Its a fact. I would have bet any reasonable sum against this ever occurring. It is, in my humble opinion, the most significant thing to happen this decade. Yes, a lot more significant than 3D movies, wars in the Middle East, or the color of our president. All of those things were guaranteed to occur at some point, they simply chose to occur now. That this can be said of almost anything, short of the coming of Jesus on a cloud of Glory. Most points of history are simply things which are destined to occur at some time, so the timing isn't particularly significant.

Of course, should the world end by any means, that is significant. However, commercial space flight is huge. It is a concept well developed in science fiction, but previously unknown in human history. True commercial exploration is the first step to commercialization of space, the purchase of the moon, human travel to the stars. We always had to assume that the bickering of nations would lead to ever greater space programs, but it became clear in the last decades that governments preferred to buy votes at home, not inspire people to great endeavors.

I hope, I pray, that this changes everything. I know the Earth is doomed, whether by the hand of God or a fiery missile from Oort. This planet will die someday. Will we die with it? Will we journey on into the cosmos? Maybe, just maybe, mankind will survive. This is that first step.


<< MORE >>

by Stephanie Osborn


A lot of my friends and fans over on Facebook have become followers of my solar and aurora alerts there, and it has been suggested that I make this a regular part of my blog, so I thought I'd explain what it is and why it's important.

All three - solar weather, space weather, and geomagnetic weather - are interconnected. This is because the Sun has a magnetic field that extends far past the Earth, and so the Earth's magnetic field interacts with it. "Space Weather" is essentially a term for the conditions of space in the general vicinity of Earth, but not necessarily inside the Earths magnetic field.

We are also sitting inside the atmosphere of the Sun, the corona. It generates a wind, usually coming out from the Sun and spiraling away – yeah, the “solar wind.” Granted, the corona isn't very dense, but it's dense enough to create some effects, and we're working on using it to our benefit, like in solar sails and such, which can use the solar wind as much as light pressure (different blog post) to maneuver around the Solar System like the spaceborne clipper ships of old.

But when the Sun gets...agitated, we'll say...it can get a lot denser. Coronal holes move from the poles down to lower latitudes, and the Sun's face develops an astronomical case of acne. This usually occurs around the time of solar maximum.

Whoa. Waitaminit. What's “solar maximum”?

Our Sun has cycles that it goes through. Some are short and some are long. These cycles are related to its magnetic field and to sunspots. In fact, many variable star astronomers such as myself consider that the Sun is at least a borderline variable star because of this; some consider it outright variable. We'll leave that to a later discussion. For now, let's just look at those cycles and why they exist.

The Sun is a gigantic ball of plasma, a gas of ionized particules like protons and electrons. It spins on an axis. These two facts, when combined, create an electic current. An electric current, in turn, generates a magnetic field. This is why the Sun has a magnetic field, and it looks like a bar magnet – a “dipole.” (Remember elementary school when you put a piece of paper on a bar magnet and sprinkled iron filings on it? It made a cool bunch of lines that arced from one end of the magnet to the other, and then fanned out at the very ends. That's what I'm talking about.) The polar areas normally have “coronal holes,” because of the open-ended lines. The plasma flows out, away from the Sun, at high speeds (200-600km/s, or 447,000mph).

But since the Sun isn't solid like a bar magnet, the plasma doesn't all have to spin around the axis at the same speed – and it doesn't. The poles don't spin at the same rate as the equator, and the deeper layers don't spin at the same rate as the surface.

So let's think about those lines of iron filings again. Our bar magnet has gone and gotten itself all twisted up because it isn't solid, so the lines of iron filings get all twisted up, too. Now, scientists are still working on this, but the best we can figure out now is that sunspots are places where “snarls” form in the magnetic lines, and break through to the surface. (In the last couple of years we've learned how to look “deeper” into the Sun to see these snarls below the visible surface. Remember that. It'll come into play later on, when we start talking about the Sun as a variable star.) This means that sunspots have magnetic fields, sometimes very complicated. There are almost always at least two – one is a north magnetic pole, the other a south pole. (When there is just one, it is usually funny-shaped and one end will be North and the opposite end South. And sometimes there's a whole cluster, which gets really complicated.) And most all of the spots on the Sun will have the same N/S orientation.

It turns out that every 11 years, there is a peak in the number of sunspots, and a minimum in the number of sunspots. We aren't quite sure why, because we don't have all the theory worked out yet. But we've all heard of Solar Maximum and Solar Minimum, and that's what those terms mean. Solar Max is when we have the most spots, and Solar Min is when we have the least.

 -Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

<< MORE >>

Look, I'm just better at modeling curves than anyone who apparently ever worked for NASA. I can't explain how bad the Solar Modeling people have gotten. Year after year they revise down their estimates...without reaching the bottom I predicted near 5 years ago. Oddly enough, instead of proving me an idiot, the sun has gone and made 2012 its maximum. Sure, i could still be wrong. Lets have a huge May sunspot number and keep going till 2014. Or start petering out after Christmas like I predicted more than 5 years ago.

