Gateway To Hell, Giant Meteorite, Vacuum Decay, Bring Back Pluto !

Scattered across the ancient Mediterranean were alleged gateways to hell, according to Roman fables.  One such gateway remains at Hierapolis  in Turkey - Hooray ! We can throw the evil-doers (mostly high-ranking government officials) into the fiery pit from whence they came..but wait - it appears that toxic gas was responsible for the fate of sacrifices....

Ploutonion, named after the god Pluto...

Speaking of Pluto, New Horizons recently made a course correction, putting it on target for its rendezvous with Kuiper Belt object MU69 - 'Ultima Thule',  on Jan 1, 2019

Voyager 2 is nearing the beginning of interstellar space, following Voyager 1 , which left our solar system 6 years ago, and is now the farthest spacecraft from Earth, at 13 billion miles distant.

enamel pin available    Pin Alchemy @GreggB4

In the never - ending search for the elusive planet X , they have discovered an extremely distant object...personally, I just want Pluto re-instated as a planet. It's a lot closer - and we've 'been' there...just because it has an elliptical orbit is no reason to expel it from our solar system ! 

Bring Pluto Back Into The Fold...

A news report asks whether the JWST could spot alien life - the answer is possibly, but first they have to actually get the damn thing into space. Currently looking at a 2021 launch, it is running 14 years behind schedule - at this rate, you'd have a better chance taking pictures from the porthole of a Space X cruiser...

Speaking of the JWST, it appears that its predecessor is hobbling through space with stabiliser problems- down to one gyro from four...fingers crossed for the Hubble telescope, our 'eye-in-the-sky' since 1990

click here for more                 NASA/JPL/ University of Arizona

In other news we may have evidence of the first exomoon , which is great, but the current fad for deducing where something is by defining where it's NOT strikes me as possibly counter - productive*...discuss

A giant meteorite used as a doorstop in a rural farmhouse ? Sounds like the start of a science fiction...

Speaking of quantum computers, which we were not, or perhaps we were - here is a good / straight forward guide to that world of bizarreness

Another way to feel small and insignificant is to read this report on hypervelocity stars racing through our milky way...and the icing on the cake has to be this apocalyptic theory of vacuum decay ...honestly, what's the point ?

In a parting wave of cheerful news, the Ukraine has just announced plans to build a solar energy station...in Chernobyl.
If I were being crass, I'd say that every cloud has a silver lining.

Cheery Bye !


G

* I parallel this with our Anti-Social 'social' media culture, where a person is judged for what they didn't do- Person:  You didn't 'like' that anti-government joke
                 Me      :   I worry about 'humanising' the monsters.
                 Person:    So you're a nazi sympathiser, then ?
                 Me      :    WTF

Cloud Cities, Dinosaurs & When Black Holes Align...

Visual of particle collsion in LHC

A theory currently doing the rounds holds that the Large Hadron Collider, in its newly turbo - charged state could be responsible for the rash of earthquakes we're experiencing lately.
I suppose it makes a change from the doom laden prophecies of gates to hell or black holes, but personally I think it's an attempt to sensationalise - as if human suffering and death wasn't enough, an unnatural explanation has to be found for tectonic activity.
Surely the logical ending of this assertion is the awakening of  Godzilla or some other  creature from the very bowels of our world ?
Anyway, I digress, but fingers are being pointed at the LHC .
Meanwhile, Cern have released 300 Terabytes of data from recent tests by the LHC for the use of any citizen scientist out there with a large storage capacity...

Another idea for consideration is the assertion that human ribs started as shark gills, which is almost certainly a theme in tales by H P Lovecraft .
Staying with the theme of the sea, a recent piece by Maddie Stone tells us a tale of Cold War paranoia, and the CIA attempting to salvage secret Russian technologies.
It's an intriguing piece, and the link is here .

Researchers are heading out for a sample.

New thinking tells us that the dinosaurs, rather than being wiped out enmasse by a comet, infact died out gradually, over millions of years, with the comet  merely serving as a full stop.
In fairness, this sounds more plausible - although I'm surprised there is not any clear evidence in the fossil record.
New evidence may be forthcoming with the imminent sample which is being taken from the Chicxulub crater ...........

Meanwhile, up on Venus...

The Venusian surface as captured by Venera 13. The probe lasted 2 hours...

We have avoided space in this post, but here's a little footnote.
There seems to be a ' buzz' around Venus at present - I'm not sure why,
Perhaps we're just jaded with all the Mars exploration.
After all , Matt Damon growing potatoes in a barren landscape may be close to reality, but it's not the exotic alien world stuff we hanker for; so there is talk of establishing cloud cities above Venus, thus avoiding the inconvenience of the molten temperatures on the surface (460°celsius), and the sulphur fumes in the air.
Anyway, wishful thinking aside, the real news is from old readings from the  ESA craft Venus Express* which discovered that Venus was colder at the Poles than we'd imagined, with temperatures dropping to - 157°c, much colder than anywhere on Earth .

Moving  further out towards Titan, it has been verified that it contains a lake of methane, with possible wetlands around its shoreline.
Covering over a million kilometres , with a depth up to 160 metres, and a slew of organic materials, it would certainly be a place to examine more closely - don't forget that the sea , known as  Ligeia Mare, is only one of three...

In the distant Kuiper Belt, it has been observed that the second largest dwarf planet Makemake has a little moon of its own, ( known as MK2 ) with a diameter of 100 miles.

Saturns moon Titan has a lake of pure methane    

Further out there...

The discovery in deep space of a series of supermassive black holes in the centre of disparate galaxies which appear to be aligned has caused uproar , defying the odds of being a random occurence, and hinting at a far larger ' structure' to the known universe.
For me this is fantastical territory, leading as it does to the nature of filaments in space , as though part of some immense neural network...just a step away from the question of intelligent design.
At present, it's still a theory until further experiments, but even so, the galaxies in question are hundreds of millions of light years apart, yet seem to follow a pattern.

Will we ever see the true nature of the scaffolding that supports the universe ?
Currently having its mirrors uncovered, our James Webb Space Telescope will see further than ever before, taking us tantalisingly close to the ' Big Bang' - well, only a few hundred million years after the event.
On that note, I take my leave -

Computer simulation of filaments and voids

*The Venus Express is now no more, but outlived its expected 500 days of  Venus monitoring , and continued exploration for a further eight years.