Revising Drake

Most of you probably know about the Drake Equation, a way to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe.  The Equation is one of those curiosities that is looked upon as valid science by some and as pointless speculation by others.  Here's what it looks like:

Math-phobes, fear not; it's not as hard as it looks.  The idea, which was dreamed up by cosmologist Frank Drake back in 1961, is that you can estimate the number of civilizations in the universe with whom communication might be possible (Nb) by multiplying the probabilities of seven other independent variables, to wit:

R* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the fraction of those stars with planets whose planets are in the habitable zone
fl = the fraction of planets in the habitable zone that develop life
fi = the fraction of those planets which eventually develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of those planets with intelligent life whose inhabitants develop the capability of communicating over interstellar distances
L = the average lifetime of those civilizations

Some of those (such as R*) are considered to be understood well enough that we can make a fairly sure estimate of their magnitudes.  Others -- such as fp and ne -- were complete guesses in Drake's time.  How many stars have planets?  Seemed like it could have been nearly all of them, or it perhaps the Solar System was some incredibly fortunate fluke, and we're one of the only planetary systems in existence.

The encouraging thing, at least for people like me who would love nothing better than to find we lived in a Star Trek universe where there's intelligent life wherever you look, just about all of these parameters have been revised upward since Drake first put his equation together.  Exoplanets, including ones in the so-called "Goldilocks zone," have turned out to be pretty much everywhere; not having planets turns out to be a much rarer situation.  There are over a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way alone; the number of planets in our galaxy is almost certainly in the trillions.  

As far as developing life... well, that one is still open to question, given that thus far we have a sample size of one to draw inferences from.  But that parameter -- fl -- just got a significant boost from a study done collaboratively by Hokkaido University and NASA of samples brought back from the asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which found significant traces of all five nitrogenous bases that make up the genetic material in every living thing known (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil).

Not only that, but they found the organic compounds xanthine and hypoxanthine (precursors of many bioactive compounds, including caffeine and theobromine), and nicotinic acid (vitamin B3).

This is an absolutely astonishing result.

"In previous research, uracil and nicotinic acid were detected in the samples from asteroid Ryugu, but the other four nucleobases were absent," said Toshiki Koga, who co-authored the paper, which appeared last week in Nature Astronomy.  "The difference in abundance and complexity of N-heterocycles between Bennu and Ryugu could reflect the differences in the environment to which these asteroids have been exposed in space."

What it brings to mind for me, though, is that if these five critical compounds can form on an airless, icy rubble pile (which is what Bennu honestly is), they've got to be pretty much everywhere in the universe that isn't so hot they fall apart.  And in case I haven't made the case strenuously enough, they are the basis of the genetic information shared by all life on Earth.

I think N -- the all-important Drake Equation estimate of the number of technological civilizations in the universe -- just got revised upward again.

Of course, even with my excited leaping about, I have to admit there's still a great deal we don't know, especially about the parameters that are lower on the list.  How many planets that do develop life end up with intelligent, technological life?  A while back I did a post about the rather terrifying idea of the Great Filter, which looks at the roadblocks that might prevent technological civilizations from forming or persisting.  Because the fact remains that when we look out there, we don't see signals from other civilizations -- something called the "Fermi Paradox" after the great physicist Enrico Fermi, who after listening to all the arguments for extraterrestrial life, famously quipped, "Then where is everybody?"

And we still have no idea about the scary parameter L -- how long, on average, technological civilizations last.  Given recent horrific developments in U.S. politics, I rather think I'm revising my own estimate of this one in the downward direction.  Maybe a benevolent alien will come and fix the mess we're in.  I know who I'm hoping for:

But even so, the Bennu study is exciting, and gives me hope that we might still one day find extraterrestrial life.  Perhaps even from the recently-launched Europa Clipper mission, which in April 2030 will do flybys of Jupiter's moon Europa -- widely considered to be our best shot of a place hosting extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System -- in the hopes of picking up biosignatures.

So we continue to wait, and wonder, and learn.  And -- as astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson always says, at the end of his talks -- "Keep looking up!"

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A circle of light

The Ordovician Period was a strange time in Earth's (pre)history.

It lasted a little over forty million years, from about 485 million years ago to 444 million years ago.  Coming out of the Cambrian Period, there was incredible diversity in marine life, especially invertebrates like arthropods, mollusks, and brachiopods; and at the beginning it was very hot -- not far off from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which had a global average temperature almost ten degrees higher than it is today.  But over the next forty million years, the climate went into a slow slide, ending with what is called the "Hirnantian Icehouse," a period of widespread continental glaciation.  The climate shift triggered a mass extinction, one of the "Big Five," and an estimated eighty percent of marine species went extinct.

