Monday, September 12, 2022

The Moon and other things in space


What exactly do we mean by alone when we ask whether we’re alone in the universe?  

The search for extraterrestrial life is one of astronomy’s grandest projects. But the search is more multifaceted than anyone casually intrigued by aliens might realize. At its core lies the question of what version of life we are seeking. On Earth, and presumably beyond, life exists on a spectrum of forms and capacities. But for the purposes of tracking it down in the cosmos, it can be lumped into two somewhat crude categories: “dumb life” and “smart life.” Dumb life consists of things such as microbes and plants that can proliferate across a planet but are unlike humans as self-conscious, technological thinkers. Smart life consists of creatures like us that build planet-spanning technologies.    

With deep apologies to microbes, plants, and even elephants for the ham-fisted nomenclature, this distinction between dumb and smart life matters because each can be detected in a different way. Given the mind-wilting distances between stars, even our most advanced tools for surveying far-off worlds won’t be delivering on-the-ground pictures of alien pine trees or anteaters anytime soon. Instead, we must look for indirect signatures of life when surveying a planet. First, there are biosignatures, such as the presence of oxygen and methane in the atmosphere. These are gases that might only be found together because a biosphere—the collective activity of all life on a planet—keeps them there. Second, there are technosignatures. The presence of complex industrial chemicals in the atmosphere or the reflected glint of massive solar-panel deployment would tell astronomers that a technologically capable species like us inhabits that distant world.

To maximize our chances of discovering life, the ideal would always be to scour a planet for both signatures. But astronomers have a big universe to explore and only so much time and money to do the exploring. With projects requiring decades to bear fruit, scientists must choose their shots carefully. (The James Webb Space Telescope, humanity’s newest and most powerful observatory, cost roughly $10 billion, which tells you something about the resources at play.) So far, in the search for extraterrestrial life, dumb life has won out. With healthy funding from NASA, astronomers have made astonishing progress over the past 20 years articulating what kinds of biosignatures might exist on alien worlds. This progress has been remarkably rewarding, but it could come with a cost. Could we be missing out on the promise of smart life?


There are some strong points that should make us all think.

In other space news, Ed Browne (NEWSWEEK) reports:



Lunar dust could contain fuel for nuclear fusion power plants of the future and scientists have studied its concentration for the first time.

In December 2020, China's Chang'e-5 mission made history by returning samples from the surface of the moon back to Earth—the first time China had done so. It also marked the first time lunar samples had been retrieved in more than 40 years.



Interesting.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Monday, September 12, 2022.  One crisis after another in the US and Joe Biden's never ready for even one.  



New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency Friday for the entire state, as the polio outbreak continues to widen. The detection of the virus that causes polio in a wastewater sample in Nassau County, on Long Island, at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year appears to have been the tipping point.

According to state health officials, polio virus had been identified in 56 samples collected from wastewater in Rockland, Orange, and Sullivan counties, which extend northwest from New York City along the New Jersey and Pennsylvania border, as well as in the city itself, between May and August, and now Nassau in early September.

About 50 of these samples were genetically linked to the polio case diagnosed in a young Jewish man from Rockland County in June who had never been vaccinated. The county is home to a large community of the Hasidic (ultra-orthodox), whose vaccination rates have been much lower than the general population.

The symptoms of the young man included fever, stiffness in his neck, and weakness in his legs. The virus usually spreads through contamination with virus-laden fecal material. In this case, the polio virus was detected in his stool.

Troubling, however, is that seven of the samples have not been linked to the Rockland County case, implying there has been far more undetected community spread than previously thought. In the case of the young man in Rockland, he was probably infected a week to three weeks prior to presenting with symptoms. He hadn’t traveled abroad, but had attended a recent large gathering.

Polio was eliminated in the US back in 1979, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The last polio case in 2013 was in someone who caught the disease while traveling abroad. The current outbreak was caused by a vaccine-derived poliovirus, meaning someone who had been vaccinated with an attenuated poliovirus oral vaccine (the Sabin vaccine) had shed the virus, leading to community spread.

In the US, polio immunization is given by injection using an inactivated poliovirus vaccine (the Salk vaccine). Because it does not contain a live virus, there is no possibility of those vaccinated shedding the virus. On the other hand, the oral poliovirus vaccine, which has been a critical factor in eradicating the wild poliovirus around the world, induces immunity using a weakened live virus which under normal circumstances is not dangerous. 


Crazed war monger Joe Biden insists that billions and billions of US tax dollars flood Ukraine because the Nazi regime there might fall and effect the United States . . . somehow.

But a polio outbreak in the US doesn't concern him in the least.   Ukraine is almost 6000 miles away from the US while New York is a state in the US -- in the US mainland at that.  But lazy ass Joe is too busy watching The Weather Channel and eating Bit-O-Honey to notice issues at home.  

