Do I believe in alien life? I think there's a very strong chance that there's other life and other life forms out there.
I turned on, I'll share this, my computer. And sometimes when I do, Microsoft Edge pops up and sometimes when it does it'll have this page. I've never searched on Bing. And I've never searched ngc 2835. Didn't even know what it was?
NGC 2835 is an intermediate spiral galaxy located in the constellation Hydra. It is located at a distance of circa 35 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 2835 is about 65,000 light years across. It was discovered by Wilhelm Tempel on April 13, 1884.[3] NGC 2835 is located only 18.5 degrees from the galactic plane.[4]
NGC 2835 is seen nearly face-on. The galaxy features four or five spiral arms, visible in near infrared due to their population II stars.[5] The spiral arms have also numerous HII regions and stellar associations, the larger of which are 5 arcseconds across.[4] Although the galaxy is quite symmetric, the northern arms have HII regions that appear brighter than the southern ones. Also the southern arms appear less developed in their outer parts than the north ones.[6] The star formation rate in NGC 2835 is 1.3 M☉ per year and the total stellar mass of the galaxy is 1010 M☉.[7] In the centre of NGC 2835 lies a supermassive black hole whose mass is estimated to be 3-10 million (106.72±0.3) M☉, based on the spiral arm pitch angle.[8]
NGC 2835 is the foremost galaxy in a small group of galaxies, the NGC 2835 group. Other galaxies identified as members of the cluster are ESO 497-035, and ESO 565-001.[9] A bit further away, at projected separation of 2.2 degrees, lies NGC 2784 and its small galaxy group.[4][9]
If that were some other life form trying to communicate with me, I would be thrilled. I know it's not. And I'm sure no other life form's going to ever waste their time trying to communicate with me.
But, yes, I do believe that there has to be something out there besides just us.
Now here is something from NASA:
For the first time, astronomers have measured and mapped polarized X-rays from the remains of an exploded star, using NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). The findings, which come from observations of a stellar remnant called Cassiopeia A, shed new light on the nature of young supernova remnants, which accelerate particles close to the speed of light.
Launched on Dec. 9, 2021, IXPE, a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, is the first satellite that can measure the polarization of X-ray light with this level of sensitivity and clarity.
All forms of light – from radio waves to gamma rays – can be polarized. Unlike the polarized sunglasses we use to cut the glare from sunlight bouncing off a wet road or windshield, IXPE’s detectors maps the tracks of incoming X-ray light. Scientists can use these individual track records to figure out the polarization, which tells the story of what the X-rays went through.
Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short) was the first object IXPE observed after it began collecting data. One of the reasons Cas A was selected is that its shock waves – like a sonic boom generated by a jet – are some of the fastest in the Milky Way. The shock waves were generated by the supernova explosion that destroyed a massive star after it collapsed. Light from the blast swept past Earth more than three hundred years ago.
“Without IXPE, we have been missing crucial information about objects like Cas A,” said Pat Slane at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, who leads the IXPE investigations of supernova remnants. “This result is teaching us about a fundamental aspect of the debris from this exploded star – the behavior of its magnetic fields.”
Magnetic fields, which are invisible, push and pull on moving charged particles like protons and electrons. Closer to home, they are responsible for keeping magnets stuck to a kitchen fridge. Under extreme conditions, such as an exploded star, magnetic fields can boost these particles to near-light-speed.
Despite their super-fast speeds, particles swept up by shock waves in Cas A do not fly away from the supernova remnant because they are trapped by magnetic fields in the wake of the shocks. The particles are forced to spiral around the magnetic field lines, and the electrons give off an intense kind of light called “synchrotron radiation,” which is polarized.
By studying the polarization of this light, scientists can “reverse engineer” what’s happening inside Cas A at very small scales – details that are difficult or impossible to observe in other ways. The angle of polarization tells us about the direction of these magnetic fields. If the magnetic fields close to the shock fronts are very tangled, the chaotic mix of radiation from regions with different magnetic field directions will give off a smaller amount of polarization.
