Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time—war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race—in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all.

With crystalline prose, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette that sees and paints the world differently. From insights on resolving global conflict to reminders of how precious it is to be alive, Tyson reveals, with warmth and eloquence, an array of brilliant and beautiful truths that apply to us all, informed and enlightened by knowledge of our place in the universe.

Recently announced research suggests that there is life on Venus.

This research identified phosphine (PH3) in the atmosphere of Venus. According to the researchers, the only way to get phosphine is from life.

I might disagree, and here is why: We think of phosphine as only associated with life because we live on Earth, where there is lots of life, and that is where we find phosphine. There are a gazillian chemical compounds that no one thought would or could exist, or even imagined one might exist, that have been synthesized by chemists over the years. The synthesis of some of these compounds depended on the novel synthesis of other, earlier “discovered” compounds. The idea that no chemist will ever figure out how to synthesize phosphine without an organism being involved does not seem likely to me.

But, I’m not a chemist, and especially, I’m not Clara Sousa-Silva, who has devoted her entire research career to understanding phosphine and related problems. She is not a chemist either, but rather, a physicist, who specializes in analysis of extraterrestrial chemicals.

This is like the Enigma of Socrates. Socrates speaks. Socrates has two legs, not four. Therefore Socrates is a man, right? That logic would be hard to beat on a planet with no parrots. But on a planet with parrots, Socrates could be a parrot.

“Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus” with about 20 authors, in Nature Astronomy has no public or open source copy. The New York Times has it, but you will need a subscription to read that. Clara has a web site devoted to phosphine, here.

I have a new theory of the origin of the universe.

(You’re old theory vs my new theory)

I would like you to stop what you are doing and listen to my theory, which simultaneously explains why everything you know is wrong, but that’s OK, I know what is TRUE INSTEAD.

There are still some details to work out….

No, but seriously, check out this new book: The Cosmic Revolutionary’s Handbook: (Or: How to Beat the Big Bang) by Luke Barnes and Geraint Lewis.

If you read a lot of books about cosmology and the universe, you will not find much new in this book, but you will find new ways to think about all that old stuff. If you really do have a new theory of everything, this book will give you some useful advice on how to buy your ticket into the physics game. Like, that you have to make sure your theory of everything works in a way that does not result in the night sky being as bright as the day sky, or makes light do something it does not do, and so on. Also, do not use many different TYPE FACES AND all caps in your write-up.

Interestingly, one of the things the actual-cosmologists-authors do NOT say is something I often hear from pro-physicists about TOE-pushers. They don’t say “if you don’t have a mathematical formula for your theory, it isn’t a theory.” I hear that all the time and I always thought there was something wrong with that. Seems to me that a totally wrong mathematical theory is too much of a likelihood.

The best overview of this book, which you SHOULD read, is from the authors themselves who made a video talking about the book. Here:

See? Visual proof that this is a good book. Check out The Cosmic Revolutionary’s Handbook: (Or: How to Beat the Big Bang). As of this writing, on sale now.*

From the abstract of the paper just out in Nature:

The Juno mission1 has provided an accurate determination of Jupiter’s gravitational field, which has been used to obtain information about the planet’s composition and internal structure. Several models of Jupiter’s structure that fit the probe’s data suggest that the planet has a diluted core, with a total heavy-element mass ranging from ten to a few tens of Earth masses (about 5 to 15 per cent of the Jovian mass), and that heavy elements (elements other than hydrogen and helium) are distributed within a region extending to nearly half of Jupiter’s radius. Planet-formation models indicate that most heavy elements are accreted during the early stages of a planet’s formation to create a relatively compact core and that almost no solids are accreted during subsequent runaway gas accretion. Jupiter’s diluted core, combined with its possible high heavy-element enrichment, thus challenges standard planet-formation theory. A possible explanation is erosion of the initially compact heavy-element core, but the efficiency of such erosion is uncertain and depends on both the immiscibility of heavy materials in metallic hydrogen and on convective mixing as the planet evolves. Another mechanism that can explain this structure is planetesimal enrichment and vaporization during the formation process, although relevant models typically cannot produce an extended diluted core. Here we show that a sufficiently energetic head-on collision (giant impact) between a large planetary embryo and the proto-Jupiter could have shattered its primordial compact core and mixed the heavy elements with the inner envelope. Models of such a scenario lead to an internal structure that is consistent with a diluted core, persisting over billions of years. We suggest that collisions were common in the young Solar system and that a similar event may have also occurred for Saturn, contributing to the structural differences between Jupiter and Saturn

From the press release:

HOUSTON — (Aug. 14, 2019) — A colossal, head-on collision between Jupiter and a still-forming planet in the early solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago, could explain surprising readings from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, according to a study this week in the journal Nature.

