What's Cool in Science This Week?

[Ubercat]

That last one can save the oceans!

Or we could stop using plastic.

Go back to making everything out of metal and glass?

[Sir Slash]

You can have my plastic straw when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. The problem's not the plastic, it's the chuckle-heads that throw it into the oceans. Or wherever other than the trash where you should. If you can re-cycle bad habits into good ones, that'd do the trick.  :bd:

[steve58]

Water found on the sunny side of Moon

NASA to reveal Moon 'new discovery' Monday.

p.s.  never knew NASA had a flying 100-inch telescope (SOFIA)!  :o  How the heck do they manage to keep an airborne 747 stable enough for a telescope?

[Pete Dero]

^ I must correct you : the moon doesn't have a sunny side  :nerd:.

The moon's rotation is locked so we always see the same side but that doesn't mean the other side doesn't get any sunlight.  When it is new moon the side of the moon we can't see is bathing in sunlight.
Previously water was found in crater floors that never receive any sunlight but this time it seems they discovered water in areas that are exposed to the sun.

Nerd hat off  .

[steve58]

yeah, I typed sunny when I shoulda typed sunlit.  :-[

[Labbug]

Talk about heavy metal!

https://www.foxnews.com/science/asteroid-discovered-170-years-ago-worth-10000-quadrillion

[Sir Slash]

Damn! That's quite a haul if we could get our hands on it.  :bd:

[GDS_Starfury]

and people think spacex is going to mars first.

[steve58]

A volcano erupted in Italy.  The eruption was captured by a number of cameras from the the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, including some that record thermal footage to measure the heat of the blasts.  Pretty cool :))

[Sir Slash]

Nice.  :clap:

[Pete Dero]

Very interesting. 

I remember reading Clarke's novel 2010 and it postulated something similar in the atmosphere of Jupiter. 

A subplot missing from the movies is that Dave Boman/Monolith Aliens had to choose between the life budding on Europa, or life that existed in a much more advanced state in the clouds of Jupiter.  The Aliens chose Europa and caused Jupiter to go into stellar fusion in a cold calculation that Jupiter's gaseous lifeforms were an evolutionary dead end where Europa had a chance of much further development. 

Fascinating to think of something like that possible at Venus.  I remember Sagan postulating about it in the 80's too.  Maybe we'll stop neglecting it in our exploration.

Update :

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/phosphine-biosignature-venus-calibration-error/

Is the Phosphine Biosignature on Venus a Calibration Error?

The problem arose because Venus is not a "standard" target for ALMA. The array of radio dishes spends most of its time looking at things that very far away, and thus very faint.

"Observing solar system objects is quite a small part of what ALMA does," Greaves says. "ALMA is learning from this situation as well, in terms of future observations. We're not the only project affected. They've had to contact a number of other principal investigators."

Looking for something barely visible (the phosphine absorption line) inside a large, bright, nearby object (Venus) creates large uncertainties with the interpretation of the subsequent data. It's possible to see things that aren't there, in the same way that looking at a bright light causes afterimages when your eyes are closed.

"ALMA told us, 'we've never tried to push the limits of getting a faint line in this way before,'" Greaves says. "So it was a risk. And obviously I'm not comfortable with finding out the drawbacks afterwards. But we did want the community to look at it and that's what they have done."

[steve58]

Earthers haven't seen this view since 1226.

[Sir Slash]

WOW! Thanks for the heads-up.  :wow:

[Myrmidon]

Pretty interesting stuff here... this potentially could be a game changer in the rocketry field.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/holy-grail-metallic-hydrogen-is-going-to-change-everything?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[Sir Slash]

Very cool!  O0