Rings are in the news
File under “things we don’t understand”:
Astronomers have discovered an entirely new ring system within the solar system, and it’s located at such a great distance from its dwarf planet parent that it should be impossible.
The ring surrounds Quaoar, which is around half the size of Pluto and located beyond Neptune…
“The six [previously known] planets with ring systems all have rings which are quite close to the surface of the planet. So this really challenges our ring formation theories,” study co-author Vik Dhillon, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Sheffield in England, told Live Science. “It was previously thought to be impossible to have rings that out, so in a nutshell, the ring of Quaoar is a real challenge to explain theoretically.”
The ring system is located at a distance of seven planetary radii away from Quaoar (that is, seven times Quaoar’s radius), which is twice as far out as the theoretical maximum limit for a ring system, known as the Roche limit.
Elastic collisions may be possible if the ring particles have an icy outer coating, Dhillon said — something that is plausible, given Quaoar’s location at the edge of the solar system. However, more data are needed to confirm this idea.
Not only are its rings news to me, but Quaoar is news to me. I’m so behind the times I can’t remember whether Pluto is still considered a planet or not; my recollection is that it seems to go back and forth, although I still cling to the nine planets of my youth.
And now for a little Bee Gees:
Amd speaking of rings – and we were speaking of rings, weren’t we? – there’s also this:
New images of Saturn from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope herald the start of the planet’s “spoke season” surrounding its equinox, when enigmatic features appear across its rings. The cause of the spokes, as well as their seasonal variability, has yet to be fully explained by planetary scientists.
Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn’s much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun. The spokes disappear when it is near summer or winter solstice on Saturn. (When the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet.) As the autumnal equinox of Saturn’s northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, draws near, the spokes are expected to become increasingly prominent and observable…
Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn’s much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun. The spokes disappear when it is near summer or winter solstice on Saturn. (When the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet.) As the autumnal equinox of Saturn’s northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, draws near, the spokes are expected to become increasingly prominent and observable.
The suspected culprit for the spokes is the planet’s variable magnetic field. Planetary magnetic fields interact with the solar wind, creating an electrically charged environment (on Earth, when those charged particles hit the atmosphere this is visible in the northern hemisphere as the aurora borealis, or northern lights). Scientists think that the smallest, dust-sized icy ring particles can become charged as well, which temporarily levitates those particles above the rest of the larger icy particles and boulders in the rings.
And speaking of the Bee Gees – we were speaking of the Bee Gees, weren’t we? – there’s also this:
Gee. I thought the science was settled. And could physicists possibly be wrong? (This is not aimed at our resident physicsguy. It’s aimed at my college friend, a space physicist of some considerable reputation, who thinks the global warming scare is true because “the experts” say it is. It’s outside her field.)
If you just take time
And be sure of who you are
We can take it up to heaven
We can walk amongst the stars
And I know if you stay
I will never turn away
We fly rings around the moon
We fly rings around the moon
We fly rings around the moon
We fly rings around the moon
There are likely a lot of objects in the Kuiper belt that have not been found by humans.
Pluto is considered a dwarf planet, not a full size one,and rightly so.
I just wonder when the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri want their space craft back. I mean, we seem to be shooting them down regularly now.
Speaking of a different kind of rings – here’s the return of a REALLY lost lost one.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/09/volunteer-finds-1600-year-old-artifact-in-the-city-of-david/
“1,600-year-old pure gold bead unearthed at Jerusalem archaeological site”
It’s a pretty little thing, and apparently a very, very rare find.
Gosh, I thought earrings were in the news…
In any event, the three-ring circus that is FTX continues on its merry way:
“FTX Lawyers Escalate Threats To Politicians: Return Donations Or Be Sued”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ftx-lawyers-escalate-threats-politicians-return-donations-or-be-sued
Personally, I don’t understand why the politicians shouldn’t be allowed to keep their “donations”—I mean bribes.
Moral reasons? Recipients of stolen money? Bad optics? But how were they supposed to know the money was stolen? And didn’t they—in good faith—actually deliver on their, um, quid (in exchange for the quo)?
…Meanwhile, SBF continues to live the high life with Mom and Pop…
Moral reasons?….
