Dolly the Sheep, the Great Red Spot, and the outbreak of Ancient Disease...

 Farewell to Philae, the ill fated lander . Philae was the first man - made explorer to land on a comet - still there, but inoperative to all intents and purposes.
The mothercraft, Rosetta is still taking and returning photos of the comet, and in September will crash-land on the surface , bringing an end to the mission - leaving us with a legacy of space debris orbiting the universe forever.
Quite a big deal, when you think of it like that.

Remaining with space, we find the alleged solving of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter - okay, it's a storm system as big as two Earths, but it also generates heat in the upper atmosphere, which may explain the temperature similarity to Earth, despite the greater distance from the Sun.
I imagine further revelations will be due very soon, now that Juno has entered orbit around the gas giant.
Did I mention the fact that Juno was the wife of Jupiter in ancient mythology , and that Galileo named its moons after the mistresses of Zeus ?

the only sheep honoured with a plaque...

In other news, the worlds first cloned sheep Dolly died at only 6.5 years old (half the average life expectancy for a sheep) , which created a new fear that clones were short lived .
Luckly though, clones were made of Dolly, and they are all aging normally.
I remember the huge issue surrounding the whole Dolly thing, the idea of 'meddling with nature '  so the news that there are more clones is not at all comforting.
It begs the question, what are they not telling us ?
But don't worry - only four of the tested thirteen clones were derived from Dolly .
So that's okay, then...
I mean if there are 13 cloned sheep (fourteen, counting Dolly), who knows how many cloned people there are ?
Perhaps we should scan photos of Trump rallies more closely.

The temptation is to write 'wake up, sheeple...'

The Siberian permafrost is thawing, global warming in action - the immediate result is an outbreak of anthrax, supposedly from old reindeer corpses .
That's pretty bad, but of course, what else awaits us, hiding in the distant past ?
The Black Death which decimated medieval Europe ?
TB, Polio and other nasties once thought eradicated ?
 It doesn't bear thinking about, so let's lighten the tone...

Hello to new life - yes, apparently even on this old piece of rock there are still surprises, with the recent discovery of new species - specifically beaked whales, which have recently been cropping up around Alaska - eight in total, none of which are previously known about; in the heady rush to colonise / occupy outer space, it seems that we still have vast unexplored swathes of this blue world.
Even our understanding of the world as it once was, is frequently called into question - most recently by the discovery of  minute air bubbles in grains of rock salt - the specimen grains being 815 million years old, it implies far higher oxygen levels in the Earths atmosphere than previously thought.
This in turn means there is a large gap between oxygen and complex lifeforms evolving.
So there would seem to be something else missing from the equation.
Like the time it took for aliens to arrive and give Earth 'the nod'.

ALIEN 1- "This'll do, but let's start with simple forms like aquatic amoebas, sponges and ultimately cephalopods and fish, then land-based murderous creatures."
ALIEN 2 - "Don't you mean humans ?"
ALIEN 1- "Same thing, different Modus Operandi "
- instantly we have intelligent aliens who understand Latin; or at least watched stray galactic transmissions of CSI.
Which brings us neatly to -
Apparently grammar could easily create a barrier to our ability to understand aliens.
Of course, the whole issue could be irrelevant given the continued lack of contact (wired magazine have just explained the Fermi Paradox again, for those who wonder)
I touched on this previously - damnit there I go again, without a decent referential database to mine for past subject matter.
I need a robot to list all my previous subjects on this blog.
Oh, wait, that will be me, then.
Doh

The Megastructure, The Mammoth, And The Canyon we've never seen

One of todays links is to a site where NASA store moon rocks and meteorites - appparently there is an expedition every year, where meteorites are sought and gathered from Arctic slopes.
I sigh, and wonder how I never heard of such a job when I was younger.
Which brings me conveniently to our recurring mystery star:

A few months back , there was a brief flurry* of media interest in what might conceivably be an alien mega-structure around a nearby star .
By nearby, I mean 1500 light years away.

Apparently it's not comets...

