Book Mention: Take Me to Your Leader

Continuing this week's alien theme, I finally finished reading through Neal deGrasse Tyson's latest book, Take Me to Your Leader last night.  It's a fun little romp through all of the pop culture, credible sworn testimony, conspiracy theories, and blurry pictures of the last eighty or so years, along with reasonable musings on the Fermi Paradox, what forms extraterrestrial life (and their perceptions and senses) might take, etc. etc.  With all that, we are left with one stark, undeniable observation:

There is not one whit of actual evidence of alien visitation.  No artifacts, no hard data, and, despite upwards of seven billion digital cameras on this planet, no unambiguous pictures.

With that uncomfortable truth in mind, the author plows forward with his usual good-natured skeptical, slightly sarcastic way, considering all sides of the issues and philosophical conundrums.  It is very clear that he's open to any evidence, even an outright personal abduction.  However, to date, there just isn't any there there, and he's quick to gently point this out.

Recommended, but only if you generally like this sort of thing.

Finally, if you do manage to get yourself abducted, please take Seth Shostak's advice and pocket an alien artifact on your way out the door/hatch/portal/whatever.  We've all had more than enough of heartfelt testimony on these matters.  It's time for a metamaterial multitool, or whatever else they're using these days.  Plonk it down on the table in front of skeptics, say a hearty "nyeh-nyeh-nyeh," donate it to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, write a bestseller, and enjoy the good life.

Call Went to Voicemail

This week's episode of Big Picture Science is titled Calling All Aliens, which is naturally enough, about recent SETI and METI efforts.  By chance, I was asked by a friend earlier this week about my opinion on the general topic.  The three thoughts I had on the matter were:

1. 
   Imagine our galaxy as a pizza – a really big pizza – one meter across and one centimeter thick.  Now imagine a bubble of space radiating out from Earth in this pizza-galaxy.  A bubble big enough for our first powerful radio signals to have reached another civilization, and for them to have sent a reply back.  At the one meter pizza scale, that bubble would be about the size of a sesame seed.  Would we really expect to have reached anyone in such a small sample?
2. More quantitatively, take a current credible guesstimate at Drake's Number – about 86,400 contactable civilizations in our galaxy.  Seems a little high in comparison with numbers I've previously seen, but let's roll with it.  Given the speed of light, expect about a 50-50 chance of that bubble in Item 1 to encompass another civilization in about 330 years.  What's more, these Drake Equation results are all over the place, and numbers as low as 100 are reasonable.  That puts the expected time to a 50-50 chance of contact out around 3200 years.  Frankly,* it's just too soon to reasonably expect any return replies.
3. However, we should still keep listening, especially given the continuing and amazing increases in signal processing power.  Don't let those two-way contact numbers in the previous item discourage you.  Unlikely as it seems, a random alien signal could come crashing in any given day – and we'd best be listening.
4. Finally, if aliens ever do find us, they'll probably view us about the same way we view the Sentinelese (see inset picture): present, but violent and not worth contacting.  Best left alone.

On that note, time for a bike ride.  Anyway, the above-linked podcast is well worth an hour's listen, and one of the more noteworthy recent episodes  at Big Picture Science.

----------

*10 Internet Points if you caught that one.

Summer Solstice... Already?

Yeah, right now, 4:24 am EDT.  Guess we're in high summer now.  Well, you probably missed the exact moment, being at awful-oh-24, but you can still get in on the BBC's midwinter transmission to Antartica from 5:30 pm – 6:00 pm EDT this afternoon.  That's 21:30 – 22:00 UTC if you're confounded by EDT.  Here are the frequencies;

• 9460 kHz (Woofferton)
• 9510 kHz (Ascension – always wanted to visit that place, might get there yet)
• 12070 kHz (Woofferton)

More details can be found over at The SWLing Post, including after-action reports and recordings eventually now up over at another post at the SWLing Post.  ps: Decent reception here on the northern Gulf. I'll have something interesting up tomorrow.

Definitely not summer solstice weather in Florida

Some Sober Thoughts on Artemis II

And I have to agree with the author linked below on the matter: Glad everyone made it back in on piece, but using rehashed Shuttle components probably isn't the way forward into a financially viable future for lunar exploration.