P.S. Jon,
I’m sure you must have meant to say “size-challenged” planet. (One can’t be too careful…Pluto might just throw a tantrum…)
Speaking of circuses….
…it looks as though Nikole Hanna-Jones has seen fit to criticize Thomas Sowell…
https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1624155384796807168
H/T Instapundit.
https://twitchy.com/artistangie-313138/2023/02/11/wut-and-lol-nikole-hanna-jones-asks-about-thomas-sowells-expertise-in-slavery-and-history/
Ever-aspiring to reach TRUTH (and ever-failing), the redoubtable “historian” (of historical fiction) asks:
“Other than being Black, what exactly is Sowell’s expertise in slavery or history?”
Had she been a tad more honest he probably should have asked,
“Other than being Black, what exactly is Sowell’s expertise in making scads of money inventing narratives about slavery or history?”
To be sure, if she had wings, she’d be able to fly…
In other interstellar news…live by the BOT, die by the BOT:
“Google Loses $100 Billion in Market Value after Chatbot Incorrectly Answers Question about Webb Space Telescope”—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/google-loses-100-billion-in-market-value-after-chatbot-incorrectly-answers-question-about-webb-space-telescope/
(Couldn’t happen to a nicer company….)
File under: Deep Red (faced)?
}}} Gee. I thought the science was settled. And could physicists possibly be wrong?
To a true scientists, the “science is never ever ‘settled’.” There can always be new data, new evidence to call into question the basis for the theories.
IN GENERAL, excepting the recent political shit, the trend in hard science (physics, math, chemistry) is towards more accuracy, more exactness. (There’s still too many anomalies in the soft sciences to declare that. And yes, “Climate Science” is very much a soft science, even without the political issues it now engenders).
For example, we never invalidated Newton’s Laws, we just found edge cases where they do not apply, and figured out things about those. That’s where much of Einstein and modern science comes in. And it was edge cases of THAT which are where Hawking made HIS name.
Another example is Wegener’s theories of Continental Drift, which were soundly rejected at first (he did not really introduce the notions, but he put them onto a much more scientific footing than the casual observations that suggested it, such as how neatly the Americas fit against Europe and Africa), but slowly took hold as evidence was collected by proponents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
THAT SAID, there have been times of massive upheaval, where everything we thought we “knew” was upended.
The most classic case of this is “Lumniferous Aether”. It became clear early on that light was a wave pattern (the classic dual slit experiment demonstrates this). The thing is, we began to realize that light propagated in a vacuum (once we could make decent vacuums)… so what was “waving” in the background to propagate the light? Theory: There is a substance that we could not detect which permeates all of space, even vacuums. “Aether”. It was this “Aether” which waved, thus propagating “light”.
By 1880, this was a hard theory, everyone who knew science Knew it existed, and it was just a matter of figuring out how to detect it.
Then, between April and July 1887, American physicists Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley, at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, performed an experiment, and published the results in November of the same year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%e2%80%93Morley_experiment
Even if you don’t care that much about science, this is an interesting view into the way science works, so, “worth the read” — you can gloss over the details, if you like.
And thus, by 1890, as word got around, literally everyone knew no one had the slightest clue how light propagated… And it was this general context, along with other discoveries of the time, in which Einstein made his name. And where the notion of “wavicle” came from, combined with the developments in “quantum theory” and The Uncertainty Principle, as further oddities in the behavior of light were explored.
Another example of “Science Upended” would be Phlogiston Chemistry, which, from the 1600s to the late 1700s was a basic notion of how heat transfered through, and acted upon, various chemical mixtures and experiments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory
It is a singular commentary on the “soft” sciences that they are more prone to upheavals, and then reversals, as an idea takes hold, becomes “certain”, and then gets backed off and even tossed back out as proponents fail to produce evidence to support their claims, and the opposition produced evidence to reject claims.
An obvious example of this would be “warm blooded dinosaurs”. As anyone who has seen Jurassic Park would recall, this idea had reached its peak by the early 1990s. What many may not realize is that this idea has been at least somewhat repudiated since. It is not fully rejected, but it has become much more tempered, with the notion that there were likely at least some species of dinosaurs who had a measure of thermal regulation, there is much less evidence that they were as fully “warm blooded” as mammals are. In other words, they were partway between the classic reptilian “cold blooded” model and the mammalian “warm blooded” ‘design’. They likely had some of the qualities we associate with being “warm blooded”, but not all of them.