Astronomers from Rice University and China’s Sun Yat-sen University say their head-on impact scenario can explain Juno’s previously puzzling gravitational readings, which suggest that Jupiter’s core is less dense and more extended that expected.

“This is puzzling,” said Rice astronomer and study co-author Andrea Isella. “It suggests that something happened that stirred up the core, and that’s where the giant impact comes into play.”

Isella said leading theories of planet formation suggest Jupiter began as a dense, rocky or icy planet that later gathered its thick atmosphere from the primordial disk of gas and dust that birthed our sun.

Isella said he was skeptical when study lead author Shang-Fei Liu first suggested the idea that the data could be explained by a giant impact that stirred Jupiter’s core, mixing the dense contents of its core with less dense layers above. Liu, a former postdoctoral researcher in Isella’s group, is now a member of the faculty at Sun Yat-sen in Zhuhai, China.

“It sounded very unlikely to me,” Isella recalled, “like a one-in-a-trillion probability. But Shang-Fei convinced me, by shear calculation, that this was not so improbable.”

The research team ran thousands of computer simulations and found that a fast-growing Jupiter can have perturbed the orbits of nearby “planetary embryos,” protoplanets that were in the early stages of planet formation.

Liu said the calculations included estimates of the probability of collisions under different scenarios and distribution of impact angles. In all cases, Liu and colleagues found there was at least a 40% chance that Jupiter would swallow a planetary embryo within its first few million years. In addition, Jupiter mass-produced “strong gravitational focusing” that made head-on collisions more common than grazing ones.

Isella said the collision scenario became even more compelling after Liu ran 3D computer models that showed how a collision would affect Jupiter’s core.

“Because it’s dense, and it comes in with a lot of energy, the impactor would be like a bullet that goes through the atmosphere and hits the core head-on,” Isella said. “Before impact, you have a very dense core, surrounded by atmosphere. The head-on impact spreads things out, diluting the core.”

Impacts at a grazing angle could result in the impacting planet becoming gravitationally trapped and gradually sinking into Jupiter’s core, and Liu said smaller planetary embryos about as massive as Earth would disintegrate in Jupiter’s thick atmosphere.

“The only scenario that resulted in a core-density profile similar to what Juno measures today is a head-on impact with a planetary embryo about 10 times more massive than Earth,” Liu said.

Isella said the calculations suggest that even if this impact happened 4.5 billion years ago, “it could still take many, many billions of years for the heavy material to settle back down into a dense core under the circumstances suggested by the paper.”

Isella, who is also a co-investigator on the Rice-based, NASA-funded CLEVER Planets project, said the study’s implications reach beyond our solar system.

“There are astronomical observations of stars that might be explained by this kind of event,” he said.

“This is still a new field, so the results are far from solid, but as some people have been looking for planets around distant stars, they sometimes see infrared emissions that disappear after a few years,” Isella said. “One idea is that if you are looking at a star as two rocky planets collide head-on and shatter, you could create a cloud of dust that absorbs stellar light and reemits it. So, you kind of see a flash, in the sense that now you have this cloud of dust that emits light. And then after some time, the dust dissipates and that emission goes away.”

There are two ways in which this super natural laboratory is foiled. One, the star itself is noisy, spitting out a wide range of unruly energy types unpredictably. The other is if the instruments on our end, at Earth, are messed up by things like the atmosphere, or the fact that the Earth is spinning so we can only see the star and planet for a few hours a day.

For these two reasons, astronomers seem to like to do two things. One is to find “quiet” stars, stars that have a steadier output of energy, so they make better backlights, as it were, for the planets. The other is to put instruments on rocket ships and fly them out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Both things are happening, and it is working.

A new paper in Nature Astronomy reports on a very interesting observation addressing planet types not previously seen much, if ever, and that are missing in our own solar system. They use the term “Missing Link” to refer to planets that are larger and less rocky, or smaller and less gassy, then the Sun’s solar system style plants are.