Now, I didn't predict a Dalton minimum. I said it was possible given the evidence, but my prediction is just for a very low sunspot number. I don't see that the peak of the cycle has strayed a bit from 2012, so dead on where it was predicted in 2001. If the cycle does an extended minimum a second time, as we saw in 2009... then maybe I'd be convinced that we had started a Dalton minimum. Right now I just think it is plausible. I think it is equally probably that 2023 will be a cycle with a reasonable sunspot number in the upper 80's to low 90's and a couple of x class storms to write home about.

The funny thing is, if you do a model progression on the sun, it is a lot like the weather. It tends to do the same thing over and over again, but with changes each time. The changes aren't unpredictable, but they don't pattern well to computers. They pattern fairly well to the human eye. Can't explain why the computers don't see the patterns and the humans do, but it does seem to be the case that the human observers are putting out much better predictions than the models. Yeah, I think we can extend that observation to a lot of other "scientific" fields as well.

<< MORE >>

Well, i hadn't really assumed that working for a living would give me a lot of free time. More significantly, under the new security arrangements, I have to be very careful about things I might talk about. Yes, I'm back to being a rocket scientist. However, this rocket is national security. Oddly enough, my hobby work is Homeland security. Yeah, I get to do Top Secret work for fun.

Since both of these topics would have been a lot of fun to blog about, I may need to re-consider my basic blog topics. Religion? Politics? Books? I know, I've been a second rate news accumulator for the Science and anti-global warming folks for years. Not sure what I'm going to do for a blog now.

Feel free to comment away. I'll take any suggestions to heart.

<< MORE >>

My previous comment about predicting anything with models is based on this Dilbert series. (And real results, which varied.)



I want to point out that I have nothing against modeling... I do it for a living. Normal people say things like "If a scientist modeled it, then it must have a grain of truth." Look, I can model the beach all day, but it doesn't produce a surfer. Modeling is about explaining what you already know to be true. If you really don't know it, models can help you "Perry Mason" out the testable details. If the testable details turn out to give negative response.

example A: Evolution - we should find monkeys that look a lot like people (Ok, kinda raw, but you get the concept.) Exhibit A: Lucy. Lucy may or may not be an ancestor or related to humans, but the mental model predicted her, she showed up. Doesn't make Evolution TRUE. But it does make it tested.

example B: If Anthropogenic Global Warming is true, we should see increased heating in the tropics, especially at high altitudes. (I think it was 10 - 12 km, I don't really remember the paper all that well.) The paper didn't show the heating. Doesn't make AGW FALSE, But it does make it elements of the model falsified.

Models are like power point presentations with math added. The math is so other people can see your thinking, as well as your pretty pictures at the end. If you don't release your models (Extremely common practice, probably the most common practice among scientists) then nobody knows what switches and levers your are pulling to produce your results. Having someone do all your thinking for you might be good on a blind date, but we are more than 10 years into this relationship, I want some explanations that fit experimental data. So far, nothing does. << MORE >>

Stéphane Udry: Evidence of billions of rocky, habitable planets in our galaxy

So, the picture the article used was terrible. Dwarf stars are dim little fellows, so the planets have to be orbiting in a fairly close band. The real question is "How long do they have?" The planets that close will get tidal locked and should be suffering from some significant drag effects from magnetic, tidal, and atmospheric interactions with the Dwarf Star. Do they have a few billion years to develop life? If not, can we use them as way-stations in the future. Turn their little dirt balls into Edens for our colonists pleasure?

Heck, we have a neighbor - Proxmima Centauri, which is only 3 light years from us. Does it have a planet? Could we use that planet if it has one? And last but not least, how long a trip is 3 light years anyway?

Last one first: Given the proper propulsion system - combined cycle nuclear magnetic - we could get a ship to 0.1 light speed in about 10 years of acceleration. 28 years later, it turns around and decelerates for 10 years into planetary orbit. Roughly, 50 years. Proxima is the closest likely planet by about 90 years, as Draconis is about 12 lights out, I'm not bothering to check my math. We could accelerate faster using some home field tricks, but deceleration is going to be slow or rough, take your pick.

So, if Proxima has a warm, wet, dirt ball. What does that matter to us? With proper basics, we could "start life" from zero fairly quickly. Lichen, simple grasses and mosses, trees. Start fish, plankton, bugs, ... and then we forward with the cute and cuddly wildlife. Yeah, it would take thousands of years, but hey, I'm immortal, I'll tell you all how it comes out.

Which leads me to this article from the Onion:
Intelligent, Condescending Life Discovered In Distant Galaxy

yeah, thats what bugs me. All them space aliens are so "Yeah, what have you invented lately." Makes me want to experimentally verify the EMP hardening technology of their forward facilities, ya know what I mean?

Picture of Superior Life Form

I are Rocket SCIENTIST!
Ok, there are superiour life forms on this planet. Yes, she is also a rocket scientist. Looks a good bit better than I do when I wear that outfit.


