bodybuilders, but the popular supplement seems to have broad benefits on everything from ageing to brain function

A massive collision of galaxies sparked by one travelling at a scarcely-believable 2 million mph (3.2 million km/h) has been seen in unprecedented detail by one of Earth's most powerful telescopes. The dramatic impact was observed in Stephan's Quintet, a nearby galaxy group made up of five galaxies first sighted almost 150 years ago. It sparked an immensely powerful shock akin to a 'sonic boom from a jet fighter' -- the likes of which are among the most striking phenomena in the Universe.

Researchers have succeeded in building a quantum computer gate based on a double-transmon coupler (DTC), which had been proposed theoretically as a device that could significantly enhance the fidelity of quantum gates. Using this, they achieved a fidelity of 99.92 percent for a two-qubit device known as a CZ gate and 99.98 percent for a single-qubit gate.

Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer layers and preparing to explode as a supernova.

Astronomers have been observing the huge star, named WOH G64, since its discovery in the 1970s. It’s one of the largest known stars, and also one of the most luminous and massive red supergiants (RSGs). The star is surrounded by an envelope of expelled star-stuff, which could indicate it’s getting ready to explode.

WOH G64 isn’t in the Milky Way; it’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy. Getting these detailed image is quite a feat for the ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer. It’s also quite an accomplishment for the team of scientists behind the image.

They’ve published their images and the results of their observations of the star in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Their research is titled “Imaging the innermost circumstellar environment of the red supergiant WOH G64 in the Large Magellanic Cloud.” The lead author is Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile.

“This star is one of the most extreme of its kind, and any drastic change may bring it closer to an explosive end.”

Jacco van Loon, study co-author, Keele Observatory

“Significant mass loss in the red supergiant (RSG) phase is of great importance for the evolution of massive stars before they end their life in a supernova (SN) explosion,” the researchers write in their paper. Understanding the progenitors to supernovae (SNe) is important because of the role they play in the Universe. These massive stars forge heavy elements through nucleosynthesis then spread them out into their surroundings when they explode. These heavy elements make rocky planets possible. SNe shockwaves can also compress gas in their vicinities, which can trigger the birth of new stars. Better images of stars approaching their explosive ends help astronomers understand them better.

“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” lead author Ohnaka said.

WOH G64 (WOH hereafter) is a whopping 160,000 light-years away. Even though the red supergiant is a behemoth that’s 2,000 times larger than the Sun, that’s an enormous distance. It’s all because of the VLTI and one of its newer instruments, called GRAVITY. It’s a powerful instrument that was installed on the VLTI in 2015.

When Ohnaka and his colleagues saw the images, they were buoyed with excitement. The images show a cocoon of dust surrounding the star, evidence that it’s convulsed and shed some of its outer layers.

“We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star,” said lead author Ohnaka. “We are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion.”

This artist’s reconstruction shows the star’s main features. The star is surrounded by an egg-shaped dust cocoon, with a wider ring or torus of dust. Astronomers are less certain about the shape and size of the outer ring, which requires more observations for clarity. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Ohnaka and his colleagues have been observing WOH for a long time, but had to wait for better instruments to get a closer look.

Among other things, they noticed that the star has become dimmer over the last decade.

Gerd Weigelt is an astronomy professor at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and a co-author of the research. “We have found that the star has been experiencing a significant change in the last 10 years, providing us with a rare opportunity to witness a star’s life in real time,” Weigelt said. In their final life stages, red supergiants like WOH G64 shed their outer layers of gas and dust in a process that can last thousands of years.

Jacco van Loon, the director of the Keele Observatory at Keele University in the UK has been observing WOH since the 1990s. “This star is one of the most extreme of its kind, and any drastic change may bring it closer to an explosive end,” Keele said.

With the more limited data available in the past, Ohnaka modelled what the dust environment might look like. Those models and observations predicted a different shape than the GRAVITY images reveal.

The images show an elongated, compact emission region in near-infrared (NIR) surrounding the star. This suggests that hot new dust has formed near the star, which helps obscure the star itself. The star’s NIR continuum has shifted in the last decade, which also supports the new dust hypothesis. Earlier images from before 2003 show more hydrogen absorption than recent images.

Other observations of RSG stars also show that their circumstellar environments aren’t spherical. For example, dust surrounding the remnant of SN1987A is also not spherical. Astrophysicists think that this dust was shed by SN1987A’s progenitor star before it evolved into a blue supergiant and exploded.