Previous studies of Cas A with radio telescopes have shown that the radio synchrotron radiation is produced in regions across almost the entire supernova remnant. Astronomers found that only a small amount of the radio waves were polarized – about 5%. They also determined that the magnetic field is oriented radially, like the spokes of a wheel, spreading out from near the center of the remnant towards the edge.
Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, on the other hand, show that the X-ray synchrotron radiation mainly comes from thin regions along the shocks, near the circular outer rim of the remnant, where the magnetic fields were predicted to align with the shocks. Chandra and IXPE use different kinds of detectors and have different levels of angular resolution, or sharpness. Launched in 1999, Chandra’s first science image was also of Cas A.
Before IXPE, scientists predicted X-ray polarization would be produced by magnetic fields that are perpendicular to magnetic fields observed by radio telescopes.
Instead, IXPE data show that the magnetic fields in X-rays tend to be aligned in radial directions even very close to the shock fronts. The X-rays also reveal a lower amount of polarization than radio observations showed, which suggests that the X-rays come from turbulent regions with a mix of many different magnetic field directions.
"These IXPE results were not what we expected, but as scientists we love being surprised,” says Dr. Jacco Vink of the University of Amsterdam and lead author of the paper describing the IXPE results on Cas A. “The fact that a smaller percentage of the X-ray light is polarized is a very interesting – and previously undetected – property of Cas A.”
The IXPE result for Cas A is whetting the appetite for more observations of supernova remnants that are currently underway. Scientists expect each new observed object will reveal new answers – and pose even more questions – about these important objects that seed the Universe with critical elements.
“This study enshrines all the novelties that IXPE brings to astrophysics,” said Dr. Riccardo Ferrazzoli with the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics/Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome. “Not only did we obtain information on X-ray polarization properties for the first time for these sources, but we also know how these change in different regions of the supernova. As the first target of the IXPE observation campaign, Cas A provided an astrophysical 'laboratory' to test all the techniques and analysis tools that the team has developed in recent years.”
“These results provide a unique view of the environment necessary to accelerate electrons to incredibly high energies," said co-author Dmitry Prokhorov, also of the University of Amsterdam. “We are just at the beginning of this detective story, but so far the IXPE data are providing new leads for us to track down.”
IXPE is a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space sciences, which operates IXPE for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ixpe/index.html
NASA Headquarters
elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov
202-358-0845
Molly Porter
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
molly.a.porter@nasa.gov
256-424-5158
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Dear Home Secretary Braverman and Attorney General Garland,
We, a group of over 300 doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and other health care professionals from more than 35 countries, are deeply concerned that the ongoing extradition threatens not only the health of Julian Assange, but also the health of our democracy. For the sake of both, we implore you to drop the charges and release Mr. Assange from Belmarsh prison immediately.
In calling for Mr. Assange’s freedom, we join the ever-growing chorus of protest [1], including the thousands of people around the world [2] who demonstrated on October 8, 2022 against Mr. Assange’s detention in the UK and his attempted extradition to the US.
The threats to Mr. Assange’s health are the cumulative result of extraordinarily cruel, unusual, degrading and inhuman conditions imposed on him. This includes:
- more than ten years of arbitrary detention, with extended periods of solitary confinement in a high security prison despite never having been convicted of a crime;
- character assassination campaigns in the media;
- a relentless persecution that systematically violated the rule of law and due process, and had little basis in fact, as documented by the former UN Rapporteur on Torture;
- illegal surveillance in the Ecuadorian embassy which included the video recording of his legal and medical consultations [3]; and
- being targeted in plans of the CIA to kidnap and assassinate him [4].
In addition, Mr. Assange has faced the firepower of at least three US government entities involved in the effort to extradite him, including the Department of Justice overseeing the attempted prosecution, the CIA conducting illegal surveillance and drawing up plans for kidnap and assassination, and the FBI overseeing and greenlighting computer crimes in Iceland committed by a hacker in a scheme to falsely implicate Mr. Assange, as corroborated by the government of Iceland [5].
Adding to the stress of a lawless persecution, Mr. Assange has also lived with the knowledge of the impossibility of a fair trial if extradited to the US. The public interest served by the publications in question (including the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs) was overwhelming and helped bring the catastrophic war in Iraq to a close. Yet, perversely, public interest may not be considered in prosecutions under the Espionage Act. In addition, no national security defendant has ever been acquitted in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Mr. Assange would be tried [6].
