Image (Credit): William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson on TheLate Show with Stephen Colbert. (CBS)
This week’s image comes from an episode of TheLate Show with Stephen Colbert, which aired earlier this week. Mr. Colbert was interviewing William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson about the absurdities on Earth and in the galaxy.
In an odd twist, Dr. Tyson was generally quiet on the sofa while Mr. Shatner carried the show with his antics. The image above shows one of the few times Dr. Tyson had a chance to explain a point. It is worth watching.
Shatner and Tyson will soon be on the road together with their own show. It is a live stage event on Wednesday, June 18, called ROCKING: The Universe is Absurd.
Scientists have long assumed the Oort Cloud, one of the most mysterious structures in our solar system, to be spherical. But during the pre-production of their new space show, “Encounters in the Milky Way,” they noticed a strange spiral pattern in the middle of the cloud. The show, which premiered on Monday at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, featured a computer-generated visualisation of the Oort Cloud on the dome. The team was reviewing the animation when they noticed what appeared to be a spiral structure inside the typically spherical cloud shape.
The ‘city killer’ asteroid 2024 YR4 may not be on a collision course with Earth anymore. But NASA has raised the odds of it hitting the moon in just seven years’ time. According to the space agency, there’s now a 4.3 per cent chance that 2024 YR4 will smash into the moon on December 22, 2032…The impact event would be the first time scientists could watch a known asteroid create a lunar crater in real-time.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are leaking radio waves to such an extent that it could threaten our ability to study and understand the early universe, say astronomers. Interference from the thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit, where they provide a global internet service, has been a continuing concern for astronomers, who say that the radio emissions from the craft could affect sensitive telescopes that observe distant, and faint, radio sources. SpaceX has worked with astronomers to try to prevent this interference, by switching off their internet-transmitting beams when they fly over key telescopes, but it turns out that this isn’t enough.
And now for something really different. If you are tired of national politics, maybe its time to talk about the extinction of all life in our solar system. Just for a change of topic, of course.
The Cool Worlds Lab has an interesting video titled “Why I Don’t Buy The Dark Forest Hypothesis” that picks apart this idea that technologically advanced species throughout the galaxy are hiding from one another out of the fear that once detected they may be destroyed. You may remember the term Dark Forest from a book of the same title by Chinese writer Liu Cixin.
Its a good discussion of the hypothesis, with plenty of diagrams mapping out a civilization’s decision to either reply to, ignore, or attack a newly discovered civilization trying to communicate.
I don’t want to spoil everything, but the bottom line is that it is probably too late for us to worry about this anyway. First, we have already sent out plenty of electronic messages as well as messages intended for alien civilizations. But more importantly, the James Webb Space Telescope is showing us that a silent civilization on a distant exoplanet can still be detected as we investigate that exoplanet’s atmosphere. So if a dangerous distant civilizations was seeking out other planets with life that it could destroy, the Earth has been telegraphing life for more than 3.5 billion years.
Check it out and learn more about the hypothesis and the arguments for and against it.
Image(Credit): Senator Amidala from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. (Starwars.com)
While the libertarians at Reason magazine have their view of the imperial story-line in the Star Wars television series Andor, the liberal folks at Mother Jones magazine have a whole different take on the Star Wars universe.
In an article last month titled “How Star Wars Reveals Conservatives’ Authoritarian Fantasies,” we read about how some Republicans are showing support for the brutality of the Dark Side as illustrated in Andor. For instance, it quotes former Mitch McConnell adviser and GOP operative Scott Jennings defending the Empire’s elimination of Alderaan in the original Star Wars movie, stating:
I think some could argue that it was warranted, given their rebellious activities. I mean, he defended the Empire against unelected hippies and violent protesters.
You can see the entire Mother Jone’s YouTube clip here.
This is not an encouraging thought at this point in history. In an interview, George Lucas himself said the rebel alliance came from his reading of history and his understanding of the Viet Cong battle against the American empire. He saw the rebels as anti-authoritarian. He also thought of the American rebels as they fought Great Britain, the largest empire in the world.
Supporting the Evil Empire is more or less the same as voicing support for the wannabee Russian empire as it attacks democratic Ukraine. I think we all can do much better than to stoop that low.
Image (Credit): Boeing’s Starliner safely on the ground last September after returning from the ISS without its crew. (Boeing)
It was this time last year – June 5th to be exact – that Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket towards the International Space Station (ISS). Hopes were high, but then things started to unravel.
NASA is saying very little. A USA Today story from last week stated the newspaper was told that NASA
…is assessing the earliest potential for a Starliner flight to the International Space Station in early 2026.
Boeing is staying pretty quiet on its Starliner mission update website. It has not posted anything on this page since September 7, 2024.
NASA was a little more open about events back in March, posting that the crew certification of the Starliner system was still underway, and stating:
Our investment in commercial crew transportation capabilities is providing the needed flexibility to operate in space as safely as possible and respond to changes quickly when they arise. NASA is seeing the commitment from Boeing to adding the Starliner system to the nation’s crew transportation base.
We may need a few more statements from NASA addressing this “needed flexibility,” while also offering up alternatives to the SpaceX monopoly. That is, an alternative that does not include the Russians saving us, though it could come to that in an emergency.
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