The elongated, cocoon shape of the emissions has two potential explanations. “The elongated emission may be due to a bipolar outflow along the axis of the dust torus,” the authors explain. “Alternatively, the elongation may be caused by the interaction with an unseen companion.”

This reconstructed GRAVITY image of WOH G64 is from the research and clearly shows the elongated, cocoon shape. Image Credit: Ohnaka et al. 2024.

The non-spherical structures are common, and researchers want to understand this phenomenon better. “Given the high multiplicity rate among massive stars, the asymmetric, enhanced mass loss in the RSG phase, which can be driven by binary interaction, is essential not only for better understanding the evolution of massive stars but also for interpreting early-phase SN spectra,” the authors explain.

Unfortunately, observing WOH is becoming more difficult. The dust is obscuring the star. “The formation of new hot dust also means that the central star is now more obscured than the epochs before 2009,” the authors explain, and if the star keeps shedding material, the star will become dimmer.

But new instruments might help. GRAVITY’s successor, GRAVITY+ is being rolled out incrementally and will be completed in 2026.

“Similar follow-up observations with ESO instruments will be important for understanding what is going on in the star,” concluded Ohnaka.

WOH G64 is getting ready to explode, but that doesn’t mean it’s imminent in terms of human lifespans. Nobody alive today will witness the explosion. However, in stellar terms, the star’s death could be imminent.

Maybe our distant descendants, if we have any, will witness it.

The post The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.

Researchers study the importance of enunciation when using speech-to-text software in medical situations.

Scientists have presented work examining the circumstances surrounding the whale deaths off the coast of New Jersey in the winter of 2022-23, which prompted concern that survey work in the area somehow contributed to their deaths. The Marine Mammal Commission has stated there is no evidence linking the whales' deaths to wind energy development; many of them died from collisions with ships. Researchers, however, are concerned that the increased presence of survey ships in and around New Jersey waters may have exacerbated the situation.

Scientists have presented results on the acoustic characteristics of a physical model of the Parasaurolophus' crest. They created a physical setup made of tubes to represent a mathematical model that will allow researchers to discover what was happening acoustically inside the crest. The physical model, inspired by resonance chambers, was suspended by cotton threads and excited by a small speaker, and a microphone was used to collect frequency data.

Engineered proteins are critical industrial and medical applications, ranging from vaccine development to making crops or food proteins more resilient. Scientists can engineer proteins to improve upon nature, but such experiments are time- and labor-intensive. Researchers have developed an AI-based protein design tool known as EVOLVEPro, which is already showing promise for several applications and could be used to help solve other medical challenges.

Researchers have found a new way to improve a key element of thermophotovoltaic systems, which convert heat into electricity via light. Engineers designed a thermal emitter that can deliver high efficiencies within practical design parameters.

Researchers have found a new way to improve a key element of thermophotovoltaic systems, which convert heat into electricity via light. Engineers designed a thermal emitter that can deliver high efficiencies within practical design parameters.

Chloramine is used as a disinfectant in drinking water systems from the US to Australia. Research now shows it breaks down into a compound that may have negative health impacts

For a little over a month now, the Earth has been joined by a new ‘mini-moon.’ The object is an asteroid that has been temporarily accompanying Earth on its journey around the Sun. By 25th November it will have departed but before then, astronomers across the world have been turning their telescopes to study it. A new paper of 2024 PT5 reveals its basaltic nature – similar to volcanic rocks on Earth – with a composition that makes it similar to lunar material. There have been many close encounters to Earth allowing many of its secrets to be unveiled.

The Moon is perhaps one of the most well known astronomical objects. It’s Earth’s only permanent natural satellite and has been in orbit since early in the planet’s history. It lies approximately 384,400 kilometres away and has played a crucial part in stabilising are axial tilt and regulating the climate and seasons. In addition to the Moon we are occasionally joined by asteroids that briefly orbit around the Earth before continuing their journey through the Solar System. 

The partial lunar eclipse from October 2023 as seen from Oxfordshire UK. Credit: Mary McIntyre FRAS.

2024 PT5 is a small asteroid that has served as a temporary “mini-moon” for Earth, orbiting near the planet for about six weeks. Analysis has revealed that the asteroid spins rapidly, completing one full rotation in under an hour and measures no more than 15 metres across. While it will leave Earth’s vicinity in just a few days, its brief presence has offered valuable insight and data on the properties of near-Earth objects.

