#Haystack Observatory

[jcmarchi]

Liquid on Mars was not necessarily all water

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/liquid-on-mars-was-not-necessarily-all-water/

Liquid on Mars was not necessarily all water

Dry river channels and lake beds on Mars point to the long-ago presence of a liquid on the planet’s surface, and the minerals observed from orbit and from landers seem to many to prove that the liquid was ordinary water. 

Not so fast, the authors of a new Perspectives article in Nature Geoscience suggest. Water is only one of two possible liquids under what are thought to be the conditions present on ancient Mars. The other is liquid carbon dioxide (CO2), and it may actually have been easier for CO2 in the atmosphere to condense into a liquid under those conditions than for water ice to melt. 

While others have suggested that liquid CO2 (LCO2) might be the source of some of the river channels seen on Mars, the mineral evidence has seemed to point uniquely to water. However, the new paper cites recent studies of carbon sequestration, the process of burying liquefied CO2 recovered from Earth’s atmosphere deep in underground caverns, which show that similar mineral alteration can occur in liquid CO2 as in water, sometimes even more rapidly.

The new paper is led by Michael Hecht, principal investigator of the MOXIE instrument aboard the NASA Mars Rover Perseverance. Hecht, a research scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory and a former associate director, says, “Understanding how sufficient liquid water was able to flow on early Mars to explain the morphology and mineralogy we see today is probably the greatest unsettled question of Mars science. There is likely no one right answer, and we are merely suggesting another possible piece of the puzzle.”

In the paper, the authors discuss the compatibility of their proposal with current knowledge of Martian atmospheric content and implications for Mars surface mineralogy. They also explore the latest carbon sequestration research and conclude that “LCO2–mineral reactions are consistent with the predominant Mars alteration products: carbonates, phyllosilicates, and sulfates.” 

The argument for the probable existence of liquid CO2 on the Martian surface is not an all-or-nothing scenario; either liquid CO2, liquid water, or a combination may have brought about such geomorphological and mineralogical evidence for a liquid Mars.

Three plausible cases for liquid CO2 on the Martian surface are proposed and discussed: stable surface liquid, basal melting under CO2 ice, and subsurface reservoirs. The likelihood of each depends on the actual inventory of CO2 at the time, as well as the temperature conditions on the surface.

The authors acknowledge that the tested sequestration conditions, where the liquid CO2 is above room temperature at pressures of tens of atmospheres, are very different from the cold, relatively low-pressure conditions that might have produced liquid CO2 on early Mars. They call for further laboratory investigations under more realistic conditions to test whether the same chemical reactions occur.

Hecht explains, “It’s difficult to say how likely it is that this speculation about early Mars is actually true. What we can say, and we are saying, is that the likelihood is high enough that the possibility should not be ignored.” 

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Mystery of 'remarkable' cosmic explosion that lay hidden for years

The "needle in the haystack" discovery of a powerful explosion from a mysterious unknown object outside our galaxy has excited astronomers.

It went unnoticed for years within a vast, two decade-long archive of observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, before being unearthed by a new paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Astronomers led by Stanford University and Harvard believe the "remarkable" cosmic explosion could either be the first X-ray burster ever discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a rare flare from a magnetar – one of the most mysterious objects in the universe – or something entirely new and unheard of.

"Have you ever flipped through old photo albums and suddenly found something fascinating hidden in the background of a picture, no one had ever noticed before? Now imagine doing that on a cosmic scale," said lead researcher Steven Dillmann, a PhD student at Stanford University.

"Using a novel machine learning approach, we looked back through over 20 years of archived observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and discovered a remarkable, powerful X-ray flash from an unknown object outside our own galaxy that had gone unnoticed for years within the vast Chandra archive – a true needle in the haystack event."

In 15 May 2020, while Chandra was observing the remains of an exploded star in the LMC (a small galaxy neighbouring our Milky Way), it accidentally captured a bright and extremely fast X-ray flash from an unknown origin.

This flash appeared and disappeared within a few seconds, went unnoticed during the initial observation, and so was stored in the large Chandra archive.

Unlike traditional approaches, the novel machine learning method used in the new study managed to uncover the so-called extragalactic fast X-ray transient (FXT), which the researchers named XRT 200515 in reference to the day it was detected by Chandra. 

"The cosmic flash is particularly interesting because of its unusual characteristics that are different to any of the other extragalactic FXTs that have previously been detected by Chandra," said Mr Dillmann.

"It produced an incredibly energetic initial burst that lasted for only 10s, whereas others lasted for minutes or hours. This was followed by a longer, less energetic afterglow lasting for a few minutes."

As neither Chandra nor any other telescope has ever recorded the source before or since this burst, its true nature remains a puzzle.

The researchers believe one explanation is that it could be the first X-ray burster ever discovered in the LMC. These are systems involving two stars: one small and super-dense dead star (called a neutron star) and a normal companion star that orbits around it.

The neutron star is like a cosmic vacuum cleaner – its powerful gravity pulls gas off its companion star. When enough gas builds up on the neutron star's surface, it triggers a massive thermonuclear explosion that releases an intense burst of X-ray radiation.

Another theory is that it could be a rare, giant flare from a distant magnetar – neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields. These flares are some of the most explosive events in the cosmos, releasing a huge amount of gamma rays in a very short time.

If XRT 200515 is an X-ray counterpart to such an event, it would be the first giant magnetar flare observed at these X-ray energy levels.