But unlike the later Permian-Triassic and Cretaceous Extinctions, this one wasn't at all sudden -- suggesting that the causes of the other two mentioned, a massive volcanic eruption and an asteroid strike respectively, might not have been responsible.

So what triggered the climatic shift and die-off?

One thing was simply plate movement; by the end of the Ordovician, Gondwana (what is now Africa, South America, Antarctica, and Australia) were near the South Pole, which led to the formation of glaciers.  But it's hard to see how that by itself would have had such an enormous effect on life worldwide.

A paper this week in Earth and Planetary Science Letters proposes a curious solution, hinging on a peculiar observation; there was a meteorite barrage around 466 million years ago, during the middle of the Ordovician.  Extant rocks of that age show dozens of impact craters.  But... those craters are almost entirely limited to regions that were within thirty degrees of the equator at the time.

The researchers estimate that the likelihood of that occurring by chance is equivalent to flipping a coin 21 times and getting tails every time.  But if they were connected, there's the problem that the extinction didn't occur right after the barrage; there was an almost twenty million year gap between the impact array and the icehouse/extinction.  It's apparent that the strikes didn't directly trigger the extinction.

What the researchers propose is a near strike by a large asteroid -- one that, had it hit square on (as the Chicxulub Meteorite would do almost exactly four hundred million years later) would have been in the planet-killer category.  But it did pass inside the Roche limit, the distance a smaller object can pass a planet at which the gravity holding the passing asteroid together is exceeded by the tidal forces trying to tear it apart.

So rather than going into orbit, or crashing into the Earth in one piece, the asteroid got shredded.  The larger chunks went into decaying trajectories and ultimately impacted Earth near their orbital planes (parallel to the Earth's equator -- resulting in the odd distribution of craters), and the rest got spun out into...

... a ring system.

[Image credit: Oliver Hull]

The researchers think the rings shaded the Earth from enough of the Sun's warmth and light that it precipitated a slow decline into an ice age, and coupled with the movement of a big section of the Earth's crust down to near the South Pole, a worldwide icehouse.  But because it was a gradual drop in temperature, the hit on biodiversity didn't happen all at once -- although by the end, it certainly was big enough to rank amongst the largest mass extinctions ever.

But -- a ring system.  Can you imagine what that'd have looked like?

Of course, it's not like taking a time machine back to the late Ordovician would be all that hot an idea, and I mean that both literally and figuratively.  Notwithstanding how gawdawful cold it'd have been, there would also be the problem of finding food.  Plants had yet to colonize the land -- that wouldn't happen until the next geological period, the Silurian -- so the continents were basically one barren expanse of rock, dirt, and sand. 

But still.  Standing there in that empty landscape, and you look up, and arching over your head, spanning the entire dome of the sky, are these broad rings, a circular belt shining in reflected light.

We used to think rings were uncommon; for a long time, Saturn was the only planet known to have them.  But better telescopes and (especially) flybys have found ring systems around all four of the gas giants.  Now, if the current paper bears up under scrutiny, we might add Earth to the list.  Eventually, the Earth's ring system scattered and decayed away -- gravitational interactions between multiple objects of similar sizes are inherently unstable -- allowing the Earth to warm again, leading into the swampy, hot Silurian and Carboniferous Periods.

But for a while, we had what must have been an awe-inspiring adornment.

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Passing shadow

In astronomy, an occultation occurs when one celestial object passes in front of another, temporarily blocking it from sight (from the perspective of an observer on Earth).  Some occultations are entirely unremarkable; the Moon occults thousands of stars every month on its trips around the Earth, and we barely notice it because it's so ordinary.  And technically, solar eclipses are occultations, even though we don't usually think of them that way.

Other occultations, though, are rarer and more interesting.  The rings of Uranus were discovered in 1977 when they occulted the star SAO 158687, making it appear to blink on and off five times.  Pluto occulted stars in 1988, 2002, and 2006, and as it passed in front of the stars the alteration in the stars' light allowed astronomers here on Earth to study the chemistry of Pluto's thin atmosphere, a technique called atmospheric limb sounding.

Of course, because the two objects have to be lined up perfectly, occultations of bright and/or familiar objects are rare occurrences.  Jupiter, for example, is going to occult the planet Saturn -- but not until February 10, 7541.

That's a long time to wait.

Because natural occultations are so uncommon, there's a proposal to create an artificial version of occultation -- and use it to try and find more exoplanets.  A proposed orbiting telescope called BOSS (for Big Occulting Steerable Satellite -- of course it has a cute acronym, because these are astronomers we're talking about) will, if deployed, have a shield that can block the light of stars and allow the much dimmer reflected light of their planets to be detected.  Ordinarily, the glare of even an ordinary star is so bright that it swallows up the signal; shielding it, creating an artificial eclipse, might reveal hidden planetary systems.