Space agencies like NASA and ESA are both exploring commercial space operations to support the growing global space economy. Exploring and mining asteroids is an activity that is well suited to this endeavour. Asteroids like 2024 PT5 which is in close proximity to Earth is well suited to this. The paper that has been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and was authored by R. de la Fuente Marcos and a team of Spanish astronomers.

The asteroid Dimorphos was captured by NASA’s DART mission just two seconds before the spacecraft struck its surface on Sept. 26, 2022. Observations of the asteroid before and after impact suggest it is a loosely packed “rubble pile” object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

The study focussed attention on changes to the short-term orbital properties and used N-body simulations (a technique to simulate a dynamic system under other physical forces such as the force of gravity.) They also explored the spectral class of the asteroid from reflectance spectra analysis obtained with the OSIRIS spectrograph and assessed its rotational properties.

The team confirmed that 2024 PT5 is a natural object (thankfully) that has a spectra which is consisted with the so called Sv-type asteroid, similar to breccia found in the Lunar mare. Assessment of its rotational properties revealed it is completing one rotation in less than an hour. They could not rule out whether the asteroid was tumbling in an erratic fashion, further analysis is needed. Finally through astrometric observations the team concluded that the orbits of 2024 PT5 and 2022 NX1 (another near Earth asteroid which is just 10 metres across) are very similar. 

Both ESA and NASA now consider a cost-effective strategy for NEO missions essential with a focus on small body science and planetary defence. The approach includes reusing and active missions and identifying accessible objects like 2022 NX1 and 2024 PT5 using ground-based observatories.  

Source : Basaltic mini-moon: Characterizing 2024 PT5 with the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias and the Two-meter Twin Telescope

The post Here’s What We Know About Earth’s Temporary Mini-Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

Despite decades of study, black holes are still one of the most puzzling objects in the Universe. As we know from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the gravitational force of these stellar remnants alters the curvature of spacetime around them. This causes gas, dust, and even photons (light) in their vicinity to fall inwards and form disks that slowly accrete onto their faces, never to be seen again. However, astronomers have also noted that they can produce powerful jets that accelerate charged particles to close to the speed of light (aka. relativistic jets).

These jets lead to powerful gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which have been observed with black holes that have powerful magnetic fields. However, where these magnetic fields come from has remained a mystery to astrophysicists for some time. According to new research led by scientists from the Flatiron Institute, the source of these fields may have finally been revealed. Based on a series of simulations they conducted that modeled the life cycle of stars from birth to collapse, they found that black holes inherit their magnetic fields from the parent stars themselves.

The research was led by Ore Gottlieb, a Research Fellow from the Theoretical High Energy Astrophysics (THEA) group at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) and Columbia University’s Astrophysics Laboratory. He was joined by colleagues from the CCA and CAL and researchers from the University of Arizona, the Steward Observatory, and Princeton University. The paper that details their findings was published on November 18th in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Infographic explaining how black holes inherit their magnetism. Credit: Lucy Reading-Ikkanda / Simons Foundation

Black holes form from the collapse of proto-neutron stars, which are essentially what remains after massive stars have blown off their outer layers in a supernova explosion. While there have been a few theories about where black holes get their magnetism, none could account for the power of black hole jets or GRBs. Through their simulations, the team initially planned to study outflows from black holes, including the jets that produce GRBs. However, as Gottlieb’s explained in a Simons Foundation press release, the team ran into a problem with the models:

“We were not sure how to model the behavior of these magnetic fields during the collapse of the neutron star to the black hole. So, this was a question that I started to think about for the first time. What had been thought to be the case is that the magnetic fields of collapsing stars are collapsing into the black hole. During this collapse, these magnetic field lines are made stronger as they are compressed, so the density of the magnetic fields become higher.”

The only problem with this theory is that the strong magnetic fields of neutron stars cause them to lose angular momentum (their rotation). Without this, the gas, plasma, and dust surrounding newly formed black holes will not form an accretion disk around them. This, in turn, would prevent black holes from producing the jets and gamma-ray bursts that astronomers have observed. This suggests that previous simulations of collapsing neutron stars didn’t provide a complete picture. Said Gottlieb:

“It appears to be mutually exclusive. You need two things for jets to form: a strong magnetic field and an accretion disk. But a magnetic field acquired by such compression won’t form an accretion disk, and if you reduce the magnetism to the point where the disk can form, then it’s not strong enough to produce the jets. Past simulations have only considered isolated neutron stars and isolated black holes, where all magnetism is lost during the collapse. However, we found that these neutron stars have accretion disks of their own, just like black holes. And so, the idea is that maybe an accretion disk can save the magnetic field of the neutron star. This way, a black hole will form with the same magnetic field lines that threaded the neutron star.”