From the wiki:
Having seen these ideas, one can grasp how dinosaurs may have partly implemented some of them without having ALL of them.
And hence one can see how the paleontological science — a soft science, as they needfully make far more guesses and inherently weak statistical arguments (weak because they are based on dozens to hundreds, rather than millions, of data points) — is in regular flux as ideas prosper and then become rejected.
Most biological sciences are similarly soft — they needfully operate off of dozens to hundreds of data points rather than millions. And those data points are not necessarily apples to apples. When you’re dealing with human physiological responses, for example, it’s not like you can say that this person’s body is exactly the same as that person’s body, because they’ve each had a very wide array of unique experiences which might be relevant to the results of any future experience.
Scientists usually do their best to deal with these, but there are always “gotchas!!” buried in there, and they are needfully, and importantly, far more subject to various biases during analyses — hence “The Decline Effect” in much of recent biological findings. I personally assert much of the Decline Effect to poor rigor even where possible as well as far too many scientists allowing what they want to believe or see affecting their analyses. Politics is also an obvious twister of results, both directly, through funding and peer support, and indirectly, through internal, personal biases — once you’ve decided what is true, you tend to ignore things which reject that “truth”, and emphasize things which support it… “confirmation bias”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect
Circuses, continued.
(This is shaping up to be a pretty entertaining Sunday, forget about the Super Bowl….)
First we saw the scurrilous Hanna-Jones picking on Thomas Sowell.
This time, the uber-pathetic Debbie Wasserman Shultz decides it’s time to take down Jonathan Turley(!)…with the results being pretty much what one might expect….
‘ Prof. Jonathan Turley Hits Back At Debbie Wasserman Schultz Attempt To Discredit Him at House Hearing;
‘ This may be the largest censorship system in the history of our country.” ‘—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/prof-jonathan-turley-hits-back-at-debbie-wasserman-schultz-attempt-to-discredit-him-at-house-hearing/
And a bit more “Uncontroversial Election” news has popped up just in time for the…Super Bowl? (Probably should save it for half-time reading…)
“Review of 2020 election continues as Texas, Pennsylvania counties find ballot total discrepancies;
“There were seven county races within the 584-ballot margin of error in Smith County, Texas.”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/2020-election-hand-recount-audit-continue-texas-county-finds-discrepancy
– – – – – – – –
And in other news, Jodi Ernst has the right ideas, the right impulses, the right motivations…but for some reason she doesn’t seem to (want to?) understand that it’s a joint project…
(Actually, one can understand her hesitation…)
“Sen. Joni Ernst says ‘Chinese are intentionally poisoning America’ with fentanyl”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/2020-election-hand-recount-audit-continue-texas-county-finds-discrepancy
AesopFan @11:41 p.m.: It’s fascinating how many things they keep finding in the City of David. Some time ago I read an essay, which I thought moderately convincing, by a scholar who had read the Hebrew Scriptures about the Temple, and also contemporary history (Josephus, especially). His thesis was that the Temple was not actually up on what is called the Temple Mount; it was in the City of David, near to the prominence which held the Roman fortress and Procurator’s palace, and connected to that location by a colonnade. He pointed out, for one thing, that scripture clearly says there was a spring where the Temple was, and there isn’t one up on that high prominence. It would be nice to think that the actual Temple location is now under Israeli control, in the City of David.
To the question of how anyone could possibly have been mistaken about the location, the author pointed out that the Romans had expelled all Jews from Jerusalem and the surrounding area following the rebellion of AD 135, and they did not return for many generations. By the time of their return, and by the time of the Crusaders’ arrival, there were ruins on top of ruins up there, and a couple of mosques. The Crusaders saw that it was a Very Important Place and assumed the Temple had also stood there.
“That’s Entertainment!” continues in the Americas…
(…so ya’ can’t say we haven’t been warned….)
