A Warning: "The collapse of South Africa"

Source: "'Worst civil unrest since 1994': How South Africa plunged into riots, looting and turmoil"--Money Control (2021).

 In his article at Hot Air entitled "The collapse of South Africa," Jazz Shaw holds up South Africa as a warning of what could happen to the United States. "The government and the police have almost disappeared, the energy grid has imploded, half of the people in the country are out of work and the nation’s infrastructure has crumbled," he reports. 

    Shaw notes that the country’s railway system has "all but ground to a halt" due to corruption and mismanagement of the Transnet company which owns and operates the railroads; the same company that also manages the ports and pipelines that connect South Africa to the outside world. And, he adds:

It’s not just the trains and the rest of the transportation infrastructure that has fallen apart. The country’s power grid has fallen well below the break-even point of energy generation and consumption. Rolling blackouts happen every day and much of the country is left without lights or heat. The roads are impassible in many areas and there is no money to repair them.

The lack properly funded and staffed police have resulted in looting and violence becoming commonplace. (Wikipedia observes that "[w]hen compared to other countries South Africa has notably high rates of violent crime and has a reputation for consistently having one of the highest murder rates in the world"). Stealing and gang violence is also widespread. In fact, according to a Twitter user cited in the article, the country is seeing "an increase in coordinated attacks on water, power and comms infrastructure," and "[l]ooting is no longer just a daily thing, but is also now becoming more structured with guerilla planning involved." The number of people relying on government grants and welfare to live is about to exceed the number of working people. And it sounds like inflation is out of control. 

    The situation is so bad that just two days ago--on Jan. 26--the U.S. embassy urged American citizens travelling to or living in South Africa to stockpile food and water amid the “ongoing power crisis” and warned of the potential for riots.

    And it will be getting worse: the Twitter user cited in the article points out that the South African government is about to implement its Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC) program "where land is taken from rightful and legal land owners and given to the 'previously disadvantaged'" and will also be implementing an nationalized health care system. Land expropriation from white farmers to black communists is what led to the collapse of the economy and agriculture in Zimbabwe--once a breadbasket of Africa. And nationalized healthcare is only something the richest of nations can afford. 

    What is the cause of this? I suppose one could point all the way back to the end of Apartheid and devolution of power to black political parties, most especially the socialist/communist African National Congress (ANC). After all, we've seen how well black Democratic governance has worked in various cities in the United States. In such situations, government becomes organized crime. But the author instead focuses on a more recent development: "green" environmental policies. Shaw explains:

So how did all of this happen? There were a variety of factors involved, including government corruption and organized crime. But a couple of years ago, in order to stay in the good graces of the world banks and the global climate cabal, South Africa agreed to ambitiously reduce its carbon footprint. They used to mine a lot of coal and other desirable resources, but their output has plummeted. Don’t worry, though. They’ve blown some serious money on renewable energy. You can see how swimmingly that’s working out.

And he warns:

    Does any of this sound familiar? Do you recall when America’s supply chain buckled when our own transportation infrastructure tanked and cargo ships were lined up at the ports for weeks? We too have seen rolling blackouts in multiple parts of the country as we rush to forbid the use of fossil fuels and toss up endless numbers of solar and wind generation plants. And it’s not as if we haven’t seen our fair share of rioting.

    It really doesn’t take that much of a shove to cause a formerly muscular infrastructure to grind to a halt. South Africa is on the verge of societal failure. And if you think it couldn’t happen in the United States, you’re kidding yourself.

POTD: The Alps In 1890

 The following photograph is from a Daily Mail article, "Fascinating new book reveals stunning vintage pictures of the Alps, from a time when the first mountain climbers 'were considered mad' and glaciers were TWICE the size they are now." According to the article, the photograph is of the the Rhone Glacier in the Swiss Alps and dates from around 1890. The quip in the headline about glaciers being "TWICE" the size as now made me laugh. Of course they were bigger then! The world was just coming out of the Little Ice Age.

Updated Tips for Surviving a Nuclear Blast

Obviously, if you are too close to ground zero, it just isn't going to matter: you will be killed by the heat or other radiation, or by the overpressure from the blast. But if you are farther out, you might survive the overpressure blast depending not only on the construction of the structure in which you find yourself, but also where you are in the structure when the blast arrives, according to this article from Business Insider: "Sheltering miles from a nuclear blast may not be enough to survive unless you know where to hide, new calculations show."

    As the article notes, "[w]hen a nuclear bomb detonates, it generates not only radiation in the form of a bright, blinding light and scorching heat, but also powerful shockwaves that can travel for tens of miles," and "[i]t's these shockwaves that are potentially lethal for people at a safe enough distance from the fireball." The researchers in this case ran a simulation of a nuclear explosion from a 750-kiloton atomic bomb (equivalent to one of the current Russian warheads). "A warhead of this magnitude would likely obliterate everything within 2.5 miles," the article states, "but people beyond that radius may stand a chance if they're sheltering in the right location of a sturdy structure."

    The team used fluid dynamics to determine "the right location" within the structure. 

    Using these models, they computed how the shockwave would move through buildings — including rooms, walls, corners, doors, corridors, windows, and doorways — at distances of 2.5 miles to 30 miles from the detonation site.