Astronomically, that's 'nearby'.
Anyway, I digress.
The point is that there is further uncertainty over the same star.
Although Keppler only has records of the star and its odd light fluctuations going back 4 years, photographic plates from previous observations have been found which trace back over a hundred years.
And light from the star was fluctuating back in 1890.
It's not the fluctuation itself that's significant, but the degree - up to 20 %, which is a lot.

The generally accepted theory was that the variance in light output was being caused by passing comets: but it has now been estimated that the amount of time involved would require 648,000 comets passing at regular intervals.
So that theory is abandoned .

KIC 8462852  artists impression pic via NASA/JPL/ Caltech

Excited, yet ?
Perhaps it's just me, but then I was actually crestfallen when SETI failed to intercept any signals from that direction.
So there is scope for further investigation, as all current theories are null and void.
Something is causing massive fluctuations in light from this star that cannot be explained by natural phenomenon.
And it's been happening regularly for over a hundred years.
Which is also confusing, as there is no apparent pattern to the variances.

It seems to be one single mechanism which is changing over time, causing the dramatic dimming of the star.
With no audible or visible wavelength signals discernible, however, if it is aliens, then they are being very quiet...

Meanwhile, back on Earth...

There is a hidden canyon beneath the ice of  Antarctica, twice as long as the Grand Canyon, and possibly culminating in a lake covering 480 square miles.
It appears that it was created in a time when Antarctica was free of ice, long ago.
However,that 'long ago' is a movable feast, as another recent discovery in the Siberian permafrost is a mammoth bearing signs of attack by ancient hunters.
Given its age and location, it seems to indicate that our ancestors were further North, some 10,000 years before our previous guesstimate: pushing back the date of humans crossing the Bering Strait into what is now North America.
Are we all immigrants from the dawn of time?




* A link to the original 'Invisible Words' post which mentions it in October last year. Not essential reading, just to say - hey, we're ahead of the curve - stay with us!

Alien Finds On Distant Worlds.

In the news this week, we learn that scientists are preparing to awaken the mollivirus, a super-virus discovered in 30,000 year old Permafrost in Siberia.
Apparently they will first check that it will not affect humans or animals.
So that's alright, then.
Seriously though - if that's the case, why bother waking it up anyway?
Have they never heard the phrase 'Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?'
Not that it's a dog...
...except further conjecture is that some of the complex super-virus genus might conceivably be lifeforms in stasis. Or gestating...haven't they seen 'The Thing' ?

Ahem.
I remove my protective but highly - sensitive tin-foil helmet...

Meanwhile, back on Ceres
Well, strictly speaking, above Ceres...
The image above is a view of the 'Occator' crater, alias 'spot 2'. The crater walls are some two miles high, and very steep.

Personally, the more I see, the more I think it may be some subsurface, molten activity - for instance , it seems as though much of Plutos shifting surface landscape is altered through some form of internal heat, so why not.
The latest images from the Dawn mission, taken from a height of  915 miles, also show detail of a crater with the ubiqitous 'reflective' material on the crater walls.
This lends weight to the idea that it is some form of highly reflective material, possibly a form of salt crystal / magnesium sulfate?
It appears to be a very recent crater, and further imaging indicates some form of ongoing modification happening.
That's right, the dwarf planet is self-repairing !
Although, I'm sure there are better, more accurate, scientific terms available...
I'm just highly excited!
It's all happening!
After a fallow period, we're getting images thick and fast from the solar system!

Pluto with better resolution

Thanks to artefacts hampering the quality of previous images from Pluto, we are now get stunning full resolution versions, and Ceres continues to impress and puzzle.
There's even a fine 3-d anaglyph, for those with red / blue viewing specs.
I'm not going to waste time with conjecture, I'll just create links to the sites with the best images.
All I will say is this (dons tin-foil helmet);
although the latest images of the Occator and Haulani craters on Ceres (the craters with the most reflective 'lights') are taken from a much closer point , we still don't see clear definition.
There are images which clearly show light coloured ejecta around craters, which seems to indicate that this is subsurface material which has been displaced.
However, we have to wait until December for the final, closest, yet probably still ambiguous images...

A new Ceres crater with light streaks on the wall...