The reason this topic comes up is that a loyal reader of Skeptophilia alerted me to an occultation that is going to occur at 1:08 AM, Greenwich Mean Time, tonight.  The bright star Betelgeuse is, for seven minutes, going to be covered by the asteroid 319 Leona -- so for that time, the familiar figure of Orion will appear to be missing his left shoulder.

Unfortunately for me, the occultation won't be visible from upstate New York, but you're in luck if you're in the southern Mediterranean or the southern tip of Florida.  Here's a map of where the occultation will be visible:

The coolest part is that Betelgeuse is so huge -- if it were where the Sun is, its outer edge would be near the orbit of Jupiter, and we'd be inside the star -- that despite its distance of 548 light years, its angular diameter is larger than that of the much closer asteroid that's occulting it.  So through a telescope, it'll be an annular occultation -- the occulting object won't quite be able to cover the entire star up.

Even so, Betelgeuse will for seven minutes dim to near invisibility to the naked eye.

You have to wonder what the ancients would have made of this.  Many cultures believed the heavens to be timeless and changeless, which is why the appearance of comets and events like the supernovae of 1054 and 1604 ("Kepler's supernova") were considered such portents of evil.

Even though we now know better, it still will be a little unnerving to have such a familiar star suddenly appear to vanish from sight.  It's a pity I won't get to see it -- it's a little late to purchase a plane ticket for Spain.  If the path of occultation passed across upstate New York, I'd even get up in the middle of a frigid December night to see one of the brightest stars in the night sky blink off for a few minutes.

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The imaginary fireball

The subject of today's post isn't anything new; it was just new to me, and, I suspect, will be to a good many of my readers, as well.  I found out about it from a long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia, who sent me a link about it with a note saying, "Okay, this is interesting. What think you?"

The link was to a 2008 article that appeared in Phys.org entitled, "Cuneiform Clay Tablet Translated for the First Time."   The tablet in question is called the "Sumerian planisphere," and was discovered in the ruins of Nineveh by a British archaeologist named Henry Layard in the middle of the nineteenth century.  From where it was found, it was dated to around 700 B.C.E., and although it was recognized that part of what it contained was maps of constellations, no one was quite sure what it was about.

The Sumerian planisphere [Image is in the Public Domain]

The researchers were puzzled by the fact that the arrangements of the stars in the constellations were close to, but not exactly the same as, the configurations they would have had at the time it was made, but then they concluded that those would have been their positions 2,400 years earlier -- and they claimed the text and maps didn't just show the stars on any old night, but on a sequence of nights chronicling the approach of a comet or asteroid.

Which, ultimately, hit the Earth.

They claim the collision site was near Köfels, Austria, and triggered a five-kilometer-wide fireball.  Why no huge crater, then?  The answer, they say, is that the steep side of the mountain gave way because of the impact, and a landslide ensued.  Organic matter trapped in the debris flow gave an approximate date, but once deciphered, the Sumerian planisphere's detailed sky maps (including the position of the Sun, the timing of sunrise, and so on) supposedly pinpointed the exact day of the impact: the 29th of June, 3123 B.C.E.

Between the planisphere and the geometry of the collision site, the researchers claimed that the comet came in at a very shallow angle -- their estimate is about six degrees -- clipped the nearby peak of Gamskogel, and exploded, creating a five-kilometer-wide moving fireball that finally slammed into Kófels head-on.

You may be wondering why Sumerian astronomers had any particular interest about an impact that occurred almost four thousand kilometers away.  They have an answer for that, too; the shallow impact angle created a sheet of superheated debris that arced away from the impact site, and right toward what is now the Middle East.  A 2014 paper by Joachim Seifert and Frank Lemke concluded that the greatest amount of damage didn't occur right at the collision site, but where all that flaming debris eventually landed -- in Mesopotamia.

"The back plume from the explosion (the mushroom cloud) would be bent over the Mediterranean Sea re-entering the atmosphere over the Levant, Sinai, and Northern Egypt," said Mark Hempsell of the University of Bristol, who is the chief proponent of the Köfels collision hypothesis.  "The ground heating though very short would be enough to ignite any flammable material - including human hair and clothes.  It is probable more people died under the plume than in the Alps due to the impact blast."

The dust and ash from the event caused a hundred-year-long "impact winter" that triggered droughts, leading to a several-centuries-long famine that ultimately caused the collapse of the Akkadian Empire.

Okay, so that's the claim.  There are, unfortunately, a host of problems with it, beginning with those pointed out by the scathing rebuttal by Jeff Medkeff in Blue Collar Scientist.  The first issue is that there is "impact glass" -- vitrified shards of debris partially melted by a collision -- in central Europe, but it dates to much longer ago (certainly more than eight thousand years ago).  There is no impact debris to be found between central Europe and the Middle East anywhere near 3,100 B.C.E., no scorched pottery shards or charred bones that would be indicative of a rain of fire.  An asteroid or comet "clipping" a mountain -- and then generating a plume of debris that was still superheated four thousand kilometers downstream -- would have sheared off the entire mountain top, and there'd be clear evidence of it today.  Last -- and most damning -- the Köfels formation has been studied by geologists and found to be not a single event, but a series of landslides, none of which show convincing evidence of having been triggered by an impact.