Now that that's over with at Silicon Graybeard's blog.  Go, read the whole thing, it's short.

Finally, note that this is a pre-scheduled post, I'm really not up at 6:30 again this morning.  At least my 10 pm previous evening self is intending not to be up then.  Actual events may prove otherwise.

Picture Perfect

From today's APOD:

That is all for today.  It's a rocket to the moon, what, you want something more?

Yep, Definitely the Equinox

Today, and the exact moment is 10:46 EDT.  Can't you just feel it?  Nah, me neither, but there it is.

No picture here, but APOD usually has something interesting up on these astronomically interesting dates.

Kessler... Maybe?

A couple of years ago I posted a little piece on the Kessler Syndrome here (includes a brief discussion one the topic at hand, if you need a reminder), and the bottom line was "yeah, don't worry about it – yet."

Now Kessler and a co-author have recently revisited the topic, and their results are not so sunny.  You can read the abstract and download the paper here, or listen to Sabine Hossenfelder's take on the matter here.  It's going to be interesting to see this one batted around over the next few years.  With such wildly divergent results, there's going to be a good academic catfight.

My advice: Enjoy your Starlink while you can, but brush up on your HF skills too.  And if it comes to it, enjoy the light show.

Protip: Never exceed any limit labeled "Runaway Threshold."  Don't, just don't.

Can't Wait Until Next Christmas...

... when this book comes out.  Here are a couple of teasers:

• A New Christmas Fable
• Joyous Noel!

Because this is how you get new scientists, engineers, and innovators.

It Never Gets Old

Watching boosters fall out of space for a soft landing and reuse never gets old.  Routine, yes, but old, never.  Article at The Daily Galaxy.

BTW, we don't know what the heck the NROL-77 super-secret payload is, and we'll probably never know.  And that's OK too, kind of the nature of these launches.  But watching the booster come back, man oh man.

BTW2: Marginal cost per pound for Falcon 9 launches is estimated at $389.  For the older, partially reusable Space Shuttle, inflation adjusted to 2025 dollars, this was $9565.  Draw your own conclusions.

Holman on Deep Tech – Pretty Wild Stuff

Back in September Jim Rutt posted an interview with Pablos Holman on the topic – and his new book – on what he terms deep tech.  Holman's central thesis is that we've gone too far down the software road, and while it's been a good road, we need to concentrate more on hardware and, you know, actually building cool stuff.  Autonomous shipping, mosquito-zapping lasers, safe nuclear reactors, high-speed rail, the list goes on.

And he does have a valid point.  In a 100 trillion dollar world economy, less than 5% is in the computer tech sector.  However it somehow vacuums up the lion's share of talent, venture capital, and press.  [Side note: I think a lot of reason tech has thrived over the last half-century is that it's largely immune to regulation and ignored by regulators.  Try to build a new computer operating system and The Man don't care; try to build a new type of trebuchet or nuclear reactor or choo-choo train and The Man will definitely inquire.  Close rant & back to the subject at hand.]

Some parts of both the interview and book come off as eccentric and out of touch with real developments in the real world these past few decades.  Take shipping for example.  Yes, cargo ships are still largely operated by humans.  However the number of crew required to run a ship is a fraction of what it was 75 years ago.  More importantly, containerized shipping has radically slashed port handling costs.  Overall cargo shipping costs have dropped by something like 90% since 1950.  Yes, there are always optimizations remaining, but come on, apply a generalized version of Amdhal's Law to the situation and give the industry another decade to catch its breath.  Dropping the remaining crew of ten to just one is insignificant when compared to what has just happened.

On the other hand, the guy was there at the start of Blue Origin, which just racked up a major success.  Furthermore, rocket boosters dropping out of the sky and landing on robotic barges has become something of an everyday occurrence.  Clearly it pays to think big, and especially in terms of making a profit.

Well, listen to the podcast interview (link above), read the guy's book, flip through the online footnotes for the book, then make up your own mind.  My take here is that, despite some weird twists and turns, the guy's onto something.