The abstract says, in part:

One of the primary goals of exoplanetary science is to detect small, temperate planets passing (transiting) in front of bright and quiet host stars. This enables the characterization of planetary sizes, orbits, bulk compositions, atmospheres and formation histories. These studies are facilitated by small and cool M dwarf host stars. Here we report the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)1 discovery of three small planets transiting one of the nearest and brightest M dwarf hosts observed to date, TOI-270 (TIC 259377017, with K-magnitude 8.3, and 22.5 parsecs away from Earth). The M3V-type star is transited by the super-Earth-sized planet TOI-270 b (1.247+0.089?0.083 R?) and the sub-Neptune-sized planets TOI-270 c (2.42?±?0.13 R?) and TOI-270 d (2.13?±?0.12 R?). The planets orbit close to a mean-motion resonant chain, with periods (3.36 days, 5.66 days and 11.38 days, respectively) near ratios of small integers (5:3 and 2:1). TOI-270 is a prime target for future studies because (1) its near-resonance allows the detection of transit timing variations, enabling precise mass measurements and dynamical studies; (2) its brightness enables independent radial-velocity mass measurements; (3) the outer planets are ideal for atmospheric characterization via transmission spectroscopy; and (4) the quietness of the star enables future searches for habitable zone planets. Altogether, very few systems with small, temperate exoplanets are as suitable for such complementary and detailed characterization as TOI-270.

An extensive discussion is to be found here at US Riverside’s news agency.

An international team of researchers led by The University of Queensland has extended cats and boxes into the quantum realm, discovering that Schrödinger’s famous dead-and-alive cat is just one of an infinite family of quantum states.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems UQ PhD candidate Lewis Howard, said the states were all generated using multidimensional boxes called hypercubes.

“We found as the hypercubes become larger, they generated Schrödinger-cat-like states with increasingly finer features in phase space, making them more powerful for quantum applications,” Mr Howard said.

“Think striped tigers as opposed to tabbies.”

Creating these hypercube states – in this case using single particles of light and a tiny mechanical drum – is an important ingredient in quantum technologies.

“The Schrödinger Cat state, discovered in 1935, is a quantum superposition of two states, normally referred to as ‘dead’ and ‘alive’.

“In 2001, a relative of the cat was introduced – the compass state, which is made up of a superposition of four different quantum states arranged in a compass form.”

The study showed that the cat and the compass state are just the smallest two members of an infinitely large family of hypercube states.

University of Innsbruck’s Dr Martin Ringbauer, who guided the research, said that hypercube states consist of multiple quantum superpositions that map out the corners of multidimensional cubes.

“We discovered these quantum hypercube states by accident while experimenting with methods to create quantum states that could be useful in quantum sensors,” Dr Ringbaurer said.

Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems researcher Dr Till Weinhold said that these quantum states could be used in future quantum technologies, such as super-sensitive sensors.

“When we use a ruler to measure distance, the smallest distance that can be measured depends on the grading of the ruler,” Dr Weinhold said.

“Usually quantum mechanics tells us that one cannot make the grading on the ruler finer and finer.

“Hypercube states get around this limit by using quantum interference to create features much smaller than otherwise possible.”

“The tiny features of hypercube states can act like the grading of the ruler to make hypercube states interesting candidates for next generation sensors.”

“These states allow us to exploit quantum properties to measure at scales far below what is classically possible.”

Title: Quantum Hypercube States

Authors: Weinhold, Shahandeh, Combes, Vanner, White, Ringbauer

The Abstract:

We introduce quantum hypercube states, a class of continuous-variable quantum states that are generated as orthographic projections of hypercubes onto the quadrature phase space of a bosonic mode. In addition to their interesting geometry, hypercube states display phase-space features much smaller than Planck’s constant, and a large volume of Wigner negativity. We theoretically show that these features make hypercube states sensitive to displacements at extremely small scales in a way that is surprisingly robust to initial thermal occupation and to small separation of the superposed state components. In a high-temperature proof-of-principle optomechanics experiment we observe, and match to theory, the signature outer-edge vertex structure of hypercube states.