The final explanation the researchers put forward is that it might be a previously unknown type of cosmic explosion that could reveal new insights about the universe.

"This discovery reminds us that space is dynamic and ever-changing, with exciting phenomena occurring constantly," said Mr Dillmann.

"It also demonstrates the value of using artificial intelligence for scientific discovery in archived astronomical data – there might be countless other discoveries waiting to be found in observations we've already made."

The researchers are now fine-tuning their method to search for signs of planets outside the Milky Way, building on previous breakthrough work led by co-author Rosanne di Stefano, which identified the first potential extragalactic planet candidate.

[mindblowingscience]

Planning is well underway for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), which will scour the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system for telltale signs of alien life.  This week, a workshop was held at the California Institute for Technology (Caltech) at which scientists and engineers discussed the state of technology that could be employed by the HWO, one of NASA’s next big telescope projects after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The hunt for signs of life in the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system orbiting distant stars  — exoplanets  —  is akin to hunting for a needle in a cosmic haystack. After all, NASA estimates there are several billion Earth-size planets sitting in the habitable zones of their stars, which regions with the right temperatures to allow liquid water to exist. And that's in the Milky Way alone.  Yet, scientists at least have a good idea of what they should be hunting for as well as knowledge of signs that would potentially indicate life.  "We want to probe the atmospheres of these exoplanets to look for oxygen, methane, water vapor, and other chemicals that could signal the presence of life," NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program chief technologist, Nick Siegler, said in a statement. "We aren't going to see little green men but rather spectral signatures of these key chemicals, or what we call biosignatures."

Continue Reading

[jbcchan]

[sunaleisocial]

Aurora mapping across North America

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/aurora-mapping-across-north-america/

Aurora mapping across North America

As seen across North America at sometimes surprisingly low latitudes, brilliant auroral displays provide evidence of solar activity in the night sky. More is going on than the familiar visible light shows during these events, though: When aurora appear, the Earth’s ionosphere is experiencing an increase in ionization and total electron content (TEC) due to energetic electrons and ions precipitating into the ionosphere.

One extreme auroral event earlier this year (May 10–11) was the Gannon geomagnetic “superstorm,” named in honor of researcher Jennifer Gannon, who suddenly passed away May 2. During the Gannon storm, both MIT Haystack Observatory researchers and citizen scientists across the United States observed the effects of this event on the Earth’s ionosphere, as detailed in the open-access paper “Imaging the May 2024 Extreme Aurora with Ionospheric Total Electron Content,” which was published Oct. 14 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Contributing citizen scientists featured co-author Daniel Bush, who recorded and livestreamed the entire auroral event from his amateur observatory in Albany, Missouri, and included numerous citizen observers recruited via social media.

Citizen science or community science involves members of the general public who volunteer their time to contribute, often at a significant level, to scientific investigations, including observations, data collection, development of technology, and interpreting results and analysis. Professional scientists are not the only people who perform research. The collaborative work of citizen scientists not only supports stronger scientific results, but also improves the transparency of scientific work on issues of importance to the entire population and increases STEM involvement across many groups of people who are not professional scientists in these fields.

Haystack collected data for this study from a dense network of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System, including systems like GPS) receivers across the United States, which monitor changes in ionospheric TEC variations on a time scale of less than a minute. In this study, John Foster and colleagues mapped the auroral effects during the Gannon storm in terms of TEC changes, and worked with citizen scientists to confirm auroral expansion with still photo and video observations.

Both the TEC observations and the procedural incorporation of synchronous imagery from citizen scientists were groundbreaking; this is the first use of precipitation-produced ionospheric TEC to map the occurrence and evolution of a strong auroral display on a continental scale. Lead author Foster says, “These observations validate the TEC mapping technique for detailed auroral studies, and provided groundbreaking detection of strong isolated bursts of precipitation-produced ionization associated with rapid intensification and expansion of auroral activity.”

Haystack scientists also linked their work with citizen observations posted to social media to support the TEC measurements made via the GNSS receiver network. This color imagery and very high TEC levels lead to the finding that the intense red aurora was co-located with the leading edge of the equator-ward and westward increasing TEC levels, indicating that the TEC enhancement was created by intense low-energy electron precipitation following the geomagnetic superstorm. This storm was exceptionally strong, with auroral activity centered relatively rarely at mid latitudes. Processes in the stormtime magnetosphere were the immediate cause of the auroral and ionospheric disturbances. These, in turn, were driven by the preceding solar coronal mass ejection and the interaction of the highly disturbed solar wind with Earth’s outer magnetosphere. The ionospheric observations reported in this paper are parts of this global system of interactions, and their characteristics can be used to better understand our coupled atmospheric system.

Co-author and amateur astronomer Daniel Bush says, “It is not uncommon for ‘citizen scientists’ such as myself to contribute to major scientific research by supplying observations of natural phenomena seen in the skies above Earth. Astronomy and geospace sciences are a couple of scientific disciplines in which amateurs such as myself can still contribute greatly without leaving their backyards. I am so proud that some of my work has proven to be of value to a formal study.” Despite his modest tone in discussing his contributions, his work was essential in reaching the scientific conclusions of the Haystack researchers’ study.

Knowledge of this complex system is more than an intellectual study; TEC structure and ionospheric activity are of serious space weather concern for satellite-based communication and navigation systems. The sharp TEC gradients and variability observed in this study are particularly significant when occurring in the highly populated mid latitudes, as seen across the United States in the May 2024 superstorm and more recent auroral events.