    They reported that narrow pockets inside buildings like doorways and hallways could act like a windtunnel, accelerating the shockwave to dangerous pressures of up to 18 times a human's body weight — easily enough to crush bones.

    "The most dangerous critical indoor locations to avoid are the windows, the corridors, and the doors," said co-author Ioannis William Kokkinakis.

    The best location is in the half of the building farthest from the blast, in a room with no windows. But, "even in the front room facing the explosion, one can be safe from the high airspeeds if positioned at the corners of the wall facing the blast," Kokkinakis told Insider.

    It's also worth noting that the building itself is important. You don't want to take cover in a log cabin, for example.

    "As the paper noted, if you're too close to the blast there's not much that can be done. However, at a distance building structures particularly stone or concrete or other stout, noncombustible materials can provide some degree of protection from the blast," said Kathryn Higley, a professor of radiation biology at Oregon State University who was not involved in the study.

Feral Hogs Expected to Spread South Into US From Canada

    The story is from The Truth About Guns and refers to them as "super pigs" because of their size and aggressiveness. The article notes that "in recent years, invasive pigs have started thriving in Canada and may spread into North Dakota, Montana, Michigan, and Minnesota." They apparently are larger than your run-of-the-mill feral hog because they need the extra size to survive the colder climate. The article also includes a couple of videos of people hunting the beasts.

    Perhaps more interesting are the score or more comments criticizing farmers and ranchers throughout the South that, if the comments are to be believed, are charging outrageous amounts for hunters to kill feral hogs in those states. The gist is that the commenters will believe that it is a serious problem when the farmers and ranchers treat it like a problem rather than a money-making venture.

Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 74 (Streamed Feb. 22, 2023)

VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 74" (50 min.)

Dilbert Creator Cancelled After Conversation On Race

 

Source: Western Rifle Shooters Assoc.

Back in 1997, then-President Bill Clinton called for a national conversation on race after a backlash developed against affirmative-action in California leading to the passage of Proposition 209 which was intended to eliminate state and local government affirmative action programs in the areas of public employment, public education, and public contracting to the extent these programs involve "preferential treatment" based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. Then, as now, the Liberals did not really want a conversation about race or race relations. The Washington Post described Clinton's efforts as "a year-long campaign of town hall meetings, conferences and reports intended to bridge the nation's lingering racial divide three decades after the civil rights movement of the 1960s." But, at the end of the article, admitted that all Clinton was really calling for was increasing the budget of the EEOC's enforcement arm--I presume his intent was to punish employers that might have supposed that they, too, could dispense with preferential hiring.

    Similarly, on March 18, 2008, his presidential campaign in trouble due to the release of video showing Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, denigrating the United States and white people, Obama delivered what has become known as his "A More Perfect Union" speech. The speech was Obama's mea culpa in which he was forced to acknowledge that Wright's statements "weren't simply a religious leader's efforts to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America...." But that apology quickly turned into a defense of Wright, reflecting, Obama argued, Wright's experience growing up in a segregated America. As we know, Obama went on to win the White House and began the modern trend of white hatred as official government policy.

    The result was that by 2016, the conversation was over and done with.  Wesley Morris, writing at The New York Times Magazine, admitted that a national conversation was only possible when there were "a mere three television networks and no internet," but had now become wholly impossible because too many views could be publicly shared. "[F]ew subjects start more internet wars than gender and race," he wrote, adding: "The aspiration of 'national conversation' makes no sense in the age of Reddit." He notes that even Obama had determined that a national conversation on race was not very productive. Morris put the problem down to a lack of empathy, but perhaps the problem is that there was never any intention of having a true conversation. It was merely an exercise in beating down anyone that didn't tow the liberal line, to the point that even the term "racist" or "racism" merely means not agreeing with Leftist positions on race.

    The latest example of this is Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, being cancelled and blackballed after commenting on a Rasmussen poll on race relations. Fox News reports the substance of the poll and Adam's reaction:

The poll that Adams cited asked two questions: (1) Do you agree or disagree with this statement: "It’s OK to be white," (2) Do you agree or disagree with this statement: "Black people can be racist, too." The poll found that 26% of Black respondents said "no" to the first question, and 21% said they weren’t sure, which Adams concluded meant 47% had a negative response.

To which Adams responded:

    "If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people – according to this poll, not to me – that’s a hate group," Adams said during his "Coffee with Scott Adams" vlog, referring to a Rasmussen poll published this week. "That’s a hate group, and I don’t want anything to do with them."

    "And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I can give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people," he continued, adding, "There is no fixing this … you just have to escape," which he said was why he moved to his current neighborhood that has "a very low Black population."     

The reaction was as sudden as it was predictable: hundreds of newspapers stopped carrying the Dilbert comic strip, quickly followed by the comic strip's distributor dropping Adams. In other words, the story wasn't why 47% of blacks don't think it okay for people to be white but instead was "how dare Scott Adams point this out" and call him a racist for doing so.

    But if Adams was "racist" as the Left claims--as opposed to simply calling a spade a spade--it would have been through experience. Hot Air reporter Karen Townsend notes:

Adams has not lived as a racist, as far as I can tell. He worked to rebuild a 14-block area of Detroit to make the lives of its residents better. You can see the organization behind the project at blightauthority.com.