<< MORE >>

For those who were unaware - the reason I missed Gulf Wars, Christmas, etc. - I was unemployed. This has ceased to be true. In the meantime, I have written a novel, three times. (It is a lot harder than it looks.) I also work with RE-Labs and Sablehawk Test Group. I've been pushing the envelope for six months trying to find a new source of funding for my hobbies - like eating - when Northrop Grummon came through with a job offer. I don't know much about the job at this time, so we'll be figuring that out as we go forward. I'll keep updating, and hopefully I can get an update schedule here that makes sense.

Thanks for your support!
<< MORE >>

The Earth Warming Faster Than Expected

This, in the parlance of the modeling community, is code games. I play them myself, so I am not immune from criticism.

When someone asks:
"So how did you get such a good answer?"
They won't appreciate:
"Um... I tweaked every knob, ran it 50 times, and picked the best answer!"
A display of code games looks a lot like their main graph.

What do we have here? Well, check out the last 40 years...most of the lines greatly overestimate current trends, yet these are considered "In the margin" so that their results can Weigh the final answer. Weighing is complicated on a computer, but a human brain looks at a graph and says- that looks like the important area. Making it Weigh heavier on top makes the top numbers look a lot more important than the bottom numbers.

Which ones are closest to the actual trend lines? Why, those are the ones who are showing statistically almost no temperature increase over the next seventy years - even a basic cooling for thirty years. This graph will be great, in thirty years, when they are arguing that the lack of heating is still within the edges of their prediction. (Hopefully, they can then retire, because the 1.0 C degrees of net heating by 2050 are far from assured.

Look, they are basing 100 years of average world temperatures on 40 years of data. This graph, again, starts at the artificial low point, and declares it T = 0. Then his scale runs up to 6! Why?  To show how bad his models are?  Even he doesn't put his margin of error above 4. Everything interesting has happened between -.5 and +.5, but "in the future" the changes will be much worse than measurement. (Hate to say it, but that isn't how modeling works. You can only model what you have seen.)

The interesting points are lines that replicate the directions of modern trend lines, which a few do, but those are covered by hundreds of runs that are NOTHING like the current trend lines. They stay "In the box" during measured times, but quickly escalate on a non-physical basis, which only shows the poverty of his data sets.

What does this show? The current set of models can predict everything up to alien invasion and squirrel zombies. (But only after it has happened.) They can look into the past and bend the lines with a handful of carefully chosen variables. A hah! It works, it lives.Sure, it runs off the rails 10 years into the future, but thats what you get with crappy 3-variable models. When we have a thousand year timeline, then match the damn data. Before then, you're just playing Model Games. << MORE >>

How to Write Like a Scientist

The winning Sentance:

“Twenty million children die of scabies every day. OMG we built a robot kangaroo!”

and also the author list:

FIRST AUTHOR: Weary graduate student who spent hours doing the work.
SECOND AUTHOR: Resentful graduate student who thinks he or she spent hours doing the work.
THIRD AUTHOR: Undergraduate just happy to be named.
FOURTH AUTHOR: Collaborator no one has ever met whose name is only included for political reasons.
FIFTH AUTHOR: Postdoctoral fellow who once made a chance remark on the subject
SIXTH AUTHOR: For some reason, Vladimir Putin.
LAST AUTHOR: Principal investigator whose grant funded the project but who hasn’t stood at a lab bench in decades, except for that one weird photo shoot for some kind of pamphlet, and even then it was obvious that he or she didn’t know where to find basic things.

Yeah. Science papers are like that. You hope you get added in, you hope the paper is meaningful, but honestly, it just looks good on your resume.

<< MORE >>

I just spent a week at a radiation effects conference. It was extremely interesting. I did attend sessions which cannot be revealed to the public...partially because the papers presented were awful. The public sessions were much better.

Everyone says "That movie was terrible" but can't do anything about it. Bwa ha ha ha haaaa. I'm senior guest editor for this conference. So the paper is good or it isn't getting past me.

Ok, so I'm part of a team with four other people, but your papers better be good. I'm not passing that crap even on a secret server. I have the clearance to read your paper, so no "the data is under the classified rock, I can't let you see it" routines.

Yeah, I saw some scary stuff. Id love to tell you about it, but I'd be the one who got arrested. (The line, "I'd tell you but I'd have to kill you" is pretty lame. They do prosecute for receipt of classified information, but giving away classified information is the LONG prison sentence. Neither one gets the firing squad.)
 
The true sadness of the last week was missing Gulf Wars. Please send pictures! I need to know someone did something they will regret at 7 deadly sins. (Certainly they will after I post the picture on the internet.) I was trapped in the airport for 24 hours. Yet another source of random dead bodies. I kept it purely mental, but frankly, I'm probably going to Hell for ... those two at least.... maybe him... yeah, long weekend.

Random Shot of someone doing something they ought to regret. Asking Dyani to pose for a picture never comes out well. Lucky blood comes off of red latex pretty easily.



ps. I just read an article where the scientists had determined that sperm does calculus. (Mine can integrate Maxwell's Equations in spherical coordinates) This qualifies under my "Sexing up Science" rules. Unfortunately, I can't think of a good poem involving sex and calculus. THEY ARE NOT FORGIVEN! The poem will occur and their humiliation and downfall is assured. (Later, after I've had some more coffee.)
<< MORE >>