[spacenutspod]

What were you doing last Saturday? As it turns out, I was doing something rather unexciting… Trying to fix my washing machine (I did – in case you are interested). At the same time, Hungarian geography teacher by day and asteroid hunter by night Krisztián Sárneczky was out observing and detected a small asteroid which it transpired was on a collision course with Earth!  Spotting asteroids is a tricky business. Not least because they are typically dark in colour against a very black sky but the sky is quite a big place and spotting a tiny dark object against a massive black sky is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack! Unperturbed by the statistics and likelihood of actually discovering one, Sárneczky regularly scours the sky looking for asteroids and supernova at the Konkoly observatory in Budapest, Hungary.  He was engaged in this very task last Saturday night (20th January) at 22:48 CET (21:48 UT) when he spotted a new asteroid using a 0.6m Schmidt Telescope. Any discovery of this sort requires swift action to get the data over to the Minor Planet Center (MPC) who co-ordinate observations from astronomers around the World.  Sárneczky only had three observations when he submitted the data but continued to observe and over the course of the following minutes secured four more observations which he passed over realising it was heading straight for Earth. The actions that follow any such discovery like this are that the MPC alert others for follow up observations. Astronomers and automated impact monitoring systems including the European Space Agency’s wonderfully named ‘MeerKAT’ system sprang into action and more observations came in.  A radio image of the central portions of the Milky Way galaxy composited with a view of the MeerKAT radio observatory. Radio bubbles and associated vertical magnetized filaments can be seen. Courtesy: MeerKAT/SARAO/Oxford University/Heywood With more data, came more accuracy and thankfully the knowledge the the impactor was only about a metre across and due to impact just west of Berlin in Germany. It is not unusual for asteroids of this size to hit Earth indeed, we get them every couple of weeks but they generally burn up in the atmosphere and pose no threat. Larger asteroids that do pose a threat are thankfully much rarer. Larger objects are also easier to spot so the majority have already been spotted and are already being tracked but there are automated searches and individuals like Sárneczky who are always on the look out. The asteroid, which is now known as 2024-BX1 hit the Earth’s atmosphere just a few hours after discovery at 01:32 CET (00:32 UT) on Sunday morning the 21st January, 50km to the west of Berlin. It burned up, leaving a fabulous streak across the sky which people witnessed as a fireball even being spotted over here in the UK. Worryingly it is actually quite an unusual thing for asteroids to have been discovered before they impact our atmosphere. Only eight have been spotted with the first back in 2008. The difficulty of course is to find them early enough to give us time to understand their trajectory and size to understand what level of threat they pose to us. I should add there are no known asteroids on a collision course with Earth  and fortunately there are people like Sárneczky and a number of automated search systems out there on the lookout for the next one.  Source : Asteroid 2024 BX1 spotted three hours before impact The post Another Asteroid Discovered Hours Before it Impacts the Earth appeared first on Universe Today.

[g4ljw-amateur-radio]

Amateur Radio Newsline Report 2409 for Friday December 29th, 2023

- PLANNING BEGINS FOR DXPEDITION TO PETER THE 1ST ISLAND - CQ MAGAZINE SUSPENDS PUBLICATION - STRAIGHT KEY MONTH CELEBRATES A TRADITION - ARIZONA DESERT COMES ALIVE WITH QUARTZFESTHAMSCI ADVISOR BECOMES DIRECTOR OF HAYSTACK OBSERVATORY - GET READY FOR HAM RADIO KIDS' DAY - FRENCH AMATEUR'S SPECIAL EVENT HONORS POLISH MARTYR = SOTA ACTIVATORS PREPARE FOR YEAR-LONG 10M CHALLENGE - ARISS CONFERENCE TO CELEBRATE 40 YEARS OF HAM RADIO - WORLD OF DX - KICKER: A TREASURED TRANSMITTER'S ENDURING MESSAGE SCRIPT AUDIO http://dlvr.it/T0kg1q

[thebourisbox]

Could AI find alien life faster than humans, and would it tell us?

See on Scoop.it - Design, Science and Technology

  Turn a radio telescope to the stars in the sky, and it's instantly deafened. From pulsars to radio galaxies, and ionospheric disturbances in the atmosphere to radio-frequency interference (RFI) from our own technology, the sky is a cacophony of radio noise. And somewhere, among all that, may lie a needle in a haystack: a signal from another world.

  For over 60 years scientists have been scanning the skies in the search for extraterrestrial life but have yet to find any aliens. When you consider the sheer volume of search space — all those stars, all those radio frequencies — versus our limited searches so far, then it's little wonder we've not found ET yet. It's a daunting task, especially for a human. Thankfully, we've got some non-human intelligence to join the search.

      The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is reaching critical mass, in our everyday lives and in science, so it is no surprise that it's now being employed in Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). AI is already helping astronomers make incredible discoveries. Here's how. We're not talking about Skynet, or the machines from The Matrix movies, or even Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data. The AI that is so in vogue at present is based on machine-learning algorithms designed to do very specific jobs, even if it's just to talk to you on ChatGPT.

  To explain how AI is assisting in SETI, astronomer and SETI researcher Eamonn Kerins of the University of Manchester compares it to the needle in a haystack problem. "You basically treat the data as though it's the hay," Kerins told Space.com Space.com. "Then you're asking the machine-learning algorithm to tell you if there is anything in the data that isn't hay, and that hopefully is the needle in the haystack — unless there's other stuff in the haystack too."