These conditions are collectively tantamount to psychological torture, as assessed by the former United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer [7], and other medical experts in the field, including Professor Duarte Nuno Vieira [8] and Dr Pau Pérez-Sales [9].
As health care professionals we have an ethical obligation to denounce torture where we see it, and to seek to end it. That is why we have called for an end to the persecution of Julian Assange since our founding three years ago, and why we again call for an end to his extradition once and for all.
The psychological torture resulting from these abuses has been grinding down Mr. Assange’s mental and physical health for over a decade. This has generated not only the risk of suicide, which would be further aggravated by the brutal conditions in US prisons. It also increases the risk of physical illnesses like cardiovascular disease, known to increase under conditions of psychological stress [10]. Confirming these concerns, Mr. Assange has already experienced a mini-stroke, which occurred on the first day of his extradition hearing in the UK High Court.
Compounding these health injustices, Mr. Assange was reported to have tested positive for Covid-19 on October 8, 2022. Given his chronic lung ailment, Mr. Assange may be at increased risk of serious illness resulting from Covid infection. In addition, Mr. Assange’s mental health is placed at further risk by the solitary confinement he has been forced to endure since his positive Covid test.
It is a travesty that a remand prisoner never convicted of a crime is languishing in Britain’s most notorious high security prison, when he shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place. The critical nature of Mr. Assange’s physical and psychological health underscores the need for his immediate release from prison. Only then can he receive the independent, high-quality, consistent health care which he requires, and which cannot be provided in a high security prison. Releasing Julian Assange will also bring to a close a case that is damaging press freedom across the globe and judicial integrity in the UK and the US.
For all these reasons, we request that you urgently intervene to end the extradition process and ensure Julian Assange is promptly released.
We look forward to hearing from you and would be grateful for a prompt response in light of the serious and urgent subject matter. Please address your reply to info@doctorsforassange.org.
Yours sincerely,
Doctors for Assange
Doctors for Assange is a group of over 300 medical professionals from 35 countries formed in October 2019 to voice concerns about the health of Julian Assange and to condemn the violations of his right to health, to doctor-patient confidentiality and to be free from torture.
Doctors for Assange. End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. The Lancet 2020; 395: e44–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30383-4
Doctors for Assange. The ongoing torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. The Lancet 2020; 396: p22-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31444-6
References:
[1] Reporters without borders lead a coalition of 16 organisations in urging the Home Secretary to urgently intervene in Assange extradition https://rsf.org/en/uk-rsf-leads-coalition-16-organisations-urging-home-secretary-suella-braverman-urgently-intervene
[2] Thousands surround the British parliament on 08/10/2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJfU4QL1Fw
[3] US agencies spying on Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfWoIAsIn6Y
[4] CIA plans against Wikileaks https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html
[5] Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment https://stundin.is/grein/13627
[6] Melzer, Nils (2022) The trial of Julian Assange, published by Verso Books
[7] Nils Melzer confirms psychological torture of Julian Assange at a session of the UN https://youtu.be/UGqVx_L-Y7M?t=267
[8] Professor Duarte Nuno Vieira is Full Professor (of Forensic Medicine, Forensic Sciences, Ethics and Medical Law) at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Beira Interior. https://www.uc.pt/fmuc/pessoas/docentes/DNVieira; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Duarte-Vieira
[9] Dr Pau Perez-Sales is a psychiatrist and director of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid‘s Post-Doctoral Degree in Mental Health in Political Violence and Catastrophe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pau_P%C3%A9rez-Sales; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pau-Perez-Sales
[10] Clinical study on the correlation between psychological stress and systemic inflammation as a major factor for cardiovascular disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36115323/
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
•
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.
Julian was long a target, of course. When WikiLeaks published the documents known as Vault 7 which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses to monitor our phones, televisions, and even cars, he and journalism itself was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any investigation into the inner workings of power that might hold the ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion and replace it with a cant fed to the mob.