The scientists involved don't even seem sure of their own chronology; the Phys.org article says 3123 B.C.E. (the 29th of June, to be exact), while the Seifert and Lemke paper says the impact occurred almost a thousand years later (in 2193 B.C.E.).  The latter date at least is closer to the claimed civilization-destroying effects; the Akkadian Empire fell in around 2154.  It seems likely, though, that the collapse of the Akkadians (and various others, including the Indus Valley Civilization, the Egyptian Old Kingdom, and the Chinese Liangzhu Culture) was due to a drought called the "4.2 Kiloyear Event."  The cause of that is uncertain, but probably wasn't an impact (again, because of the lack of clear stratigraphic evidence).  The most likely culprit was a shift in cold-water currents in the North Atlantic changing patterns of rainfall, but even that is speculative.

As far as Hempsell's even more outlandish claim -- that the Köfels impact generated the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah -- I won't even go into details except to say that there is evidence of a much smaller airburst explosion where the cities were allegedly located, but once again, it's from a different date (around 1650 B.C.E.).  As for any other evidence of the biblical "Cities on the Plain," it's slim to nonexistent.  Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, of Tel Aviv University, called the tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah "an etiological story, that is, a legend that developed in order to explain a landmark.  In other words, people who lived in the later phase of the Iron Age, the later days of the kingdom of Judah, were familiar with the huge ruins of the Early Bronze cities and told a story of how such important places could be destroyed."

So given the (1) lack of any reasonably reliable evidence, (2) a chronology that even the researchers don't seem to be able to keep straight, and (3) plausible alternative explanations for the supposed societal aftereffects, I'm afraid I'm gonna be in the "don't think so" column on this one.  As dramatic as it would be if the astronomers of Sumer documented the approach and ultimate collision of a comet or asteroid, a collision that ultimately showered flaming debris over the entire Middle East, I think we have to set aside the drama of an imaginary fireball for the cold light of reason.

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The astronomical pogo stick

It's all too easy lately to find reasons to criticize humans.  I'm guilty of contributing to it myself, by my focus on pseudoscientific nonsense; you can jump from "some humans do stupid stuff" to the cynical "all humans are irreparably stupid" without even realizing it.

It's worthwhile focusing instead on our accomplishments, some of which are downright amazing.  This year, I think we all need something to cheer us up and make us feel a little more optimistic about our potential as a species.  So today we're going to look at: the mind-blowing reconnaissance mission NASA has undertaken to collect, and bring back to Earth, material from the asteroid Bennu.

Bennu is interesting from a number of standpoints.  It's a carbonaceous asteroid, meaning it is high in the carbon-containing compounds that were probably abundant in the early Earth's atmosphere -- carbon dioxide and monoxide, methane, and hydrogen cyanide.  Because these were the raw materials from which the first biochemicals were synthesized, it's of serious interest to people like me who are obsessed with the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.  Astronomers tend to be more curious about Bennu because its composition is thought to be very similar to the material from which the Solar System originally coalesced, so learning about it might give us a lens into our region of the galaxy's very distant past.

And if you needed another reason, Bennu is one of the asteroids which periodically crosses the Earth's orbit, making it high on the list of eventual Earth strikes.  (Not to worry: it's not going to hit the Earth, or anything else, for at least another two hundred years, and the current surmise is that it's much more likely to hit Jupiter than it is to hit Earth.)

So in 2016, NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx mission, which first did a near pass and mapped out its surface to look for good spots for rock collecting, and then on the second encounter -- which happened three days ago -- dropped onto the asteroid with a maneuver that looked like someone bouncing on a pogo stick.  The six-second contact stirred up material from the surface, which was sucked into a collector.  OSIRIS-REx then zoomed back off into space for its return voyage to Earth, carrying what scientists hope is a sixty-gram sample of the surface of the asteroid.

Okay, that's already impressive, right?  If you want your mind boggled further, consider this:

OSIRIS-REx's trip (one way) from Earth to Bennu covered about 820 million kilometers.  The asteroid's diameter is about 530 meters; the spacecraft's is a little under seven meters.  I did a bit of back-of-the-envelope calculation, and discovered that our ability to hit Bennu from this distance is equivalent to hitting a target the size of a bacterium with a bullet the size of a virus -- from a kilometer away.

Oh, and it's hardly standing still.  Bennu is a fast-moving target, zooming along at 28 kilometers per second.