 She continues (underline added):

    The racial divide is real in America. Many groups, including the Democrat Party, thrive on that. Remember all the cries of Jim Crow 2.0 from Biden and other Democrats when the voting rights act House Democrats passed did not pass in the Senate? Biden went on a little tour of cities like Atlanta to stir the pot with his inciteful rhetoric. His latest insult is to say there are many white people who still enjoy watching lynchings today. Where are these lynchings? The truth is that there are none and Joe Biden is given a pass every time he says such crazy things. Remember when Biden told a predominantly black audience that Mitt Romney wanted to put them all back in chains during the 2012 election?

    So, calling black Americans a hate group fanned the flames of anger. Suggesting white people get away from black people was also an unnecessary thing to say. Adams asks why anyone would want to be around people who do not respect them. That’s a legitimate question but that isn’t exactly what he said. He explains his move to a mostly white area and how he no longer sees the benefit in helping black Americans.

   He sounds frustrated and a little defeated. It’s understandable. He does good work for a needy community in a dying city and all of that is overlooked to punish him for speaking his opinions on a poll. ...

But that is the point: Adams is being labeled a "racist" because he has pointed out an inconvenient truth: that nearly half of black people are racist against whites. 

    Elon Musk has bucked the trend of condemning Adams, stating:

    'For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians,' the 51-year-old billionaire explained. 

    'Same thing happened with elite colleges and high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.'

That would make sense but it is anathema to the Left. And so a backlash is developing. And the longer the backlash is suppressed, the more likely it is to exceed simply passing laws against affirmative action programs and "diversity, inclusion and equity" propaganda.

POTD: The Abandoned Outlaw House in Mobile County, Alabama

 

Outside view

Inside view

Source: "Inside abandoned mansions: 6 hauntingly beautiful sites across the US"--New York Post.

VIDEO: "Galactic Superwave Risk Just Got Real"

 Suspicious Observers makes note of recent scientific papers showing that the giant X7 cloud near the galactic core is distending and, based on observations, it appears that a collision is imminent that might produce a galactic superflare. Except, due to the lag from the speed of light, this collision has already occurred and we should start seeing the light from this collision soon (probably within the next decade). Suspicious Observers discusses the possible impact of this additional light from the galactic core: it may turn out to be nothing, or it may trigger a reaction from our sun. 

VIDEO: "Galactic Superwave Risk Just Got Real"--Suspicious Observers (4 min.)

POTD: Exploring An Abandoned Hospital

These videos don't relate where this hospital is located; only that it had been shut down several times and finally abandoned in 2001. Unfortunately, there are no exterior shots, so I wasn't able to get an impression as to the size of the facility. What makes this interesting is the amount of equipment and supplies still there, even though there had obviously been vandals through at least a portion of the building. But I've seen videos of other hospitals that where similarly closed with still significant amounts of equipment, furniture and so forth left behind. I can only assume that the advancement of technology and regulatory requirements make it impractical to sell or transfer the older equipment to a different facility. 

    Unlike other videos of abandoned buildings where everything has been removed, though, this video gives you an idea of what it might be like to go through a building post-TEOTWAWKI where you would expect that most everything would still be in the building.

    Although the videos are labeled as two-parts, the second is not a continuation of the first, but more of a "do-over" video. The first video, according to the YouTuber, was done by himself and somewhat impromptu, whereas the second was filmed with assistance from friends and appears more planned.

VIDEO: "Abandoned Hospital with EVERYTHING Left Behind PART 1...(Blood samples and needles found)"--BigBankz (11 min.)

VIDEO: "Found Blood Samples inside an Abandoned Hospital with Everything Left Behind | Part 2"--

BigBankz (22 min.)

POTD: Exploring An Abandoned Apartment Complex

VIDEO: "Exploring Deteriorating Abandoned Apartment Complex - No Floors!"

LordExplores (12 min.)

 Another video for your viewing pleasure. I'm not sure where this structure is located, but it appears to be a brick and concrete structure dating from the mid-20th Century and structurally in poor shape given the age. 

It's Science Time

 

Just a few science and tech articles that have been cluttering up my in-box:

• "Plague Trackers: Uncovering the Elusive Origins of the Black Death"--SciTech Daily. It's long been known that the bubonic plague of the 14th Century began in an area of what is today Western China. But that doesn't explain the origins or sources of the plague bacterium from earlier or later outbreaks. This article describes a team using DNA analysis to try and track down the ultimate source of the disease. From the article:

    The team studied genomes from strains with a worldwide distribution and of different ages and determined that Y. pestis has an unstable molecular clock. This makes it particularly difficult to measure the rate at which mutations accumulate in its genome over time, which are then used to calculate dates of emergence.

    Because Y. pestis evolves at a very slow pace, it is almost impossible to determine exactly where it originated.

    Humans and rodents have carried the pathogen around the globe through travel and trade, allowing it to spread faster than its genome evolved. Genomic sequences found in Russia, Spain, England, Italy, and Turkey, despite being separated by years are all identical, for example, creating enormous challenges in determining the route of transmission.

    To address the problem, researchers developed a new method for distinguishing specific populations of Y. pestis, enabling them to identify and date five populations throughout history, including the most famous ancient pandemic lineages which they now estimate had emerged decades or even centuries before the pandemic was historically documented in Europe.