“Biden, Lula Vow to Defend Democracy in Americas”—
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/democracy-amazon-ukraine/2023/02/11/id/1108287/
“Social Credit Brazilian Style: All UBI Recipients Must Be Vaxxed”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/social-credit-brazilian-style-all-ubi-recipients-must-be-vaxxed
Opening graf:
“Anybody who seriously thinks that Universal Basic Income (UBI) programs of the future won’t be full blown social credit systems need look no further than Brazil, where newly selected socialist / globalist Lula da Silva just decreed that the Bolsa Familia program will require family members to be vaccinated in order to continue receiving benefits….”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf1d65OHYXo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXZpFOq0JOc
I believe the singer is Lani Hall.
I think their conclusions are wrong, dar al islam doesn’t yield to dar al harb
https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/new-findings-suggest-israel-can-build-third-temple-now/
it is facinating what I discovered about the back story to raiders, there was an expedition in the early 19th century that looked for the ark, but searched adjacent to the presumed temple mount, the revelations were a minor scandal
Ain’t gonna happen.
What is more probable is that a missile from one of “the neighbors”, during the next “contretemps” (or the one after, or the one after that0, accidentally—or perhaps not accidentally—pulverizes the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif.
Should that occur it will cause a massive, lengthy temblor, multi-continental and pan-global….
Well, let’s hope not….
this is the contrary notion,
https://israelmyglory.org/article/mount-moriah-or-the-city-of-david/
you look at an impartial historian like tom holland he scrutinized all three peoples of the book, yet only islam fired up a storm of flak, ‘crescent and the sword’
circling back how do you spot such a small object at such a great distance, second question, how does a low mass object accrete a ring that wide,
Temple: Yeah, I don’t know. God does. But I have long wondered if modern Jews would in fact build and use a new Temple, with all its scriptural sacrifices. Not my call at all.
Sun seems to be acting out.
“A Piece of the Sun Breaks Off, Creating a Spectacular Solar Polar Vortex”—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/a-piece-of-the-sun-breaks-off-creating-a-spectacular-solar-polar-vortex/
Maybe that’s why everything seems to be going haywire…
(How do you tell the sun to chill?)
its a fascinating detail, moslems consider all of al quds sacred, because mohammed stood on a rock and ascended to heaven or something,
orthodox probably, conservative or reform, would find it an enigma
i don’t quite figure why orthodox don’t have to serve in the Israeli army, or maybe it’s just one sect
miguel cervantes:
Just the Haredi sect of ultra-Orthodox. It is a group that’s growing, though, because of its high birthrate.
Kate, The New Testament IMPLIES that at least a part of the Temple will exist near the time of the second coming. Given that one does not currently exist, if you believe the scriptures are true, then you have to see the implication that at least part of one will be rebuilt. I would remind skeptics that for centuries it would have seemed that Israel would never be a nation again, and prophecies that spoke of Israel could not be true, and yet, here we are.
In Luke 24:15-31 Jesus spoke of an abomination standing in the Temple , referencing back to Daniels prophecy. Jesus seemed to be saying this would be right near the end. I know that the Greek ruler Antiochus , which had earlier spurned on the Maccabean revolt , was a shade of this, and what the Romans did in the AD 70s may have also had some similarities, but the true fulfillment of that prophecy is associated with the second coming , hence implying that a part of the Temple will be rebuilt.
Also, in 2 Thessalonians 2: 1- 12, Paul also states that the ” man of lawlessness” , probably the Anti-Christ, will set himself up in the Temple as a god.
Those two sets of verses are two of the primary reasons I reject the ” Left Behind” scenario commonly believed in American Evangelical churches that the church is getting out of Earth before the Time of Great Tribulation.
possibly, but I don’t see how that could be possible in current circumstances,
when arab and other forces are trying to erase jewish history,
if you read thessalonians in conjunction with revelations, you see they are referring more to a religious figure not a political figure,
circling back again, it does seem to defy standard understandings of how moons form rings,
Barry Meislin, maybe it’s the Sun God sending us all these UFOs.
Miquel,
If you hear about a significant 7 year treaty between Israel and an important leader , who may have ancestral ties with Turkey or Syria, then you may have your answer as to how such a Temple would be allowed to be rebuilt. But that is based on ” reading between the lines” in the sum of the prophecies and information on the regional origin of the Roman troops who actually destroyed the Temple in the first century. Again , a bit of extrapolation and reading between the lines….and I am not the one who came up with that understanding, but at this time it seems a possible understanding of the sum of those prophecies. If you see the temple being rebuilt, it should be an indicator things are getting close. If you see a leader set himself up as god in that Temple, then understand that all hell is about to break loose in Israel.