If that doesn't impress you, I can't imagine what would.

OSIRIS-REx's sampling arm, seconds before impact on asteroid Bennu on October 20, 2020 [Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of NASA/JPL]

"The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do," said mission principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona.  "I can’t believe we actually pulled this off."

His elation and incredulity are understandable considering all of the things that could have gone wrong, and how slight the error would have to be to result in the spacecraft either plunging into a destructive crash or else missing the asteroid entirely.  And at that point, OSIRIS-REx had to function perfectly on its own -- at that distance, radio signals traveling at the speed of light take over eighteen minutes to reach Earth, and (even assuming an instantaneous response by NASA scientists) another eighteen to send back a command like "NO NO NO DON'T DO THAT!"

By that time, the spacecraft would either be rubble or else zooming away into space, and away from the target.

So the mission went off without a hitch.  Well, the first half of it -- they still have to get OSIRIS-REx back to Earth safely.  But I'd say given how flawless the first bit was, there's a good chance they'll accomplish the whole shebang, and we'll have some really interesting stuff to study.

When you consider things like this, it's reassuring -- the capacity for human accomplishment is limitless.  Yes, I know there's still idiotic stuff going on down here.  But I'm not ready to give up on humanity yet.  I find the OSIRIS-REx mission incredibly inspirational.

Gives me hope that there may be a bright future for our species yet.

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Have any scientifically-minded friends who like to cook?  Or maybe, you've wondered why some recipes are so flexible, and others have to be followed to the letter?

Do I have the book for you.

In Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, from Homemade to Haute Cuisine, by Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz, you find out why recipes work the way they do -- and not only how altering them (such as using oil versus margarine versus butter in cookies) will affect the outcome, but what's going on that makes it happen that way.

Along the way, you get to read interviews with today's top chefs, and to find out some of their favorite recipes for you to try out in your own kitchen.  Full-color (and mouth-watering) illustrations are an added filigree, but the text by itself makes this book a must-have for anyone who enjoys cooking -- and wants to learn more about why it works the way it does.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Lurking under the ice

So once again I've been sent a link several times with either "Oh, lord, here we go again" or "Ha!  This is real!  You skeptics are so dumb!" notes appended.  The link is to a story in The New York Post about a "massive anomaly lurking in Antarctica."

My first thought was to wonder how an anomaly can lurk, whether in Antarctica or elsewhere, and of course this put me in mind of H. P. Lovecraft's seminal horror story "At the Mountains of Madness."  In this tale some explorers head out to the Frozen Continent after the discovery of certain artifacts of great age, and upon investigation they find a massive city (I believe it's described as "cyclopean" and "eldritch," two of Lovecraft's absolute favorite words), following which they're one by one picked off and eaten by Shoggoths, who apparently lurk quite effectively.

So the usual stuff.  But the particular anomaly referenced in the Post article was discovered not through direct exploration but by use of a magnetometer, and the conclusion was that there is a large metallic object hidden (or lurking, as the case may be) underneath the ice in Wilkes Land, a region of eastern Antarctica.  It's buried at a depth of 900 meters, and is 250 kilometers across.

Which is pretty big.  Cyclopean, even.

Wilkes Land, also known as "Not My Idea of a Vacation Spot" [image courtesy of NASA/JPL and the Wikimedia Commons]

Some scientists have suggested that the anomaly is the remains of a huge asteroid -- perhaps twice as large as the one that created the Chicxulub Crater in what is now the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, and in the process did in most of the species of dinosaurs.  If so, the Wilkes Land Magnetic Anomaly is a good candidate for the smoking gun of the Permian-Triassic Extinction, which occurred 252 million years ago and is estimated to have wiped out 96% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life in one fell swoop.  The timing certainly seems right, as do the characteristics of the site.

But of course, far be it from your average New York Post reader to accept something like the results of scientific study.  No, the lurking anomaly has to be something more mysterious.  Some of the suggestions have been:

• it's a massive UFO base
• it's an underground (or underice, as the case may be) city where the Nazis escaped to after their defeat in World War II
• it's where they moved HAARP after they decommissioned the one in Alaska.  (Yes, I know that HAARP studies the atmosphere, so it wouldn't do you much good buried 900 meters deep in ice.  Stop asking questions.)
• it's a portal to the inside of the Hollow Earth

Then there's the "UFO-hunting crew" that calls itself "Secure Team 10," which basically combined all of the above into one all-purpose loony explanation.  The Post explains their claim as follows:

Secure Team 10 suggested the Nazis built secret bases in Antarctica during World War II, which were designed to be used by flying saucers. 

The UFO hunters added: “There is some evidence of this coming to light in recent years, with images purporting to show various entrances built into the side of mountains, with a saucer shape and at a very high altitude.” 