The relationship between rainfall, groundwater, evaporation and transpiration, vegetation, bodies of water, animal distribution, agriculture, humans, and atmospheric conditions (not to mention oceanic factors and topography) underlie many different realms of academia and policy. Almost nothing I’ve ever done in my anthropological research didn’t include the hydrologic cycle, climate, and related issues. The weather weirding we are currently watching across the globe, including the current heavy rains and tornadoes, are part of this, and the long lived California Drought, the one that ended just recently, is as well.

In Drought: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Cook looks at the dry end of the spectrum of the hydrologic cycle, but in so doing, he really has to cover the basics of rain related climate. There is math, and there is complicated science, in this book, but all of the material presented here is accessible to anyone who wishes to learn. If you are interested in climate change or agriculture, or paleoclimate, or any of that, Cook’s book is an essential reference, filling a gap that exists in the available range of current public-facing serious science books.

Cook covers the hydrologic cycle and the relationship between the hydrologic cycle and climatology. He defines the sometimes confusing concepts and measurements known as “drought” in a non-confusing and detailed way. I’ve found that in many discussions of drought, self defined experts who also happen to be climate change deniers tend to talk past (or over or around) others, making it difficult for the average non-expert to avoid frustration. Cook will arm you with the knowledge to stand up to such shenanigans!

Cook covers drought in the Holocene, and the relationship between climate change and drought. He provides two key detailed case studies (the American dust bowl, and droughts in the Sahel of Africa). He covers landscape degradation and desertification, and irrigation.

Drought: An Interdisciplinary Perspective is fully authoritative and thorough, and, as noted, very readable and understandable. Reading this book might make you thirsty but it will also make you smarter.

Ben Cook is a research scientist at NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and he teaches at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies.

More precisely, or actually, less precisely, the lead author on that paper says that the universe may be between 12.5 and 13 billion years old.

There is a write-up here.

So, that hold-the-date card they sent out for the 14 billion year anniversary of the universe? Keep it tacked to the fridge for now, but be prepared to pencil in a new date.

1940, Armistice Day Blizzard (145 dead). Population: 2.7 million

1970 Blizzard episode of Mary Tyler Moore show (no casualties). Population: 3.8 million

1991, Halloween Blizzard (22 dead, 100 injured). Population: 4.3 million

2019 The Great Snows of 2019 (casualties not yet counted). Population: 5.7 million

The average total snowfall for the Twin Cities is 47 inches over the winter, over the last century or so. Prior to 1979 (inclusively) the average was 43.7 inches. After that date, the average has been 53.4 inches. That is an expected increase of 20% owing likely to added moisture in the atmosphere caused by global warming.

For comparison, the average total snowfall in Buffalo, New York is 94 inches. The average annual snowfall in Boston is 42 inches, more like Minnesota. It is said that Minnesota gets a lot of snow. But really, Minnesota is mostly a semi-dry state, where agriculture only happens with irrigation, and the snowfall is half what it is on the other side of the Great Lakes, and about the same as the east coast. (The east coast is wetter, but more of that falls as rain or, as is the case of Boston, dense slush.)

Since the famous Armistice Day blizzard, which surely contributed significantly to Minnesota’s reputation, the population of the state has doubled. Since the Mary Tyler Moore days, when Minnesota became known to most other Americans, population has gone up by something like 30%. Indigenous Minnesotans don’t reproduce that fast, and many move away (to California, mostly) so that is a much larger number that are totally new to the area, often from tropical or at least warmer, areas, than one might think.

Plus, Minnesotans are known to be masters of passive-aggressive. But this also means they are masters of another trait: Deep denial.

For all these reasons, the weather of Minnesota matters little, and the reputation not at all, as a foundation for the ability of Minnesotans to handle winter. Which brings us to the following video, which YOU MUST WATCH TO THE END:

Conclusions: Look out the window before you leave your garage!

It is an object in the Kuiper Belt. The first shot is shown below on the left, and then, up close… you can really kinda see something:

In just a handful of hours, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will perform the furthest encounter of an object in our solar system. On Jan. 1 at 12:33 a.m., New Horizons is set to fly by 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, and collect images and scientific data to beam back to Earth. Ultima orbits the Sun from a vast region of icy and rocky bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Studying this primitive world—which has been around, unaltered, since the beginning of the solar system—will provide us with vital insights into the origins and evolution of our celestial neighborhood.

Latest update HERE.