Nobody Cares! (Science & Tech Edition)

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Hubble keeps proving its worth.

Hubble Space Telescope takes best picture yet of the comet visiting from another solar system

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best picture yet of a high-speed comet visiting our solar system from another star.

apnews.com

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best picture yet of a high-speed comet visiting our solar system from another star.

NASA and the European Space Agency released the latest photos Thursday.

Discovered last month by a telescope in Chile, the comet known as 3I-Atlas is only the third known interstellar object to pass our way and poses no threat to Earth.

Astronomers originally estimated the size of its icy core at several miles (tens of kilometers) across, but Hubble’s observations have narrowed it down to no more than 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers). It could even be as small as 1,000 feet (320 meters), according to scientists.

Other "visitor from beyond the stars" news...

Manhattan-sized interstellar object could be alien probe here to ‘destroy us’: Harvard scientist

A Harvard physicist has asserted that new images of the Manhattan-sized interstellar object rocketing through our inner solar system back his claim that it’s not a comet — but instead possibl…

nypost.com

It's only good, fact-based news from the New York Post.

 

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James Lovell, the steady astronaut who brought Apollo 13 home safely, has died

James Lovell, a member of humanity’s first trip to the moon and commander of NASA’s ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, has died at the age of 97.

arstechnica.com

James Lovell, a member of humanity's first trip to the moon and commander of NASA's ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, has died at the age of 97.

Lovell's death on Thursday was announced by the space agency.

"NASA sends its condolences to the family of Capt. Jim Lovell, whose life and work inspired millions of people across the decades," said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy in a statement on Friday. "Jim's character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount. We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements."

 

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Not brown dwarfs but actual planets given the lead roll in planetary system formation. Pretty cool.

James Webb Finds Evidence of Free-Floating Planets So Large They Can Gather Their Own Planetary Systems

The James Webb Space Telescope have found evidence of massive planets capable of forming their own planetary systems — without a star.

futurism.com

So much for heliocentrism.

An international team of astronomers using observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope have found evidence of massive planets out there that're capable of forming their own planetary systems — without a star.

These planets would be the center of something like a mini version of our solar system where other, smaller planets revolve around it. But without the light of a star, these systems, if they exist, would go largely overlooked by our telescopes, lost to the dark void of space.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Halo worlds.

 

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Continuing to erase the science from NASA's curriculum vitae.

NASA’s acting chief calls for the end of Earth science at the space agency

NASA's charter clearly states the agency should study planet Earth, however.

arstechnica.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

NASA is quite certain to have found potential evidence that there was once life on Mars billion years ago.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

So much 1977 energy!

    What's in Store?

    John A. Carroll

    Once upon a planet dreary
    Came a rocket engine cheery
    On a flight to test a theory
    On Mars's frigid desert floor!

    Did life arise spontaneous
    Or some alien's trash extraneous
    Seed the globe that now contains us?
    Quoth the Lander, "Either-or."

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Science and/or Engineering

And when is it one or the other

sketchplanations.substack.com

Short piece on some explanations of the difference between science and engineering.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

There's a little part of "computer science" that isn't engineering, but it's way over on the right.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Say Hello to the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

The annual award ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and 24/7 lectures.

www.wired.com

Evernote Link

Does alcohol enhance one’s foreign language fluency? Do West African lizards have a preferred pizza topping? And can painting cows with zebra stripes help repel biting flies? These and other unusual research questions were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2025 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the serious and the silly converge—for science.

 

[Beebo Brink]

And can painting cows with zebra stripes help repel biting flies?

Not sure why this question is up for ridicule. The answer could have really useful implications for animal health.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Not sure why this question is up for ridicule. The answer could have really useful implications for animal health.

I think the point about the Ignobel Prizes is that, as the article puts it, they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” This is, first you think, "WTF?" and then you think, "Maybe that's not such a stupid idea after all."

A lifetime ago, one of the science teachers at my school used to tell the story about how she once came across an abstract of a paper about a study of the substances inside a flea's knees that made them such good jumpers, and thought "what a waste of money researching that," and then realised that if they could answer that question and synthesise the substance(s) they'd have something vastly more efficient than rubber as a shock absorber, so maybe it wasn't such a waste of time and money.

 

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[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Woah! Station!

 

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The James Webb telescope may have discovered a brand new class of cosmic object: the black hole star

Astronomers have discovered a new object that could help shed light on mysterious "little red dots" that were first spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022.

The newfound object, dubbed "the Cliff," suggests that the little red dots represent a totally new class of cosmic objects known as a "black hole star," the researchers say. This newly hypothesized object would essentially be a black hole feeding so rapidly that it lights up the thick cocoon of gas surrounding it, making it glow like a star.

Black hole sun
Won't you come
And wash away the rain?

 

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I think it's only a couple steps - what with the social/political climate heading in the direction it seems to - from "chase thieves" to "shoot looters." But that's me.

Retail Stores May Soon Use Drones to Chase Thieves

Flock Safety's high-tech drones designed for cops are now being offered to private security firms.

gizmodo.com

 

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The Mysterious Object Cruising Through Solar System Is Releasing Strange Metals, Paper Finds

Astronomers found that interstellar object 3I/ATLAS shows an "extreme abundance ratio" of nickel and iron in its gas plume.

futurism.com

The headline is a bit over the top. The metals are not strange. It's just nickel and iron. But the abundance of the metals found in its gas plume seem out of the ordinary.

 

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This is cute.

Committee Unable to Contact Nobel Prize Winner Because He's Too Chill, Had Phone on Airplane Mode

Dr. Fred Ramsdell and his wife were backpacking through the Rocky Mountains when they missed the Nobel Assembly's call.

futurism.com

In the serenity of a small Wyoming mountain town, Sonoma Biotherapeutics immunologist Dr. Fred Ramsdell was suddenly startled by his wife shouting as he walked their two dogs nearby. The two were on a three-week backpacking through the Rocky Mountains; naturally, his immediate assumption was that she crossed paths with a grizzly bear.

Having finally reached cell service access, her phone flooded with dozens of messages. She was yelling to him that he’d won a Nobel Prize. The skeptic scientist retorted: “I did not” Yet his wife had 200 texts that told another story.

While the Nobel Committee was attempting to reach Ramsdell, the carefree immunologist was touching grass, fully immersed in the pair’s preplanned off-grid trip with zero regard for the prize announcements — phone on airplane mode, unbothered. When he isn’t researching, Ramsdell likes to fully disconnect in nature. They had to drive another hour for him to get cell service in southern Montana, where he’d finally get on the phone with the committee.

 

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Long-lived gamma ray burst could signal a new kind of cosmic catastrophe

Flashing from the distant cosmos, the searchlight beams of light called gamma ray bursts (GRBs) mark the brightest and most powerful cosmic blasts since the Big Bang, but they are short-lived. Triggered by the collapse of a giant star into a black hole, they last just seconds or minutes. So, on 2 July, when NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a GRB that kept going for about 7 hours before fading, observers wondered whether they were witnessing an entirely new phenomenon.

“It basically just does not observationally look like any of the other things in that category that we’ve seen,” says astrophysicist Daniel Perley of Liverpool John Moores University. In more than half a dozen preprints posted online last week, researchers describe watching the burst, known as GRB 250702B, as it unfolded across the electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to radio waves. The papers also speculate that the unusual burst has an unusual source. One provocative idea is a black hole sinking into the heart of another star and tearing it apart from the inside.

Hey, I saw that episode of Stargate SG1.