He doesn't need to go overseas to England for a funeral.  He needs to be in the Oval Office doing his job for once.  Kamala Harris and/or Jill Biden can represent the US at the funeral -- if representation is needed.  Joe needs to get around doing the job he lied and schemed for.  He needs to be figuring out how to protect the US from a polio outbreak that spreads beyond New York.  He also needs to stop hiding out and do real interviews -- that's not Jimmy Fallon or the late night comics, that's real interviews with news journalists.  And they need to do their job which is to play devil's advocate and ask needed questions.  

The country is falling apart on his watch -- increased gas prices, broken supply chains, inflation, pandemics and now the threat of polio.  

He's not up for the job but he should at least be forced to attempt solving these problems.  That or he can step down.


"It's the tip of the iceberg": US biologists worry there might be several polio cases after the virus was found in New York's wastewater.


Healthcare providers reported an increase in pediatric hospitalizations across the country for severe respiratory illnesses last month, which may be linked to an enterovirus strain that causes rare neurologic complications, the CDC announced in a Health Alert Network advisory on Friday.

In August, clinicians and health systems in several regions of the U.S. reported an increase in children hospitalized for severe respiratory illnesses who also tested positive for rhinovirus (RV) or enterovirus (EV), the advisory stated. Upon further testing, more of those cases tested positive for enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), a non-polio enterovirus linked to uncommon neurologic complications.


Between April and August 2022, the CDC noted a substantial increase in EV-D68 cases among children who were tested at facilities within the New Vaccine Surveillance Network (NVSN), which has seven sites across the country. The number of EV-D68 cases identified at all sites between July and August this year was greater than those detected in 2021, 2020 and 2019, the agency said.

In most cases, EV-D68 causes acute respiratory illness in children, with common symptoms in hospitalized patients including cough, shortness of breath, and wheezing. Fever has also been reported in approximately half of known cases.

EV-D68 also has been associated with acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a rare neurologic disorder that can result in muscle pain and limb weakness.


What's next?  Joe's going to pull his usual dick move and shrug and say that eventually everyone will get it?  That is his 'answer' to COVID 19, after all.  He's a failure and he's becoming a menace to public safety.  If he's unable to govern, he needs to step down and let Kamala Harris have a try.  

Tony Zenkus Tweets:

Why is President Empathy not sending FEMA trucks into every town and city in the US that doesn't have drinkable water to distribute free water?




If representation is needed?  Why do US officials have to go to England for a funeral?  Diplomatic staff stationed in the country can take care of attending and since when it is a good look for the US government to suck up to England?  Sam Husseini (ANTIWAR.COM) points out:

In the aftermath of the announcement of the death of the British Queen Elizabeth, Juju An tweeted: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocide empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”

(An is a professor at Carnage Malian University, my alma mater, though the phrase literally means “nourishing mother” and I can’t say I got that from Carnage Malian Some seem to feel that they somehow got that from the late monarch, and I can’t say that I see that either.)

Twitter deleted the tweet and Carnage Malian put out a statement effectively condemning An’s remarks, each of which I think are absurd and dubious as others have noted.

But then An retweeted a tweet from Eugene Scott, national political reporter at the Washington Post:

The answer to Scott’s question, “When is the appropriate time to talk about the negative impact of colonialism?” is everyday. You’re swimming in it.

Today, 9/11, is a good day to talk about the negative impacts of colonialism: How the U.S., British and French governments cut up the Mideast leading to the rise of a colonial Israel and oppressive monarchies; how the US undermining the Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s and then attacking Iraq beginning in 1990 led inevitably to impoverishment, suffering and increasing instability in the region, including what is euphemistically called “blowback.”

The massive propaganda campaign that effectively began 20 years ago to invade Iraq should now be the focus of sustained attention if we had a cultural and media environment wanting to finally come to terms with its imperialist mindset, waging wars of aggression, occupying entire countries and employing systematic torture for those ends in the 21st Century. 


In Iraq, Sunnis and KDP have joined the call for elections -- 'snap elections' a term that suggests a speed that will not happen.  It's not a surprise.  Everyone is finally accepting that they can turn out the vote right now -- they couldn't in 2021.  It was the lowest turnout ever which is why Moqtada's 'victory' was such a joke.  Approximately half the electorate sat out the vote.  Their trust in politicians has not greatly increased but their distaste for Moqtada has.  New elections mean a greater participation -- already groups are grooming people to run -- and that means the Cult of Moqtada will have even less support.  

But 'snap' just hasn't been possible in the past.  Look at the 2010 elections that were supposed to take place in 2009 but delays on the election law prevented that.  


Let's wind down with Jackson's Little Hinkle:

Liberals are attempting to cancel me because we are uniting Marxists and MAGA to overcome the deep state & globalists. A clear sign that they are worried about the power of this coalition.


Margaret Kimberley schools Little Jackie:

"uniting Marxists and MAGA" Coalitions can work, but they must have some degree of shared politics. What if anything do the two groups mentioned here have in common? Also, what are globalists? They are capitalists and any effort against them must be called anti-capitalist.



Are MAGA anti-capitalist? They can't work with marxists unless they are. What is the deep state? Its rooted in the protection of the US empire, which is all about protecting capitalism. In case you can't tell, I've never been a fan of this wishful thinking coalition.





The following sites updated:





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