    “You can’t think of the plague as just a single bacterium,” explains Poinar. “Context is hugely important, which is shown by our data and analysis.”

    To properly reconstruct pandemics of our past, present, and future, historical, ecological, environmental, social, and cultural contexts are equally significant.

• "We Might Have Been Wrong About The Role Rats Played in The Black Death"--Science Alert. An excerpt:

    While plague begins in rodents, it sometimes spills over to humans. Europe may have once hosted animal reservoirs that sparked plague pandemics. But plague could have also been repeatedly reintroduced from Asia. Which of these scenarios was present remains a topic of scientific controversy.

    Our recent research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has shown that environmental conditions in Europe would have prevented plague from surviving in persistent, long-term animal reservoirs. How, then, did plague persevere in Europe for so long?

    Our study offers two possibilities. One, the plague was being reintroduced from Asian reservoirs. Second, there could have been short- or medium-term temporary reservoirs in Europe. In addition, the two scenarios might have been mutually supportive.

However, the rapid spread of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the next few centuries also suggest slow-moving rats may not have played the critical role in transmitting the disease that is often portrayed.

European climate 

 

    To work out whether plague could survive in long-term animal reservoirs in Europe, we examined factors such as soil characteristics, climatic conditions, terrain types and rodent varieties. These all seem to affect whether plague can hold on in reservoirs.

    For example, high concentrations of some elements in soil, including copper, iron, magnesium, as well as a high soil pH (whether it is acidic or alkaline), cooler temperatures, higher altitudes and lower rainfall appear to favor the development of persistent reservoirs, though it is not entirely clear why, at this stage.

    Based on our comparative analysis, centuries-long wild rodent plague reservoirs were even less likely to have existed from the Black Death of 1348 to the early 19th century than today, when comprehensive research rules out any such reservoirs within Europe.

    This contrasts sharply with regions across China and the western US, where all the above conditions for persistent Yersinia pestis reservoirs in wild rodents are found.

    In central Asia, long-term and persistent rodent reservoirs may have existed for millennia. As ancient DNA and textual evidence hints, once plague crossed into Europe from central Asia, it appears to have seeded a short- or medium-term reservoir or reservoirs in European wild rodents. The most likely place for this to have been was in central Europe.

    However, as local soil and climatic conditions did not favor long-term and persistent reservoirs, the disease had to be re-imported, at least in some instances. Importantly, the two scenarios are not mutually exclusive.

• "A blast of ultrasound waves could rejuvenate ageing cells"--New Scientist. The article relates: "Low-frequency ultrasound appears to have rejuvenating effects on animals. As well as restarting cell division in ageing human cells, it has reinvigorated old mice, improving their physical performance in tests such as running on a treadmill and making one old mouse with a hunched back move around normally again." It continues:

    After a certain number of divisions – known as the Hayflick limit – the cells in our bodies stop dividing, becoming senescent. Stresses such as toxic chemicals can also make cells become senescent.

    This can have knock-on effects because some senescent cells secrete chemicals that cause inflammation or induce senescence in other cells. The growing proportion of senescent cells in various tissues in our bodies as we get older is thought to be one of the main causes of ageing and age-related diseases. For this reason, many people are trying to develop treatments that involve killing off senescent cells.

    But another approach could be to use low-frequency ultrasound to rejuvenate them.

    Sheetz’s team has found that low-frequency ultrasound makes senescent cells from monkeys and humans resume dividing and halts the secretion of chemicals that promote senescence. The researchers used ultrasound with a frequency of less than 100 kilohertz, well below the 2000 kHz or so used for medical imaging.

• "Loss of Epigenetic Information Can Drive Aging, Restoration Can Reverse It"--Harvard Medical School.

    Perhaps the most burning question for those who study aging is what causes it.

    For decades, a reigning theory in the field was that aging arises from an accumulation of changes to DNA, primarily genetic mutations, which over time prevent more and more genes from functioning properly. These malfunctions, in turn, cause cells to lose their identity, so that tissues and organs break down, leading to disease and, ultimately, death.

    In recent years, however, studies have increasingly hinted that there’s more to the story.

    For instance, some researchers found that some people and mice with high mutation rates don’t show signs of premature aging. Others observed that many types of aged cells have few or no mutations.

    Researchers started wondering what else works with or instead of DNA changes to cause aging. A list of possible culprits grew. Among them were epigenetic changes.

    A component of epigenetics is the physical structures such as histones that bundle DNA into tightly compacted chromatin and unspool portions of that DNA when needed. Genes are inaccessible when they’re bundled up but available to be copied and used to produce proteins when they’re unspooled. Thus, epigenetic factors regulate which genes are active or inactive in any given cell at any given time.

    By acting as a toggle for gene activity, these epigenetic molecules help define cell type and function. Since each cell in an organism has basically the same DNA, it’s the on-off switching of particular genes that differentiates a nerve cell from a muscle cell from a lung cell.

    “Epigenetics is like a cell’s operating system, telling it how to use the same genetic material differently,” said Yang, who is co-first author with Motoshi Hayano, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Sinclair lab who is now at Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo.

    In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Sinclair’s lab and others showed in yeast and mammals that epigenetic changes accompany aging. Yet they couldn’t tell whether these changes drove aging or were a consequence of it.