I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent on the outer reaches of empire in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. I am acutely aware of the savagery of empire, how the brutal tools of repression are first tested on those Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth. Wholesale surveillance, torture, coups, black sites, black propaganda, militarized police, militarized drones, assassinations, wars.
Once perfected on people of color overseas, these tools migrate back to the homeland. By hollowing out our country from the inside through deindustrialization, austerity, deregulation, wage stagnation, the abolition of unions, massive expenditures on war and intelligence, a refusal to address the climate emergency, and a virtual tax boycott for the richest individuals and corporations, these predators intend to keep us in bondage, victims of a corporate neo-feudalism, and they have perfected their instruments of Orwellian control. Tyranny imposed on others is now imposed on us.
From its inception the CIA carried out assassinations, coups, torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including on that of US citizens, activities exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes, especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance. The CIA is a rogue and unaccountable paramilitary organization with its own armed units and drone program, death squads, and a vast archipelago of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and disappeared.
The US allocates a secret black budget of $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus to kidnap, torture, and assassinate targets around the globe, which is why, since it had already set up a system of 24-hour video surveillance of Julian and the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, it quite naturally discussed kidnapping and assassinating him. That is its business.
Senator Frank Church, after examining the heavily redacted CIA documents released to his committee, defined the CIA’s covert activity, and I quote, as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies, and consorting with known torturers and international terrorists.”
All despotisms mask state persecution with sham court proceedings. The show trials and troikas in Stalin’s Soviet Union, the raving Nazi judges in fascist Germany, the denunciation rallies in Mao’s China. State crime is cloaked in a faux legality; judicial farce. Julian is extradited and sentenced. And given the Lubyanka-like proclivities of the Eastern District of Virginia – This is a near certainty – It means that those of us who have published classified material, as I did when I worked for the New York Times, will become criminals
It means that the iron curtain will be pulled down to mask the abuses of power. It means that the state, which through special administrative measures, or SAMs, anti-terrorism laws, and the Espionage Act have created our homegrown version of Stalin’s Article 58, can imprison anyone anywhere in the world who dares commit the crime of telling the truth. We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to fight against powerful subterranean forces that, in demanding Julian’s extradition and life imprisonment, have declared war on journalism. We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to fight for the restoration of the rule of law and democracy.
We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to dismantle the wholesale Stasi-like state surveillance erected across the West. We are here today for Julian [applause], but we are also here to overthrow – And let me repeat that word for the benefit of those in the FBI and Homeland Security who have come here to monitor us: overthrow… The corporate state and create a government of the people by the people and for the people that will cherish, rather than persecute, the best among us.
An Iraqi-American excavation team has unearthed a monumental rock-carving relief in a major archaeological site in the northern city of Mosul.
The carvings were found at Mashki Gate, or Al Maska in Arabic, one of the monumental gates for the old city of Nineveh, the imperial capital and most populous city of the Assyrian Empire.
The reliefs date back to the era of the Assyrian King Sinharib who reigned from 705 to 681 BC, Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage director Dr Laith Majid Hussein said on Monday.
A huge corruption scandal is looming in Iraq: unknown persons have stolen the equivalent of almost 2.6 billion euros from the Iraqi tax authorities' account. The theft was announced by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar at the weekend and has since been confirmed by Prime Minister-elect Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Jabbar said an investigation by the Treasury Department, which he headed until his resignation this week, found that "a certain group," without specifying details, had the money stolen from an IRS bank fund at Rafidain Bank.
Earlier, the Iraqi Treasury released a document showing the alleged theft. The letter caused a stir: it shows that the money had been withdrawn between September 2021 and August 2022. It was deposited using 247 checks into the accounts of five different companies and withdrawn immediately. Rafidain Bank said it had nothing to do with the theft. Its job was limited to "disbursing the General Tax Administration's bonds in its branches after verifying the validity of their issuance," according to the largest Iraqi bank, which also has branches in Cairo, Beirut and Abu Dhabi.
UN Special Representative for Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has urged authorities to recover $2.5 billion that was embezzled from the tax authority, the latest corruption scandal to rock the country.
The case was revealed on Saturday by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, who ordered an investigation when he was acting finance minister. Documents related to the investigation have been leaked to the media.
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