So where does the Ark of the Covenant fit in?
Asking for a friend.
Huxley,
I do not know.
Jon Baker:
Fair enough! I do wonder about it, though. Indiana Jones whatever, there was an Ark.
The Bible is a mysterious book.
@ huxley > “The Bible is a mysterious book.”
Understatement of the millennium.
I suspect much of that is deliberate.
Re: Ark of the Covenant
Jon Baker, AesopFan:
I keep running into stories about Ethiopia. The most interesting is this 2007 Smithsonian article. At the end of which the reporter manages to meet the current Keeper of the Ark in Ethiopia, who was not especially informative, but apparently a real person.
____________________________
According to the First Book of Kings, King Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem to house the ark. It was venerated there during Solomon’s reign (c. 970-930 B.C.) and beyond.
Then it vanished. Much of Jewish tradition holds that it disappeared before or while the Babylonians sacked the temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
But through the centuries, Ethiopian Christians have claimed that the ark rests in a chapel in the small town of Aksum, in their country’s northern highlands. It arrived nearly 3,000 years ago, they say, and has been guarded by a succession of virgin monks who, once anointed, are forbidden to set foot outside the chapel grounds until they die.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/keepers-of-the-lost-ark-179998820/
“…Turkey or Syria…”
More earthquake disclosures:
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-730932
“How did a seismologist predict the Turkey earthquake 3 days earlier?;
“A Dutch researcher predicted that an earthquake would hit the region, highlighting with almost exact precision the epicenter of the quake that would soon strike.”—
https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-731310
Key grafs:
‘A Dutch expert published a tweet on his Twitter account three days before the earthquake in Turkey on Monday, predicting that a powerful earthquake would happen imminently in Turkey.
‘He even attached an aerial photograph and marked the area where the disaster would happen.
‘…Dutch seismologist Frank Hoogerbeets, who works for the Solar System Geometry Survey (SSGS) in the Netherlands, predicted the earthquake in Turkey on February 3.
‘…The SSGS describes itself on Twitter as a research institute for monitoring geometry between celestial bodies related to seismic activity.
‘After Hooogerbeets’ prediction went viral, he reacted to the earthquake and said: “As I stated earlier, sooner or later this would happen in this region, similar to the years 115 and 526. These earthquakes are always preceded by critical planetary geometry, as we had on 4-5 February.”…’
“Critical planetary geometry”… Hmmm.
actually it’s wasnt mysterious until this modern era at all,
until the sithlords took over, for the better part of 2000 years, it was the mainstay of Western Civilization, observed imperfectly sometimes in the breach, then the other dieties, Darwin Marx Freud, came into the mix
that was graham hancocks conjecture, about the ark
marx being envy, freud being unreason, your best guess what sin darwin celebrates,
The researcher seems to refer to alignment of various planets in the solar system as a predictor of earthquakes. I have no way to evaluate such claims; sounds like new astrology, but what do I know? There are some disclaimers posted on his Twitter feed, saying no correlation has been demonstrated.
Your second link, Barry M., goes to an article about Rep. Anna Paulina Luna.
Oops, mistake..
Thanks Kate…
Hey, on second thought, her name fits right in with our solar speculations….
(And while I like her spirit…she seems to be a bit of a strange bird herself…not quite as bizarre as George Santos…but maybe, alas, a kindred spirit…)
As I think Speaker McCarthy said, people can vote for odd Representatives, and the best repair for that is to vote for someone else in two years.
re: Ark of the Covenant, I’ve seen those stories about Ethiopia for years, and also a story that says that when the Babylonians sacked the first Temple, they found the Holy of Holies empty, nothing to steal, which is said to support the Ethiopia story. I don’t know, and at this historic distance, I don’t think anyone does, unless the guys allegedly guarding it in Aksum, and they don’t say.
anna intimidates them, barry (is that how it goes) now these hamas fan girls like ocasio cortez, that’s perfectly normal
yes the influence of a planet 3/4 of a billion miles away does seem to make sense
fwiw
https://dailyhistory.org/What_happened_to_the_ark_of_the_covenant