    It wasn’t until the current study that Sinclair’s team was able to disentangle epigenetic from genetic changes and confirm that a breakdown in epigenetic information does, in fact, contribute to aging in mice.

ICE mice 

 

    The team’s main experiment involved creating temporary, fast-healing cuts in the DNA of lab mice.

    These breaks mimicked the low-grade, ongoing breaks in chromosomes that mammalian cells experience every day in response to things like breathing, exposure to sunlight and cosmic rays, and contact with certain chemicals.

    In the study, to test whether aging results from this process, the researchers sped the number of breaks to simulate life on fast-forward.

    The team also ensured that most of the breaks were not made within the coding regions of the mice’s DNA — the segments that make up genes. This prevented the animals’ genes from developing mutations. Instead, the breaks altered the way DNA is folded.

    Sinclair and colleagues called their system ICE, short for inducible changes to the epigenome.

    At first, epigenetic factors paused their normal job of regulating genes and moved to the DNA breaks to coordinate repairs. Afterward, the factors returned to their original locations.

    But as time passed, things changed. The researchers noticed that these factors got “distracted” and did not return home after repairing breaks. The epigenome grew disorganized and began to lose its original information. Chromatin got condensed and unspooled in the wrong patterns, a hallmark of epigenetic malfunction.

    As the mice lost their youthful epigenetic function, they began to look and act old. The researchers saw a rise in biomarkers that indicate aging. Cells lost their identities as, for example, muscle or skin cells. Tissue function faltered. Organs failed.

    The team used a recent tool developed by Sinclair’s lab to measure how old the mice were, not chronologically, in days or months, but “biologically,” based on how many sites across the genome lost the methyl groups normally attached to them. Compared to untreated mice born at the same time, the ICE mice had aged significantly more.

Young again 

 

    Next, the researchers gave the mice a gene therapy that reversed the epigenetic changes they’d caused.

    “It’s like rebooting a malfunctioning computer,” said Sinclair.

    The therapy delivered a trio of genes — Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4, together named OSK — that are active in stem cells and can help rewind mature cells to an earlier state. (Sinclair’s lab used this cocktail to restore sight in blind mice in 2020.)

    The ICE mice’s organs and tissues resumed a youthful state.

    The therapy “set in motion an epigenetic program that led cells to restore the epigenetic information they had when they were young,” said Sinclair. “It’s a permanent reset.”

    How exactly OSK treatment achieved that remains unclear.

• "Harvard scientists find eight surprising social factors that raise your risk of an early death - including living in an unclean neighborhood, not seeing your children or being disrespected"--Daily Mail Online. The 8 factors are: (i) being lonely, (ii) living in an area with dirty streets, (iii) having little control over your finances, (iv) meeting children less than once a year, (v) not working for pay, (vi) avoiding children, (vii) not volunteering and (viii) being treated with less courtesy or respect.
• "Unhappy marriages are BETTER for your health than being single or divorced, scientists say"--Daily Mail Online.

    People who live with a spouse are less likely to have high blood sugar levels which can lead to type 2 diabetes — regardless of how harmonious or acrimonious their relationship is, according to research.




    Experts believe couples influence each other's behaviour – such as diet – as well as tending to have higher shared income, which can also lead to healthier eating. 

 

"Drinking two cans of beer or glasses of wine per day may LOWER chance of developing dementia, major study suggests - but risk goes up with every sip beyond that"--Daily Mail Online.
• "Curious Kids: why do we think there is a possible Planet X?"--The Conversation. 

    There’s a good reason astronomers spend many hundreds of hours trying to locate a ninth planet, or “Planet X”. And that’s because the Solar System as we know it doesn’t really make sense without it.

    Every object in our Solar System orbits around the Sun. Some move fast and some slow, but all move abiding by the laws of gravity. Everything with mass has gravity, including you and me. The heavier something is, the more gravity it has.

    A planet’s gravity is so large it impacts how things move around it. That’s what we call its “gravitational pull”. Earth’s gravitational pull is what keeps everything on the ground.

    Also, our Sun has the largest gravitational pull of any object in the Solar System, and this is basically why the planets orbit around it.

    It’s through our understanding of gravitational pull that we get our biggest clue for a possible Planet X.

    When we look at really distant objects, such as dwarf planets beyond Pluto, we find their orbits are a little unexpected. They move on very large elliptical (oval-shaped) orbits, are grouped together, and exist on an incline compared to the rest of the Solar System.

    When astronomers use a computer to model what gravitational forces are needed for these objects to move like this, they find that a planet at least ten times the mass of Earth would have been required to cause this.

VIDEO: "Electric Solid Rockets - Throttleable Solid Propellant"

Integza (16 min.) 

• "Packing Aerogel With Uranium Could Give Us The Space Engine We've Been Looking For"--ScienceAlert.

    ... NASA's Institute of Advanced Concepts has provided a grant to a company called Positron Dynamics for the development of a novel type of nuclear fission fragment rocket engine (FFRE). It could strike the balance between the horsepower of chemical engines and the longevity of solar sails.

    FFREs are not a new concept in themselves, but many have massive technical hurdles to overcome before they can be considered useful. Their advantages, such as high specific impulse and extremely high power density, are offset by their disadvantages, such as requiring a complicated form of plasma levitation.