“This begs the question: how would you enter these entrances without something that could fly and was the same shape as the hole itself?”

My general opinion is that it begs a great many more questions than that one, but do go on.

Secure Team also suggested the US Navy led a mission to investigate the mysterious continent. 

This expedition was called Operation High Jump, which conspiracy theorists believe was an attempt to find the entrance to a secret world hidden underneath Earth.

Have I emphasized strongly enough that this magnetic anomaly, whatever it is, is covered by a 900-meter-thick sheet of ice?

Anyhow.  Once again we have the woo-woos coming up with bizarre ideas, which of course is what woo-woos do, and tabloid clickbait like The New York Post enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon to induce readers to provide them with ad revenue by clicking on the link.

And, as a side effect, inducing my readers to send it to me, which they've done (at the time of this writing) six times and counting.  So thanks to all of my loyal readers for keeping me informed on the latest missives from the wingnuts.  As for me, I think I'm going to lurk my way up to the kitchen and get another cup of coffee.

All I want for Christmas is a Death Asteroid

So it's December, which means it's time for Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Our Fellow Humans, and Death Asteroids.

I'm not sure what it is about this time of year that brings out the fatalism in so many.  You might recall that the Mayan Apocalypse, for example, was scheduled on December 21, 2012, prompting mass panic amongst the woo-woos until December 22 rolled around and it became apparent that contrary to popular expectation, the world had failed to end on schedule.

It's disappointing when you can't even count on an apocalypse to show up on time.

In any case, this year, the End of the World is going to be brought about by an asteroid with the euphonious name 2003 SD220, which is scheduled to make a near pass to Earth on Christmas Eve.

2003 SD220 [image courtesy of JPL]

Well, near, that is, in the sense of "11 million kilometers away," which is 28 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.  So we're talking "near" in the astronomical sense, just as geologists consider anything under about 50,000 years old "recent," even though 50,000 years seems like a long time even for someone as old as I am.  But such sensible and soothing words have not had the least effect on the woo-woos, who are jumping about making panicked little squeaking noises about how the asteroid is going to kill us all, notwithstanding the fact that all of the previous Ends of the World they predicted have not, technically, happened.

The asteroid is 2.5 kilometers across and is moving five miles per second, which is a pretty good clip for something that large.  But from there, irrational fear takes over and logic goes right out the window.  It will be close enough, we are told, that its gravitational pull will cause us to experience deadly tsunamis, earthquakes, and the eruption of dormant volcanoes.  And that's if it doesn't actually impact the Earth directly, which would be an "extinction-level event."

Never mind that there are plenty of mountains on the Earth that are 2.5 kilometers tall, and their gravitational pull doesn't cause tsunamis etc.  And they're a hell of a lot closer than 2003 SD220 will ever get.

But maybe it's because it's traveling so fast.  Maybe by some new and undiscovered type of physics, moving fast makes something's gravitational pull increase.  I dunno.

So NASA, who must be really fucking sick and tired of people who don't understand science getting everyone stirred up every couple of months, issued a statement.  Paul Chodas, manager of the Near-Earth Object Office of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the following:

There is no scientific basis -- not one shred of evidence -- that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates. 

In fact, NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program says there have been no asteroids or comets observed that would impact Earth anytime in the foreseeable future.  All known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids have less than a 0.01% chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years. 

The Near-Earth Object office at JPL is a key group involved with the international collaboration of astronomers and scientists who keep watch on the sky with their telescopes, looking for asteroids that could do harm to our planet and predicting their paths through space for the foreseeable future. If there were any observations on anything headed our way, we would know about it. 

If there were any object large enough to do that type of destruction... we would have seen something of it by now.

Can't you just hear the annoyed sighing that went along with his writing this?

But of course, that statement had exactly the opposite effect from what Chodas wanted.  If NASA was saying the asteroid is harmless, that must mean they're covering something up.  It must be deadly.  It must, in fact...

... be four times the size of Jupiter.

And yes, there are people who are seriously claiming that.

Why haven't we seen it yet, if it's so big, is something of a mystery.  After all, we can see Jupiter itself just fine, and it's currently 57,000 times further away than the asteroid is.

Maybe the asteroid is made of dark matter.  Makes as much sense as anything else these people say.

As for me, I'm not worried.  2003 SD220 is going to be far enough away that it won't be visible without a pretty good telescope, which is actually kind of disappointing.  So on Christmas Eve, I'll be nestled up all snug in my bed, and I sure as hell won't have visions of Death Asteroids dancing through my head.

E.T. called. Your lunch is ready.

It's okay to be ignorant, as long as it doesn't become a way of life.

Even the best educated of us don't know stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Socrates, after all, had a point when he gave his famous answer to followers who asked him, "How can you be so wise?"  "If I am wise," he said, "it is because I alone of men realize how little I know."