  That other stuff is usually RFI, but the machine-learning algorithm is trained to recognize all the types of RFI we already know about. Those signals — the familiar patterns of mobile phones, local radio transmitters, electronics and so on — are the hay. The training involves "injecting signals into the data and then the algorithm learns to look for signals that are like that," Steve Croft, an astronomer with the Breakthrough Listen SETI project at the University of California, Berkeley, told Space.com The algorithm learns to spot the patterns of these familiar signals and disregard them. Should it spot something in the data that it hasn't been trained on, then it flags this up as something interesting that requires a human to follow up on.

  "There have been attempts recently at sifting through some of the Breakthrough Listen data with a machine-learning algorithm," said Kerins. "The data had already been combed through quite carefully previously by more conventional means, but yet the algorithm was still able to pick out new signals after being trained on the stuff that we know about."

  This project was led by Croft and an undergraduate student, Peter Ma of the University of Toronto, who wrote the algorithm and put it to work analyzing data from 820 stars observed by the 100-meter radio telescope at Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. The data, totaling 489 hours' worth of observations, contained millions of radio signals, almost all of which were human-made interference. The algorithm checked every single one of them and found eight signals that did not match anything it had been trained on and which had been missed by earlier analyses of the data.

Read the full article at: www.space.com

[tastydregs]

AI Is Speeding Up Astronomical Discoveries

Photo: John Moore (Getty Images)

First Full-Color Images From Webb Space Telescope

The famous first image of a black hole just got two times sharper. A research team used artificial intelligence to dramatically improve upon its first image from 2019, which now shows the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy as darker and bigger than the first image depicted.

I’m an astronomer who studies and has written about cosmology, black holes and exoplanets. Astronomers have been using AI for decades. In fact, in 1990, astronomers from the University of Arizona, where I am a professor, were among the first to use a type of AI called a neural network to study the shapes of galaxies.

Since then, AI has spread into every field of astronomy. As the technology has become more powerful, AI algorithms have begun helping astronomers tame massive data sets and discover new knowledge about the universe.

Better telescopes, more data

As long as astronomy has been a science, it has involved trying to make sense of the multitude of objects in the night sky. That was relatively simple when the only tools were the naked eye or a simple telescope, and all that could be seen were a few thousand stars and a handful of planets.

A hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble used newly built telescopes to show that the universe is filled with not just stars and clouds of gas, but countless galaxies. As telescopes have continued to improve, the sheer number of celestial objects humans can see and the amount of data astronomers need to sort through have both grown exponentially, too.

For example, the soon-to-be-completed Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile will make images so large that it would take 1,500 high-definition TV screens to view each one in its entirety. Over 10 years it is expected to generate 0.5 exabytes of data – about 50,000 times the amount of information held in all of the books contained within the Library of Congress.

There are 20 telescopes with mirrors larger than 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter. AI algorithms are the only way astronomers could ever hope to work through all of the data available to them today. There are a number of ways AI is proving useful in processing this data.

One of the earliest uses of AI in astronomy was to pick out the multitude of faint galaxies hidden in the background of images.

ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Rigby, CC BY

Picking out patterns

Astronomy often involves looking for needles in a haystack. About 99% of the pixels in an astronomical image contain background radiation, light from other sources or the blackness of space – only 1% have the subtle shapes of faint galaxies.

AI algorithms – in particular, neural networks that use many interconnected nodes and are able to learn to recognize patterns – are perfectly suited for picking out the patterns of galaxies. Astronomers began using neural networks to classify galaxies in the early 2010s. Now the algorithms are so effective that they can classify galaxies with an accuracy of 98%.

This story has been repeated in other areas of astronomy. Astronomers working on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, use radio telescopes to look for signals from distant civilizations. Early on, radio astronomers scanned charts by eye to look for anomalies that couldn’t be explained. More recently, researchers harnessed 150,000 personal computers and 1.8 million citizen scientists to look for artificial radio signals. Now, researchers are using AI to sift through reams of data much more quickly and thoroughly than people can. This has allowed SETI efforts to cover more ground while also greatly reducing the number of false positive signals.

Another example is the search for exoplanets. Astronomers discovered most of the 5,300 known exoplanets by measuring a dip in the amount of light coming from a star when a planet passes in front of it. AI tools can now pick out the signs of an exoplanet with 96% accuracy.

AI tools can help astronomers discover new exoplanets like TRAPPIST-1 b.

NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI), CC BY

Making new discoveries

AI has proved itself to be excellent at identifying known objects – like galaxies or exoplanets – that astronomers tell it to look for. But it is also quite powerful at finding objects or phenomena that are theorized but have not yet been discovered in the real world.

Teams have used this approach to detect new exoplanets, learn about the ancestral stars that led to the formation and growth of the Milky Way, and predict the signatures of new types of gravitational waves.

To do this, astronomers first use AI to convert theoretical models into observational signatures – including realistic levels of noise. They then use machine learning to sharpen the ability of AI to detect the predicted phenomena.

Finally, radio astronomers have also been using AI algorithms to sift through signals that don’t correspond to known phenomena. Recently a team from South Africa found a unique object that may be a remnant of the explosive merging of two supermassive black holes. If this proves to be true, the data will allow a new test of general relativity – Albert Einstein’s description of space-time.

Image: Medeiros et al 2023, CC BY-ND

The team that first imaged a black hole, at left, used AI to generate a sharper version of the image, at right, showing the black hole to be larger than originally thought.

