More space news!

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[DShomshak]

Astronomers find evidence that, at first glance, seems consistent with Dyson spheres -- but also with unusual but natural debris disks. Sufficiently unusual to warrant further study, though.

 

All 7 candidate stars are red dwarfs, which may also be significant and not in a good way. Read the article, decide for yourself.

 

Astronomers are on the hunt for Dyson spheres (msn.com)

 

(Other pop-sci articles have been more clickbaity in their headlines, shame on them.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[dmjalund]

It would take a lot less matter to build a Dyson sphere around a red dwarf than a larger star, also red dwarfs last a lot longer

[Beast]

10 hours ago, dmjalund said:

It would take a lot less matter to build a Dyson sphere around a red dwarf than a larger star, also red dwarfs last a lot longer

Red dwarf stars tend to be pretty active with solar flares
so they will need more shielding if they are in the habit zone

[Scott Ruggels]

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[Scott Ruggels]

Boeing capsule launch postponed indefinitely due to chronic helium leak. 
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-first-crew-launch-of-boeings-starliner-capsule-is-on-hold-indefinitely/

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[archer]

The door seems to have stayed on Boeing's Starliner during the launch today.

[Cancer]

A couple of useful items were in the July 2024 issue of Physics Today, which I get through a society membership.  Physics Today is likely to be a challenging read for most people, but it's not a full-on technical journal; upper-division college physics majors, and those in allied sciences, can read some of the articles.  That said, my BS was a double major (astronomy, and physics, which were separate albeit overlapping degree programs) and my graduate degrees are in astronomy, and the articles from some branches of physics (like material sciences, nonlinear optics, and biophysics) pretty much leave me behind.  If you can find it in a library (colleges with physics departments often get it), see if you can get to it.  It's a monthly.  I get it in dead-tree form.

 

Last month there was a ten-page article on martian atmosphere by Erdal Yigit.  A few bits I had not known before, about how different the soil is between Earth and Mars.  On Earth, a global average of the soil is 45% mineral matter, 50% is air and water, and the rest is organic matter.  On Mars, it's 98% mineral and 2% air and water; as far as we have been able to detect, biological material is absent in the martian soil.  And we know from the ALH84001 episode that even if we were to bring back a soil sample from Mars (which would be hard, expensive, and has the explicit dangers of cross-contamination), there are microscopic structures in martian rocks that look to be of biological origin but after intense examination are not.

 

The idea of human exploration of Mars is discussed in a general way, mentioning but trying to avoid exaggerating or minimizing the difficulties.  Simply getting there "involve[s] surviving nine months of space travel with limited room and resources in a rather unhealthy environment for the human body and mind."  It mentions the alternative of setting up a base camp and training station on the Moon, which is what NASA's Artemis program is attempting.  Then there is the problem that the surface conditions of Mars are extraordinarily hostile.  The thin atmosphere means that the harmful parts of the solar spectrum (e.g., the hard UV) reaches the surface unattenuated.  The lack of a magnetic field means the high-energy charged particles of the solar wind and other sources of cosmic rays reach the surface in full force.  The dust storms are seasonal and last for months; the temperatures are extremely low; the atmosphere is tenuous but the surface winds are high speed.  "It is a technological mystery whether human suits and settlements can ever be designed to provide continuous protection from these conditions."

 

Some even further-out ideas are mentioned briefly.  The author mentions terraforming, and the situation that this beyond currently foreseeable technology.  He also mentions something I had not previously heard of: "An alternative approach would be to adapt the human genome so that it can survive in the Martian environment," which has biochemical challenges of its own, and that is leaving aside "a subject of intense ethical discussion."

 

Finally, there's also a two-page discussion about dangers from infalling meteors/asteroids/etc. at the back of the issue which would be interest to a lot of people.