It is our response to ignorance that counts.  And it seems to me that when people are asked for information about which they are ignorant, they generally have one of two reactions:

1. They act like it's perfectly okay to be lazy enough not to want to know the answer.  This is the "oh, well, I'm not good at science" thing I sometimes hear from students.  (My usual answer -- "Work harder, then" -- seldom has any result except their looking at me like I have three heads.)
2. They start making stuff up.  This often happens when the person in question is one of those types who has to know everything, or when the answer that's being sought is so critical or so interesting that (s)he just can't bear saying, "I don't know, and we may never know."

As an example of the latter, consider the recent odd astronomical discovery that the dwarf planet Ceres has two mysterious bright spots that show up intermittently on NASA photographs.  

[image courtesy of NASA]

The writer of the news article linked above, Mariette LeRoux, seems a little put out that scientists aren't explaining the spots.  All we know, she said, is that the spots "behave differently," as if they are not being caused by the same phenomenon.  Federico Tosi, who analyzes data from the Dawn probe's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, said, "For sure, we have bright spots on the surface of Ceres which, at least from a thermal perspective, seem to behave in different ways."

Which summarizes the observations, and tells us exactly nothing beyond that.  And that is what scientists should do, given that this is all they have at the moment.  They're still trying to find out more, or come up with a model of what could explain the spots, so they're not falling upon one horn of the dilemma.  But they're also not just inventing wild ideas when they have almost nothing to go on, and thus are avoiding the other horn of the dilemma as well.

Which is more than I can say for the woo-woos, who are having a field day with this.  Here are a few of the "explanations" (if I can dignify them by that word) I've seen on such sites, since the observation was made a month ago:

• The spots are a signaling device that was placed on the surface of Ceres to keep an eye on us and relay information to our Alien Overlords to let them know when we were getting too uppity.  Prepare for an imminent invasion of the Earth.
• Ceres is a hollow artificial sphere, inside which is a fantastically old civilization.  This enormous spacecraft has been battered over the eons by meteorite impacts (see all the craters?) and finally the external hull has cracked, and we're seeing light leaking out.
• This is an Illuminati base to which our leaders periodically teleport.  Why any Illuminatus would want to go to Ceres -- which, last I checked, was cold, colder even than upstate New York -- is beyond me.  You'd think if they were having a convention, they'd choose Hawaii or Costa Rica or somewhere like that.
• Ceres is a giant weapon that is heading for the Earth, and these are the targeting lasers.  Yes, I know that Ceres has been in a completely stable, nearly circular orbit since its discovery in 1801, but silly things like "facts" never discourage these people.

So anyhow.  We start with "there are two mysterious spots on Ceres" and end with alien superweapons.  All of which makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it.

But on a happier note, there's a second story this week that reinforces science's stance that it's always better to be patient in our ignorance, and look for natural answers, than to jump to ridiculous and outlandish ones.  Some aberrant signals that have been picked up by the Parkes Radio Telescope, and that were being considered by the UFOs-and-Aliens crowd as possible candidates for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence, were shown to be...

... coming from the microwave oven in the observatory's staff break room.

(Note: these are not the Fast Radio Bursts I described in my post last week; but some completely natural, earthly source may be the explanation for those, too.)

To demonstrate this, astronomer Emily Petroff ran the microwave oven three times, each time opening it before the timer went off.  And each time, the radio telescope recorded a peryton -- an odd, narrow-band signal.  Petroff writes:

The two ovens responsible for most or all of the observed perytons are from the same manufacturer (Matsushita/National) and are both in excess of 27 years of age though still working reliably.  Our tests point clearly to the magnetron itself as the source of the perytons since these are not detected unless the oven door is opened. 

Further, our analysis of the peryton cluster of 23rd June 1998 implies the perytons are a transient phenomenon that occurs only when the magnetron is switched off.  That we have observed perytons from at least two ovens over 17 years suggests that they are not the product of an unusual failure or fault but are inherent to, and long-lived in, at least some common types of oven.

So there you have it.  How to steer between a state of lazy ignorance and a state of absolute certainty. Navigating your way past these obstacles is critical if you want to know the real answer -- and neither make up loony ideas, nor simply shrug your shoulders and accept being permanently ignorant.

Because, after all, isn't accepting your ignorance, and ceasing your efforts to find out answers, that much more awful state called "being stupid?"

Asteroid dodgeball

One has to wonder what people get from forecasting the end of the world.

Because some people are really into this.  You've got your religious/End Times Crowd, but they're not the only ones.  There's the We're All Going To Die In An Epidemic Cadre, the Yellowstone Supervolcano Will End Life As We Know It Club, and the ever-present Economic Collapse Will Result In Global War Association.

And is it just me, or do these people seem kind of... happy about the whole idea?