Medeiros et al 2023, CC BY-ND

Making predictions and plugging holes

As in many areas of life recently, generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT are also making waves in the astronomy world.

The team that created the first image of a black hole in 2019 used a generative AI to produce its new image. To do so, it first taught an AI how to recognize black holes by feeding it simulations of many kinds of black holes. Then, the team used the AI model it had built to fill in gaps in the massive amount of data collected by the radio telescopes on the black hole M87.

Using this simulated data, the team was able to create a new image that is two times sharper than the original and is fully consistent with the predictions of general relativity.

Astronomers are also turning to AI to help tame the complexity of modern research. A team from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics created a language model called astroBERT to read and organize 15 million scientific papers on astronomy. Another team, based at NASA, has even proposed using AI to prioritize astronomy projects, a process that astronomers engage in every 10 years.

As AI has progressed, it has become an essential tool for astronomers. As telescopes get better, as data sets get larger and as AIs continue to improve, it is likely that this technology will play a central role in future discoveries about the universe.

Want to know more about AI, chatbots, and the future of machine learning? Check out our full coverage of artificial intelligence, or browse our guides to The Best Free AI Art Generators and Everything We Know About OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

[adz]

MIT

[jcmarchi]

MIT community members gather on campus to witness 93 percent totality

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-community-members-gather-on-campus-to-witness-93-percent-totality/

MIT community members gather on campus to witness 93 percent totality

The stars and other celestial objects truly aligned on MIT’s campus Monday. After a weekend of rain, the community was treated to clear skies and high temperatures to view the only partial eclipse for the next 20 years.

Community members took in the interstellar anomaly in gatherings large and small. Although many traveled north to view the full eclipse, those in Greater Boston were treated with 93 percent coverage and ample ways to appreciate the cosmic wonder.

As the moon met the sun beginning around 2:15 p.m., Kresge Oval hosted crowds of onlookers, with staff members handing out solar filters of various types and encouraging star-struck viewers to sketch what they saw and tell stories. The event was hosted by the MT Edgerton Center and inspired by the seminar EC.050/090 (Recreate Experiments from History: Inform the Future with the Past).

On the other side of campus, the MIT Museum also hosted a gathering that included a full afternoon of programming. Attendees could hear from an astronomer and ask questions while they took in the views with solar filter glasses.

In Building 55, home to the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), where the lives of stars take up a bit more headspace each day, sights and sounds from NASA’s livestream appeared on the department’s large new media wall.

Each of the gatherings could have been a scene out of a science fiction movie as everyone donned their glasses and looked up in amazement at the darkening sky. Those with extra eyewear to share quickly found themselves with new friends to experience the moment with.

“The Edgerton Center is really about building communities, and this was an opportunity to get the MIT community together to observe this thing that rarely happens and have some conversations about what’s really going on,” said Jim Bales, the associate director of the Edgerton Center.

Such events have evoked fear and confusion in Earthlings throughout history, but this time, MIT’s community members seemed more prone to appreciative reflection. Many students, faculty, and staff took a break from terrestrial life to take in the rare natural phenomena, a welcome planetary disruption to an otherwise typical Monday on Earth.

“Watch parties are cool because you’re learning from what other people have to say about it and you get to meet new people,” said sophomore Sol Roberts. “You can only stare up for so long, but being with other people it makes it more enjoyable.”

Of course, MIT didn’t abandon its scientific bent entirely. The community, after all, was never going to stop helping humanity understand the fundamental workings of the universe. Myriad community members participated in professional and citizen science initiatives of one sort of another. Meanwhile, MIT’s Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts measured changes in the atmosphere, and members of the Department of Physics took measurements of the sun’s intensity using the shiny new radio telescope on the roof of Building 54.

As surreal as the skies appeared, the Earth’s surface offered equally fun sights. The gatherings made the eclipse at once an intergalactic event and a hyper-local one, an impossibly distant astronomical anomaly shared between friends.

[thepractitionerd]

Behold, the First Photo and Video of an ACTUAL Black Hole...

Behold, the First Photo and Video of an ACTUAL Black Hole…

Ladies, Gentlemen, and everyone in-between; we have witnessed a major milestone in astronomy. After many, many years of depending on computer-generated images based on the what the theory of general relativity has predicted for decades, we finally have an actual image of a black hole in space. I know, I know; IT’S FINALLY…

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Some minerals seen on Mars today may have formed in liquid CO₂ instead of water

Dry river channels and lake beds on Mars point to the long-ago presence of a liquid on the planet's surface, and the minerals observed from orbit and from landers seem to many to prove that the liquid was ordinary water.

Not so fast, the authors of a new Perspectives article in Nature Geoscience suggest. Water is only one of two possible liquids under what are thought to be the conditions present on ancient Mars. The other is liquid carbon dioxide (CO2), and it may actually have been easier for CO2 in the atmosphere to condense into a liquid under those conditions than for water ice to melt.

While others have suggested that liquid CO2 (LCO2) might be the source of some of the river channels seen on Mars, the mineral evidence has seemed to point uniquely to water. However, the new paper cites recent studies of carbon sequestration, the process of burying liquefied CO2 recovered from Earth's atmosphere deep in underground caverns, which show that similar mineral alteration can occur in liquid CO2 as in water, sometimes even more rapidly.