    Positron Dynamics hopes to tip that balance by utilizing two separate breakthroughs derived from other areas of research. The first novel approach would be to put the fissile material in an ultralight aerogel. The second would be implementing a superconducting magnet to contain those fission particles.

    FFREs essentially utilize the same nuclear process that powers energy-generating nuclear plants on Earth. However, instead of generating only electricity, they also generate thrust and a very high amount of thrust at that.

    However, it's not practical to send a whole bar of uranium fuel, such as that used in fission reactors here on Earth, up into space.

    Embedding the fuel itself into one of the lightest known human substances solves that problem.

    Aerogels are extraordinarily airy materials that look ethereal when someone is holding them, as they are in the lead image above. Embedding fuel particles for the fission reaction in them would be a convenient way to hold the fuel together while still allowing the overall structure to be light enough to be lifted into orbit.

    However, the structure of the aerogels themselves wouldn't do much to contain the fission fragments as they break apart. To do so would require a massive outside force, which is where the superconducting magnet comes in.

• "Blue Origin Making Solar Cells from Lunar Regolith"--Next Big Future.

    Since 2021, Blue Origin has been making solar cells and transmission wire from regolith simulants. Using regolith simulants, their reactor produces iron, silicon, and aluminum through molten regolith electrolysis, in which an electrical current separates those elements from the oxygen to which they are bound. Oxygen for propulsion and life support is a byproduct.

    This process purifies silicon to more than 99.999%. This level of purity is required to make efficient solar cells. While typical silicon purification methods on Earth use large amounts of toxic and explosive chemicals, their process uses just sunlight and the silicon from their reactor.

    The harsh lunar environment means lunar solar cells need cover glass. They would only last for days without glass. This technique uses only molten regolith electrolysis byproducts to make cover glass that enables lunar lifetimes exceeding a decade.

• "NASA captures hidden light shows on the sun that could explain why our star's outermost layer reaches more than a million degrees - at least 100 times hotter than its surface"--Daily Mail Online.

    Using the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), the American space agency captured various X-rays emitted by the hottest material in our star's atmosphere.

    High-energy X-rays were observed in only a few locations, while low-energy X-rays and ultraviolet light were detected across the ball of gas's entire face.

    Scientists hope the new views will help them solve one of the sun's biggest mysteries: why its outer atmosphere reaches more than a million degrees -  at least 100 times hotter than its surface.

And:

    While astronomers are perplexed by the source of the corona's, the sun's outermost layer, heat, they speculate it could come from small eruptions in the sun's atmosphere called nanoflares. 

    Flares are large outbursts of heat, light, and particles visible to a wide range of solar observatories. 

    While nanoflares are much smaller events, both types produce material even hotter than the average temperature of the corona. 

• "'Impossible' new ring system discovered at the edge of the solar system, and scientists are baffled"--LiveScience. 

    Astronomers have discovered an entirely new ring system within the solar system, and it's located at such a great distance from its dwarf planet parent that it should be impossible. 

    The ring surrounds Quaoar, which is around half the size of Pluto and located beyond Neptune. It is only the third ring to be found around a minor planet and the seventh ring system in the solar system, with the most famous and well-studied rings surrounding the giant planets Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus.

However, and this is what is baffling the boffins, "[t]he ring system is located at a distance of seven planetary radii away from Quaoar (that is, seven times Quaoar's radius), which is twice as far out as the theoretical maximum limit for a ring system, known as the Roche limit. For comparison, the main part of Saturn's rings sits at just three planetary radii from the gas giant."

• "Breakthrough in Battery Technology: Progress on Fast-Charging Lithium-Metal Batteries"--SciTech Daily.

    This new approach, led by University of California San Diego engineers, enables charging of lithium-metal batteries in about an hour, a speed that is competitive against today’s lithium-ion batteries. The UC San Diego engineers, in collaboration with UC Irvine imaging researchers, published this advance aimed at developing fast-charging lithium-metal batteries today (February 9, 2023) in the journal Nature Energy.

    To grow lithium metal crystals, the researchers replaced the ubiquitous copper surfaces on the negative side (the anode) of lithium-metal batteries with a lithiophobic nanocomposite surface made of lithium fluoride (LiF) and iron (Fe). Using this lithiophobic surface for lithium deposition, lithium crystal seeds formed, and from these seeds grew dense lithium layers – even at high charging rates. The result was long-cycle-life lithium-metal batteries that can be charged quickly.

    “The special nanocomposite surface is the discovery,” said UC San Diego nanoengineering professor Ping Liu, the senior author on the new paper. “We challenged the traditional notion of what kind of surface is needed to grow lithium crystals. The prevailing wisdom is that lithium grows better on surfaces that it likes, surfaces that are lithiophilic. In this work, we show that is not always true. The substrate we use does not like lithium. However, it provides abundant nucleation sites along with fast surface lithium movement. These two factors lead to the growth of these beautiful crystals. This is a nice example of a scientific insight solving a technical problem.”

• "New imaging finds trigger for massive global warming 56 million years ago"--Ars Technica.

    Scientists have scanned a section of the North Atlantic and revealed the remnants of what had been a huge pulse of hot rock that initiated a rapid climate warming event 56 million years ago.