Me, I'm not so thrilled by the prospect.  It's not that life is perfect, but hell, I'll take what I have over everyone in the country dying of Ebola, or being smothered by a giant ash cloud, or even the rivers running red with the blood of unbelievers.

And of course, those aren't the only ways the world could end.  Massive earthquakes, tsunamis, even alien invasions could do the trick.  And if that's not enough, we now have an article bouncing about in the social media that claims that we're all about to die...

... in an asteroid collision.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The site Cosmos Up, which sounds more reputable than it actually turns out to be, ran an article last week called "Dangerous Asteroid Rapidly Approaching Earth?" in which we find out that the euphoniously-named 2014 UR116 is about to play a cosmic game of Whack-a-Mole with the Earth.  Here's how they describe it.  Grammar and spelling is as-written, so you can get the overall charming effect of the original:

A large asteroid named 2014 UR116 is moving into an orbit, most likely involving a collision with Earth. Asteroid flies inside the solar system.

His route is similar to the trajectory of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. He flies by planet, Venus and Mars, and is a real danger for the inhabitants of the earth.

He does that, does he?  I'm scared already.

Russia’s only network of robotic telescopes MASTER created by Lomonosov Moscow State University University in collaboration with the three domestic universities (Ekaterinburg, Irkutsk and Blagoveshchensk), Kislovodsk Station of the Pulkovo Observatory RAS and the University of San Juan (Argentina), an asteroid discovered in 2014 UR116, – more than 300 meters in diameter – which can collide with the Earth. This was reported by the laboratory site space monitoring MSU.

So far, sounds at least vaguely scientific.  But then, the author goes on to tell us the following:

Exact trajectory of the asteroid 2014 UR116 yet impossible to determine, but theoretically it could collide with the Earth, and Mars and Venus. The energy of the explosion, in the event of a collision with the Earth, a thousand times greater than the explosion of Chelyabinsk asteroid.

It's going to collide with the Earth and Mars and Venus?  One right after the other, or something?  On the other hand, if they mean that we can't tell which one it's going to hit, that's kind of a high uncertainty value.  According to the site Wolfram Alpha, the current distance between Earth and Mars is 157.9 million miles.  If that's the size of the error bars in their trajectory calculations, I'll take my chances, you know?

But of course, "We Don't Know And It Probably Won't Hit The Earth, But Even So, It's A Pretty Big Chunk Of Space Rock" doesn't make nearly as snappy a headline as "Dangerous Asteroid Rapidly Approaching Earth."

Still, you have to wonder why the people currently forwarding this article on Twitter and Facebook seem so... cheery about the whole thing.  Myself, I think that being at ground zero of an asteroid strike would be unpleasant, at least during the 2.8 nanoseconds before I was vaporized by the impact. You'd think people would be circulating articles saying, "Hey, Isn't It Cool That We've Found Another Asteroid That Won't Hit Us?" instead of articles saying "Fuck, We're All Gonna Die."

Yet another way in which I don't get human nature.  I'll add it to the list.

Well, that should take care of your "Bieber Fever."

So San Francisco made it through yesterday without being obliterated.  I'm pleased about that, because San Francisco is a great place and it would suck if it was destroyed by an earthquake even if it is a hotbed of "sexual immortality" (as one of the prophecies of doom called it).

Of course, the same bunch of prophets also called it a "Bowl of Iniquity," which is just funny.  It sounds like the breakfast they serve in hell's deli, doesn't it?  ("Hey, hon, can I have another Bowl of Iniquity, with some milk and sugar?  Thanks.")

But of course, this failure of the Lord to keep his word and smite the hell out of California isn't going to stop the prognosticators of doom from moving on to the next Holy Warning.  In fact, a reader told me we already have one that has cleared the starting gate, and it's a doozy.  Ready?

FEMA has been caught in the act of sending shiploads of plastic coffins and other corpse-transport devices...

... to Puerto Rico...

... because there's going to be an asteroid impact in the Atlantic Ocean...

... causing an enormous, 200-foot-tall tsunami...

... in order to kill everyone at the October 19 Justin Bieber concert in San Juan.

Well.  I certainly can't top that.  And I have to state, for the record, that I can understand why the Lord might want to smite Justin Bieber.  Destroying Puerto Rico in order to do it sounds like it might be a bit of an overreaction, however.  On the other hand, if you read the Old Testament you'll find that this sort of thing happened all the time, with the Lord having a bad morning and smiting the shit out of everyone who happened to be in the vicinity, so I guess there's precedent.

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways, after all, and if killing everyone in Puerto Rico is his way of dealing with Justin Bieber, then who am I to question it?

So, there you have it.  The next prophecy to look forward to.  Much more creative than a silly old earthquake, don't you think?  And just think!  If it's true, we'll never have to hear "As Long As You Love Me" again.