The new paper is led by Michael Hecht, principal investigator of the MOXIE instrument aboard the NASA Mars Rover Perseverance. Hecht, a research scientist at MIT's Haystack Observatory and a former associate director, says, "Understanding how sufficient liquid water was able to flow on early Mars to explain the morphology and mineralogy we see today is probably the greatest unsettled question of Mars science. There is likely no one right answer, and we are merely suggesting another possible piece of the puzzle."

In the paper, the authors discuss the compatibility of their proposal with current knowledge of Martian atmospheric content and implications for Mars surface mineralogy. They also explore the latest carbon sequestration research and conclude that "LCO2–mineral reactions are consistent with the predominant Mars alteration products: carbonates, phyllosilicates, and sulfates."

The argument for the probable existence of liquid CO2 on the Martian surface is not an all-or-nothing scenario; either liquid CO2, liquid water, or a combination may have brought about such geomorphological and mineralogical evidence for a liquid Mars.

Three plausible cases for liquid CO2 on the Martian surface are proposed and discussed: stable surface liquid, basal melting under CO2 ice, and subsurface reservoirs. The likelihood of each depends on the actual inventory of CO2 at the time, as well as the temperature conditions on the surface.

The authors acknowledge that the tested sequestration conditions, where the liquid CO2 is above room temperature at pressures of tens of atmospheres, are very different from the cold, relatively low-pressure conditions that might have produced liquid CO2 on early Mars. They call for further laboratory investigations under more realistic conditions to test whether the same chemical reactions occur.

Hecht explains, "It's difficult to say how likely it is that this speculation about early Mars is actually true. What we can say, and we are saying, is that the likelihood is high enough that the possibility should not be ignored."

IMAGE: At left: Steel is seen to corrode into siderite (FeCO3) when immersed in subcritical liquid carbon dioxide (LCO2). At right: Samples of albite (a plagioclase feldspar) and a sandstone core are observed to form red rhodochrosite (MnCO3) when exposed to supercritical CO2 in the presence of a water solution with potassium chloride and manganese chloride, with particularly strong reaction near the interface of the two solutions. In both experiments, water saturation is provided by floating LCO2 on the water. Under the lower pressure conditions characteristic of early Mars, the water would float on the LCO2. Credit: Todd Schaef/PNNL (left) and Earl Mattson/Mattson Hydrology (right)

[mindblowingscience]

An international team of scientists from Sweden, Norway, Japan, and Switzerland, has presented research findings that reveal a crucial role of biological particles, including pollen, spores, and bacteria, in the formation of ice within Arctic clouds. These findings, published today in Nature Communications, have far-reaching implications for climate science and our understanding of the rapidly changing Arctic climate. The research, whose outcomes have unveiled the connection between biological particles and the formation of ice in Arctic clouds, was conducted over multiple years at the Zeppelin Observatory, situated on the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, in the High Arctic. Gabriel Freitas, lead author and Ph.D. student at Stockholm University, detailed their innovative approach: "We have individually identified and counted these biological particles using a sensitive optical technique reliant on light scattering and UV-induced fluorescence. This precision is essential as we navigate through the challenge of detecting these particles in minuscule concentrations, akin to finding a needle in a haystack."

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[starryficsfinishwen]

[pgr] bloodbath ⋄ roland drabble

you never believed in Jesus Christ until he rose from the vermillion liquid—a baptism in the age of death.

roland x f!commandant

I have a headcanon roland keeps roses because he's dramatic™

content: a bit yandere roland,,,shikikan is oc and has different constructs

word count: 2,104 (I swear it was originally a drabble)

Roses.

One would think that roses were common, yet, in a world devoid of any type of life, it would be a miracle to find any traces of natural flowers that bloomed in the Golden Age. They all disappeared when the virus broke out. It would be finding a needle in a haystack if one attempted to; it was hard to find one. Let alone the roses you found on your doorstep one day.

That's right—a rose.

You've never seen one in real life before. The ones you've seen at the observatory were either replicants, or if they were real, they would be plucked and dissected for educational purposes. However, from the looks of the flower that you held in your hand that day—they were true. This was a real rose indeed.

How soft, how peculiar. How one touch of the petals felt unnaturally cool to your fingertips, unlike holograms. How the thorns felt so real that you were sure they would prick your skin if you put too much pressure on it. No doubt, the one who picked it out was a connoisseur of illegal means; yet, like how small it was, a voice at the back of your head was suddenly telling you a warning.

You paid no mind to it, though. It took a lot of convincing for your constructs to pay no mind to it. There were no traces of malice, no traces of evil means.

So, you kept it, thinking it wouldn't come back. Until it would be at your doorstep once a week.

Sometimes, they were the size of your fist. The other day, it was a tiny, little bud. The number of roses that was at your doorstep grew from one to ten. Then, it became a neatly packed bouquet.

Surely, this was a prank. But whoever was planning it was starting to become a menace—who was it? What was their target?

Suddenly, a chill ran down your spine as you saw there was finally a piece of paper neatly tucked between one of the roses' petals. Coordinates. Ones that lead to a city infested with the punishing virus.

The corrupted were mindless creatures unless they sensed life like yours. But— (this time, your mind went blank).

Who would know? With the rapid evolution of the virus, it wouldn't be a surprised if the corrupted grew a brain. Yet, an ominous feeling washed over you again.

You threw the bouquet on the same day.

One day, you and your constructs find yourselves in the vicinity of the corrupted-infested city. Exhausting your strengths, all of you take shelter at one of the abandoned buildings.