And Then There Were Two

Two successful commercial space launch companies with reusable first stages, that is.  Blue Origin gets one off of and back onto the ground in one piece: Video at the BBC  It's short, under two minutes.  Go and watch the whole thing.

Congrats to Blue Origin!  This is very good news.  SpaceX was the first, but with them there was only one company with this capability.  One is a special number because it shows that a thing can be done.  However, it's also only one corporate failure away from none.  With two, we have some redundancy.  I'm reasonably sure that companies three and four are about to spring into the spotlight.  Exciting times!

Fireball Over Cape San Blas

Just go to the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day link here and see it in full resolution.  On mouse-over the image changes from long duration open shutter to light-enhanced short duration.  The former shows the spectacular streak, while the latter shows the ion & smoke trail.

Wonders abound, even close to home.

iPhone Satcoms

Last week I broke my four year old iPhone 12 mini – fell off my desk and (probably) the prongs that contact the sim card shifted just enough – so I fell into a deal on a mid-line iPhone 16.  Fishing offshore the next day, I just had to try the phone's new satcom feature, being out of range for the cell net.  Utterly trivial to use, I simply pulled it out and had at it.  (RTFM?  Hah!  I let the instructions on the screen walk me through.)  Had to sweep around to keep the phone pointed at a satellite, and the transmit took a loooong time – it seems to be about a 20 bits per second data rate – but it all worked just fine.  Until we hit the 12 mile limit, then it gave an "unavailable in this area" message.  So I put the phone away and went back to fishing.

Anyway, the satcom feature works.  If you were thinking of getting a satellite phone for hurricane season (or heaven forbid, get into ham radio), something like this may be all you need to tell distant family "Yeah, bad storm but we're all OK.  Send rum."

More details available at about and how to send at the Apple site.  I'm still mulling over serious satellite comms, but at least this base is now covered before hurricane season.

Hubble at 35

Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and it's still doing remarkably well.  Here's a good  summary article at space.com

Extraterrestrial Life Possibly Detected

Another strong dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide signal found by the Webb telescope.  Article at BBC.

What to say?  Another case of "insofar as we know, only life makes this stinky stuff."  Sure, there could be abiotic causes for DMS and DMDS, it's just that we don't know of any.  What's more, there's still a 0.3% chance that just the chemical detection itself (let alone life) is a statistical fluke.  Doing atmospheric chemistry is hard enough here on Earth.  Doing it on a planet 124 light-years away is a tad more difficult.  Also, note well that this isn't any kind of discovery of intelligent life.  If confirmed this would only indicate bacteria and maybe ocean plankton.

I'm sure reasonably certain the there are teams all over Earth sifting through the data in search of other biomarkers as you read this.  For the moment, let's keep the stress on the "Possibly" part in the title here.

So Beautiful It Doesn't Even Look Real

Today's APOD (link):

However, I assure you that it is real.  Click through to the NASA site at the link for full rez and caption.

Wooden Satellites – Not As Crazy As It Sounds

Building the main structure of a satellite out of wood kind of makes sense.  If it's already kiln-dried, it's not going to warp.  Good strength-to-weight ratio.  Non-conductive.  Environmentally friendly on its inevitable reentry.  And we certainly have the construction techniques down.  It's time to try building and deploying one, and JAXA has done just that.  Article here.

All I've got for the moment.  Last week was a trying one.  This week: hacking out a large bush interlaced in poison ivy.  Eh, better to do it in cold weather than hot.

It Just Wouldn't Be Christmas...

... without the Christmas Comet.  Merry Christmas to all!

Holy Cosmic Bat Nebula, Batman!

At yesterday's APOD, the Cosmic Bat Nebula.  Usually these things are 'squint, and you can sort of see it' representations.  This one however looks like it's been carefully rendered in:

A very fitting image for this Halloween season.

Still want it to cool off enough for a real hike, grumble-grumble.

Let's Look at That One More Time

SpaceX Super Heavy booster landing last weekend, over at APOD.

It's only 59 seconds of the main landing action.  Even if you've watched it before, go watch again now.  It'll get your blood pumping for the rest of the day.