    The climate event, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), warmed the already-hot climate of the time by about 5.6° C due to a jump in atmospheric CO2. Levels of that greenhouse gas rose from about 1,120 parts per million to about 2,020 ppm—much higher than today’s 417 ppm. Although it didn’t trigger a major extinction, it still exterminated some deep-sea creatures and tropical plants. ...

And:

    Although the cause of PETM has been debated since it was discovered in the 1990s, more and more evidence has accumulated that points to massive quantities of CO2 and methane emitted due to volcanic activity in the North Atlantic as the primary cause. This activity created what’s now known as the North Atlantic Igneous Province— the same kind of enormous volcanic phenomenon linked to climate disruption and extinctions at other times in Earth’s past, like the end-Triassic, the end-Permian, the early Jurassic, and others.

    But there’s a problem with that explanation. The jump in temperatures at the start of the PETM took between 3,000 and 10,000 years, whereas the igneous activity lasted far longer, from about 63 to 54 million years ago. If the volcanic activity was responsible for the PETM, then something extraordinary must have happened at the time of the warming to distinguish it from the volcanism that preceded and followed. That extraordinary event seems to have been a geologically quick surge of magma that invaded oil-rich sediments and boiled off CO2 and methane. A paper published in 2019 showed how a huge pulse of hot mantle rock from a “mantle plume” could have supplied that magma as it spread out beneath the crust.

    In December, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Chicago, the same team of scientists behind the 2019 paper presented preliminary evidence that there had been a huge pulse of hot mantle rock, based on what it left behind in the North Atlantic.

• "World-first vaccine that fights off range of fungal infections is 100% effective at preventing severe disease in early study — as hit show The Last of Us heightens fungal fears"--Daily Mail Online.

    The vaccine, called NXT-2, works by providing the body with antibodies that can fight off infections caused by three species of fungus: Aspergillus, Candida and Pneumocystis.

    The shot was 100 percent effective at preventing serious infection in monkeys and mice that were immune suppressed and exposed to a fatal amount of fungi.

    Researchers say that plans for a human trial are now underway. 

• "Fluke Discovery of Ancient Farming Technique Could Stabilize Crop Yields"--Science Alert.

    While studying food diversity in 2011, environmental scientist Morgan Ruelle, now at Clark University, accidentally stumbled across one possible technique that could help stabilize dipping crop yields.

    The once widespread practice is now only used by small farms in places like Caucasus, Greek Islands, and the Horn of Africa. Despite being incredibly simple, most of the agroecology community weren't aware of it.

    Yet farmers have been using this technique for more than 3,000 years across at least 27 countries. It may have even been what gave rise to agriculture in the first place.

    The method is planting maslins – a combined mix of cereals that can include rice, millet, wheat, rye, barley and more – and harvesting them all together to be separated or used as a single product.

    In Ethiopia, for example, where Ruelle discovered the existence of maslins, duragna contains multiple species and varieties of barley and wheat, all grown together. The locals consider the mix to be one crop, using it to make bread, beer and traditional savories with it.

    Local farmers reported this mix ensures at least some yield under unfavorable conditions, and now researchers have the experimental trials to back up these claims. Working at Cornell University, Ruelle and colleagues conducted a review of previous work, demonstrating maslins yielded higher stability under changing conditions. By shifting species composition each season, farmers could hedge against climate impacts without the need for additional intervention.

• "Sea Level Is Stable Around the World… The Good News the Media Don’t Want Us to Hear"--Watts Up With That?

    The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has updated its coastal sea level tide gauge data which continue to show no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. These measurements include tide gauge data at coastal locations along the West Coast, East Coast, Gulf Coast, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as seven Pacific Island groups and six Atlantic Island groups, comprising more than 200 measurement stations.

    The longest NOAA tide gauge record on coastal sea level rise measurements is in New York at the Battery, with its 160-year record which is shown below with a steady rate of sea level rise of 11 inches per century. A slightly slower rate of sea level rise occurs at nearby Kings Point, New York, whose 80-year record also appears below.

    Tidal gauges at the Battery and Kings Point show sea level rising at a pace of 11 inches per century. Both locations show a steady pace of increase, with the same pace of increase holding steady despite periods of relatively rapid temperatures increase and periods of cooling. The Battery measurements date back to 1855, showing the same pace of sea level rise well before the existence of coal power plants and SUVs.

    NOAA data provide assessments with a 95% confidence level at all measured locations which demonstrate the consistent behavior of location-specific sea level rise over time. The 2016 updated NOAA tide gauge data include four long-term periods between 92 and 119 years for California coastal locations at San Diego, La Jolla, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The actual measured steady rates of sea level rise at these locations vary between four inches and nine inches per century.

    In contrast to the steady but modest rise in sea level, revealed in long-term measurements, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) speculates that sea level will almost immediately begin rising significantly more than in the past and present. NOAA records contradict such claims. This pattern of steady but modest sea level rise extends throughout the world, throughout times of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, and throughout periods of accelerated warming and cooling.

• "Green Fail: Dozens of Scottish Wind Turbines Powered by Diesel Generators, Pour Hydraulic Oil Into Countryside"--Breitbart.