❝Are you alright?❞ the leader of your team asked. His frame was battered, vital fluids splashed onto his body. Luckily, his inver-device was unscathed.

❝Capt.,❞ his second-in-command, who mirrored the leader's appearance, nervously called out, ❝Alfred is the one who got hit the most.❞

Alfred, the new one in your team, had the worst shape amongst the team. You became the buffer from preventing him to be infected further.

❝Commandant,❞ he weakly spoke your title, languid hands trembling from the pain, ❝I'm sorry I couldn't protect you much...❞

❝No,❞ you softly spoke, aiding your second-in-command as he administered first aid, ❝I'm the one who should be sorry. I should have let you retreat early.❞

❝I've tried contacting for back-up, but there's still no response.❞ The leader evidently sighs, weary eyes skimming over his comrade and the device in his hand.

❝Can Alfred still hold on?❞ He added, looking over the medic.

❝I can,❞ a loud groan came out of Alfred's mouth, ❝you should look over commandant.❞

You were barely wounded at all. It was all of your constructs who did all the heavy work—it made you shiver.

❝I'm fine, Alfred, you should save your strength.❞

At first, it may look like it was all of their efforts to continuously protect you. However—it didn't seem like the case. It seemed more like...there were instances where the attacking force was more interested in aiming for the constructs rather than you.

❝Do we have enough supplies?❞ You asked when the silence overtook you all apart from the short groans of Alfred.

❝We don't have much left...❞ the second-in-command paused, ❝the bag broke while we were running away.❞

❝I'll go look for supplies, then.❞ the leader stood, slipping the comms back to his pockets, ❝everyone should stay here.❞

❝I'll join you.❞ You pipped, but was cut off by the leader,

❝No, you should stay here, commandant. You need to stay safe.❞

❝I know you mean well, Paul, but it's okay. I can manage myself.❞ You looked at Paul, the leader, before looking at your second-in-command, ❝Alan needs to look over Alfred.❞

Paul nervously shifted, ❝but—❞

❝It's okay, I swear.❞

Truth be told, other than supplies, you wanted to investigate. There was something so strange about the city and the happenings. You would rather keep your comrades safe, so you decided not to tell them of your thoughts.

You and Paul were walking around, failing to find anything that would be useful to you. It took a while, before finding a corner with two corridors. Both of you decided to split up.

❝Come back and call for me if you need help, commandant,❞ Paul said as you patted him on the back before parted ways.

❝It won't be long,❞ you nodded, ❝I'll come back.❞

Paul called out when you turned your back on him, ❝Commandant.❞

But you never looked back. Instead, your blood ran cold when a familiar item was glued to the wall.

❝You better watch your back.❞

A single red rose was on the wall.

And then, the world turned black.

The Golden Age was an era when technology flourished.

A new life, a new world. A coexisting world where humans and technology would live together. Machineries and advanced technology made life easier. Yet, the very same technology that built the world tore it apart so easily.

Thanks to that, the natural course of the world became chaotic. In the dying age of life, where sunlight was artificial and the water was unlike the ones at Earth, you lived.

Yet, you believed that life could still exist on the once-blue planet that your ancestors once lived on. Yet, you were certain your death would happen at the same place they died, too.

When you opened your eyes, the faint light of a fluorescent bulb blurred your vision. You couldn't move your legs nor your arms. It took a while before you realized you were on a makeshift bed. Sudden pain erupted in your head which made you wince when you sat upright.

Where were you? Was your team alright?

Not long, your memories of what happened earlier came back, and an unspoken rage for Paul—or whoever was brainwashing him—seeped through your skin and bubbled.

You took careful but fast steps as you bolted out of the room. Whatever opening you saw, you decided to take it just so you can at least find an exit. Safety and survival had to be certain—otherwise, Babylonia would never honor your name.

Somehow, as you ran, it felt like a hundred gazes were on you. Your body felt stiff, but you persisted. Until you came across a door.

A dead end. But why would she give up if she was a step closer to freedom?

You opened the door. But what greeted you was something that you never expected.

White-tiled floors. Bright lights. A crimson bathtub.

You believed in no god. Gods abandoned earth and humanity when the virus broke out. Jesus Christ left the world so many years ago. If there was one, then they must have enjoyed drinking in the miseries of those left behind.

But—there could be another.

The next second you blink, the water in the bathtub has ripples. A gentle, soothing kind, that you never realized the door closed as you took a step back.

And then a thought crossed your mind—Jesus Christ. An entity of man, believed to be the one who walked on water and brought life to those who were dead. And suddenly, you find yourself in his vicinity when the blood bath parted.

You never believed in Jesus Christ until he rose from the vermillion liquid—a baptism in the age of death.

Golden eyes that were intensely staring at you the moment you stepped inside the room. His lips parted, as if saying something, but only viscous vermillion poured out. Your back, out of shock, hits the closed door. Snapping out of your trance, you panic and began to shake the jammed door handle. Warning signs flash through your head as you felt the punishing virus concentration rise from normal levels to explosive ones.

You were certain: an Ascendant.

❝Commandant,❞ his voice was a lower octave, which made a chill run down your spine, ❝I've been waiting for you since.❞

Words died on your throat before you could speak. This was the first time you met such a person, never once in your missions did you encounter this spiked punishing level. You trembled under his gaze as he rose from the tub and slowly stepped out.

❝Did the cat catch your tongue, dear?❞ the pet name rolled out of his tongue so easily. You should be disgusted, but for some reason, you became enthralled.