3D rendering of a rapidly spinning black hole’s accretion disk and a resulting black hole-powered jet. Credit: Ore Gottlieb et al. (2024)

The team ran calculations for neutron stars collapsing to form black holes and found that, in most cases, the timescale for black hole disk formation is often shorter than that of the black hole losing its magnetism. In short, before a newly formed black hole swallows a proto-neutron star’s magnetic field, its magnetic field lines become anchored in the neutron star’s surrounding disk passes to the black hole. As Gottlieb characterized it:

“So the disk enables the black hole to inherit a magnetic field from its mother, the neutron star. What we are seeing is that as this black hole forms, the proto-neutron star’s surrounding disk will essentially pin its magnetic lines to the black hole. It’s very exciting to finally understand this fundamental property of black holes and how they power gamma ray bursts — the most luminous explosions in the universe.”

This discovery resolves the long-standing mystery of where black holes get their magnetic fields. It also presents astronomers with new opportunities to study relativistic jets and gamma-ray bursts, one of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe. If confirmed, these results suggest that forming an early accretion disk is the only thing needed for powerful jets to emerge. Gottlieb and his team are excited to test this theory with future observations.

Further Reading: Simons Foundation, Astrophysical Journal Letters

The post New Study Suggests Black Holes Get their “Hair” from their Mothers appeared first on Universe Today.

74 million kilometres is a huge distance from which to observe something. But 74 million km isn’t such a big deal when the object is the Sun.

That’s how far away from the Sun the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter was when it captured these new images.

The Solar Orbiter was launched in 2020 to investigate the Sun. It’s studying the mechanism behind the Sun’s solar wind, the complex dynamics of its magnetic field, and eruptions like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. That’s just a sampling of its science goals.

One item on the mission’s long list of objectives is high-resolution images of the Sun’s surface. For that, the spacecraft carries different imagers that operate in different wavelengths. This allows the spacecraft to almost peel back the Sun’s layers and uncover relationships between them.

The ESA has released four new images of the Sun, each one giving us a different look at our star: visible light, magnetic, plasma, and UV. These images were captured with the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI-German contribution) and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI-Belgian contribution) instruments in March 2023. Each image is a composite of 25 images, all captured on the same day. They’re the highest resolution images of the Sun ever taken.

The images are remarkable for their detail. This image shows sunspots, regions that are darker and cooler than their surroundings. They appear where magnetic field lines are concentrated. The magnetic flux inhibits convection. Image Credit: ESA

According to Daniel Müller, Solar Orbiter’s Project Scientist, the Sun’s magnetic field is key to understanding the star.

“The Sun’s magnetic field is key to understanding the dynamic nature of our home star from the smallest to the largest scales. These new high-resolution maps from Solar Orbiter’s PHI instrument show the beauty of the Sun’s surface magnetic field and flows in great detail. At the same time, they are crucial for inferring the magnetic field in the Sun’s hot corona, which our EUI instrument is imaging,” Müller said.

This magnetic map of the Sun from the Solar Orbiter shows how magnetic field lines and sunspots are correlated. Image Credit: ESA.

The Solar Orbiter’s PHI instrument also gives us a map of how plasma is moving around on the Sun’s surface. Blue regions are moving toward the Orbiter, while red regions are moving away.

The map of plasma movement clearly reflects the rotation of the Sun, with blue regions moving toward the orbiter and red regions moving away. However, it also shows how material is disoriented around the sunspots. Image Credit: ESA

The ultraviolet image of the Sun from the Solar Orbiter’s EUI instrument is probably the most visually stunning. It shows what’s happening above the photosphere, where glowing plasma extends out from sunspots. The plasma is superheated and follows the same magnetic lines that encourage the sunspots.

The Sun’s superheated plasma follow magnetic field lines and extends beyond the photosphere in the same regions the sunspots occur. Image Credit: ESA

The Solar Orbiter’s images are truly extraordinary. It’s easy to lose yourself in them, and to wonder about Life, the Universe, Nature, Evolution, How Everything Came to Be, and your own mortality in the face of it all.

Go ahead and lose yourself in these images for a while. The economy won’t grind to halt if you take a few moments. Image Credit: ESA

Now, back to your cubicle.

The post Gaze at New Pictures of the Sun from Solar Orbiter appeared first on Universe Today.