    Scotland’s green-obsessed left-separatist government has been left with egg on its face by revelations that dozens of gigantic onshore wind turbines are having to be hooked up to diesel generators, leaking thousands of litres of hydraulic oil into the countryside.

    Scottish Power — led by a Spaniard, Ignacio Galan, and actually a subsidiary of Spanish firm Iberdrola — conceded that some 71 of its turbines had to be hooked up to diesel generators to keep them warm in December, according to the Sunday Mail, with a whistleblower telling the left-leaning newspaper that problems with the turbines are deep-seated.

• "Moderna Booster Vaccine Singled Out for Chronic Hives"--MedPage Today.

    The monovalent Moderna COVID-19 booster vaccine may be associated with an elevated risk for new-onset chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), or hives lasting more than 6 weeks, according to a Swiss study.

    Among people who got an mRNA COVID vaccine booster and had new-onset hives reported to local allergists, 90% had vaccination precede CSU in the canton of Vaud during the study period, as did 81% of patients in the nationwide cohort, reported Yannick Daniel Muller, MD, PhD, of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and coauthors.

    Crude incidence rates of CSU following a booster dose in the two cohorts was 1.9-2.1 per 100,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine and 30.8-43.9 per 100,000 doses of Moderna's product, according to their research letter in JAMA Network Openopens in a new tab or window.

    This difference translated to a relative risk with the Moderna booster dose of 20.8 (95% CI 6.5-66.0) for the Vaud cohort of 80 people, and 16.1 (95% 10.8-24.0) in the Swiss cohort of 782 individuals.

    "These data should not discourage patients from being vaccinated," Muller's group concluded. "However, guidelines defining the eligibility and dosing for upcoming mRNA-based boosters are needed for patients with CSU after an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine."

    The reason behind the possible association are unclear, and warrant further study, according to the study authors.

• "The truth about 'Pfertility': Covid vaccines CAN disrupt menstrual cycles but do not appear to damage fertility because birth rates went UP during pandemic"--Daily Mail Online. The truth is that we do not know what will be the long term impact of the vaccines and boosters.
• "Innovation in Science Is on The Decline And We're Not Sure Why"--ScienceAlert.

    The rate of ground-breaking scientific discoveries and technological innovation is slowing down despite an ever-growing amount of knowledge, according to an analysis released Wednesday of millions of research papers and patents.

    While previous research has shown downturns in individual disciplines, the study is the first that "emphatically, convincingly documents this decline of disruptiveness across all major fields of science and technology," lead author Michael Park told AFP.

    Park, a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, called disruptive discoveries those that "break away from existing ideas" and "push the whole scientific field into new territory."

    The researchers gave a "disruptiveness score" to 45 million scientific papers dating from 1945 to 2010, and to 3.9 million US-based patents from 1976 to 2010.

    From the start of those time ranges, research papers and patents have been increasingly likely to consolidate or build upon previous knowledge, according to results published in the journal Nature.

    The ranking was based on how the papers were cited in other studies five years after publication, assuming that the more disruptive the research was, the less its predecessors would be cited.

    The biggest decrease in disruptive research came in physical sciences such as physics and chemistry.

    "The nature of research is shifting" as incremental innovations become more common, senior study author Russell Funk said.

Burden of knowledge 

 

    One theory for the decline is that all the "low-hanging fruit" of science has already been plucked.

    If that were the case, disruptiveness in various scientific fields would have fallen at different speeds, Park said.

    But instead "the declines are pretty consistent in their speeds and timing across all major fields," Park said, indicating that the low-hanging fruit theory is not likely to be the culprit.

    Instead, the researchers pointed to what has been dubbed "the burden of research," which suggests there is now so much that scientists must learn to master a particular field they have little time left to push boundaries.

    This causes scientists and inventors to "focus on a narrow slice of the existing knowledge, leading them to just come up with something more consolidating rather than disruptive," Park said.

    ​Another reason could be that "there's increasing pressure in academia to publish, publish, publish, because that's the metric that academics are assessed on," he added.

    The researchers called on universities and funding agencies to focus more on quality, rather than quantity, and consider full subsidies for year-long sabbaticals to allow academics to read and think more deeply.

    "We're not getting any less innovative as a species," Park emphasized, pointing to recent breakthroughs such as the use of mRNA technology in COVID-19 vaccines, or the measurement of gravitational waves in 2015.

    Jerome Lamy, a historian and expert in the sociology of science at France's CNRS research agency, who was not involved in the research, said it showed that "ultra-specialization" and the pressure to publish had increased over the years.

    He blamed a global trend of academics being "forced to slice up their papers" to increase their number of publications, saying it had led to "a dulling of research."

Some other items not discussed in the article are the rise of scientific orthodoxies that require you to subscribe to the orthodoxy to get a research position. In his 2006 book, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science, and What Comes Next, by Lee Smolin, he discusses the lack of advance in theoretical physics and assigns quite a bit of the blame to a heterodoxy built up around string theory that means that forces up and coming graduate students to either adopt string theory as their focus of research or not work within the academic community. 

    Another item Smolin discusses, however, is that there is an emphasis on advancing students and researchers who are good at the mathematics rather than being creative and thinking outside the box. I suspect that is why we see so many papers with Chinese names attached.