❝Y-You-❞ you tried to choke out an accusation, but the words disappeared as soon as he approached you. The man was so close to you, you could barely breathe.

Another warning sign flashed through your head as he reached out to cup your chin. His pensive eyes continued to stare you down, which made you shrink in your suit.

❝Hm? Yes, it's me. It's been a while.❞

He called you by your name. A name you never shared so easily with anyone unless—

❝Who are you?❞ You cried out, ❝What do you want?❞

❝Oh,❞ a split second, his face fell, but the next, he grinned so sweetly. ❝I'm quite surprised.❞

❝Do you really not know me?❞ he added, a hint of mischief and snark in his eyes, ❝I thought you enjoyed my gift?❞

Gift? What gift?

Your eyes widened as he laughed, the shaking in your body no longer contained. The flowers that you received made sense; it all came from this stranger.

❝I guess you don't remember, I'm a bit appalled.❞ He chuckled, before using his spare hand to caress your cheek. You can make out the faint smell of vital fluid, and you remember your comrades.

❝Don't worry,❞ he bitterly smiled as if reading your mind, ❝you've always been like this. Nothing changed, hm. I didn't hurt them; they were simply my pawns from the beginning.❞

His silver hair, dripping with the fluid. Deranged yet pensive golden eyes that watch you squirm under his control. The dark clothes that made you believe he was a priest—you wished you worshipped more before crumbling into the hands of the virus that took away your future.

❝Let me go,❞ you choked out, ❝please.❞

His touch was gentle, but his amusement was thriving off of your fear. Using his thumb, he traced your bottom lip.

❝And let you escape again? I wish not to do that anymore. You have no idea how many times I've tried to return you to me.❞

❝What do you want anyway?❞ Your fear seemed to have kept you grounded, even if this man was scaring you to death.

You believed you weren't special. You never graduated with latin honors, you had flimsy comrades, and your performance wasn't always exceptional unlike that commandant of the Gray Ravens. But somehow, this man was so interested in you.

A dark chuckle escaped his lips. ❝Want is merely something I would use in our situation.❞

Kind. Gentle. Two words that seemed to sum up his touch to you. An unspoken silence passed by the both of you, before he pulled out something from his inner pockets—a rose.

The same ones you've seen for weeks.

❝I do want you, (name), yes. But our promise is more than "want" here.❞

❝What are you-❞

Secured by the thorns, a glint caught your eye. At first glance, it was like a trick of light, but then you noticed it was—

❝I need you, (name).❞

How was it possible to hear your name spoken so softly and with reverence, despite the situation.

❝I, Roland, am here to fulfill the promise we created from our youth.❞

Your blood ran cold.

A smile graced his lips, but the scream that curled in your throat was choked.

❝I am never letting you go again this time, (name).❞

[sunaleisocial]

Liquid on Mars was not necessarily all water

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/liquid-on-mars-was-not-necessarily-all-water/

Liquid on Mars was not necessarily all water

Dry river channels and lake beds on Mars point to the long-ago presence of a liquid on the planet’s surface, and the minerals observed from orbit and from landers seem to many to prove that the liquid was ordinary water. 

Not so fast, the authors of a new Perspectives article in Nature Geoscience suggest. Water is only one of two possible liquids under what are thought to be the conditions present on ancient Mars. The other is liquid carbon dioxide (CO2), and it may actually have been easier for CO2 in the atmosphere to condense into a liquid under those conditions than for water ice to melt. 

While others have suggested that liquid CO2 (LCO2) might be the source of some of the river channels seen on Mars, the mineral evidence has seemed to point uniquely to water. However, the new paper cites recent studies of carbon sequestration, the process of burying liquefied CO2 recovered from Earth’s atmosphere deep in underground caverns, which show that similar mineral alteration can occur in liquid CO2 as in water, sometimes even more rapidly.

The new paper is led by Michael Hecht, principal investigator of the MOXIE instrument aboard the NASA Mars Rover Perseverance. Hecht, a research scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory and a former associate director, says, “Understanding how sufficient liquid water was able to flow on early Mars to explain the morphology and mineralogy we see today is probably the greatest unsettled question of Mars science. There is likely no one right answer, and we are merely suggesting another possible piece of the puzzle.”

In the paper, the authors discuss the compatibility of their proposal with current knowledge of Martian atmospheric content and implications for Mars surface mineralogy. They also explore the latest carbon sequestration research and conclude that “LCO2–mineral reactions are consistent with the predominant Mars alteration products: carbonates, phyllosilicates, and sulfates.” 

The argument for the probable existence of liquid CO2 on the Martian surface is not an all-or-nothing scenario; either liquid CO2, liquid water, or a combination may have brought about such geomorphological and mineralogical evidence for a liquid Mars.

Three plausible cases for liquid CO2 on the Martian surface are proposed and discussed: stable surface liquid, basal melting under CO2 ice, and subsurface reservoirs. The likelihood of each depends on the actual inventory of CO2 at the time, as well as the temperature conditions on the surface.

The authors acknowledge that the tested sequestration conditions, where the liquid CO2 is above room temperature at pressures of tens of atmospheres, are very different from the cold, relatively low-pressure conditions that might have produced liquid CO2 on early Mars. They call for further laboratory investigations under more realistic conditions to test whether the same chemical reactions occur.

Hecht explains, “It’s difficult to say how likely it is that this speculation about early Mars is actually true. What we can say, and we are saying, is that the likelihood is high enough that the possibility should not be ignored.”