Category Archives: Science

Just Passing Through! A Second Interstellar Object Detected.

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On September 10th, a tweet caught my attention: Time to call it, #gb00234 is interstellar (he said with no authority or to call such things). https://t.co/9oVHmifV4K — Nick Ascroft (@assscroft) September 11, 2019 Apparently the object named #gb00234 was a second interstellar object on a hyperbolic trajectory through the solar system! Over the next couple days, more information about the object was posted: Here's my best fit (ICRF, barycentric) to the CNEOS astrometry for potential interstellar #gb00234 Conservatively assuming 1 arcsec astrometric uncertainty and dropping the really bad points, eccentricity is 1.07180496 +/- 0.00087880 That's definitely hyperbolic. More coming pic.twitter.com/kxVPqMpd6J — Simon Porter (@AscendingNode) September 11, 2019 Here's what the residuals look like. The very first epoch is a bit off, and there's some curve to the RA, which may be due to cometary non-gravs (basically outgassing as a rocket). Hard to tell with the quality of the data, though. pic.twitter.com/Tw8E93G8dd — Simon Porter (@AscendingNode) September 11, 2019 Here's a … Continue reading →

Peeking in a keyhole.

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This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Lunarcy

About the same time you see Kepler and Gassendi on the terminator you will find this keyhole shaped crater in the south. Hainzel (70km dia.) is the southern lobe of this figure-8 shaped feature that consists of 3 craters. The northern beautifully terraced lobe is Hainzel A and in the shadow side (east) of Hainzel itself is Hainzel C who’s west wall can be seen on the floor of Hainzel. This is a very identifiable feature making it a landmark for exploring this region. To the right of Hainzel is a small crater Epimenides (27km). South of this crater is a similar sized crater, Epimenides B (26km) with a curious bulge on it’s floor. North of these is a small mare, Lacus Timoris that winds its way east from Hainzel. Note the nice rima that proceeds north from Hainzel A into Palus Epidemiarum near the crater Capuanus (61km) at the top of the image. You can see one of its … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists on Vatican Observatory Faith and Science

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There is new thing on the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science archive!  We have added a new section—“Religious Scientists”.  We mean “religious scientists” in a broad sense: scientists who are people of faith, believers in God. There are two parts to this new section.  The first part is a listing of different scientists whose work is featured in the archive.  For each scientist, there is a link that takes you to the different entries in the archive related to that scientist.  Some of the scientists in the listing are well-known—Isaac Newton, for example.  Others are not so well known—William F. Rigge, S.J., for example. The second part is a simple listing of religious scientists.  Information about each scientist is limited.  However, the second part includes many more scientists compared to the first part. It is important to understand that both parts are listings of religious scientists, not saintly scientists.  Scientists are not always saintly.  Scientists are also often independent-minded and … Continue reading →

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This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Lunarcy

Apollo 17 was our last manned mission to the moon. The first two Apollo missions were the “safe” ones: go to the moon, land, the astronauts do a little exploring and “returning them safely to the Earth.” Apollo 11 had 2.5 hours of EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) during which time they collected 21.55kg of samples. The EVA time and collections increased for each successive mission culminating on Apollo 17 at just over 22hours in 3 EVAs on the surface with a total collection of 110.4kg of geologic samples. This last mission was the only mission with a professional geologist, Harrison Schmitt a member of the crew. In this image we can see the landing site for Apollo 17, in the Taurus-Littrow Valley, marked with a “o” above center. Immediately above that marker is what was called North Massif and below it, brighter here, is South Massif that define the valley. All the EVA activity with the rover took place between … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook: September 7, 1967 – Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge

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This entry is part 11 of 15 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints. For today’s guestbook entry, we jump out of sequence once again to September 7, 1967, when Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge made a visit. They came with their daughter Sarah. Next to their names is written, “La Jolla, California.” Later, they signed the guestbook again in 1970 during a meeting on galactic nuclei at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. There is a timely reason to highlight these guests of the Specola this week. On Monday, August 12, 2019, Margaret Burbidge celebrates her 100th birthday. Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, along with collaborators William Fowler and Fred Hoyle, are most known for developing the theory of the nucleosynthetic origin of elements in stars. This ground-breaking theory was published in a 100-page journal article in 1957. This paper is referred to … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Help My Unbelief

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This entry is part 34 of 186 in the series Across the Universe

This column was published in The Tablet in August, 2007, and first ran here in 2015 We believe in things we don’t see — like electrons, or black holes — because they let us make sense of things we do see. But sometimes we don’t believe, even when we see. The question of what we believe, and why we believe in it, struck me particularly at the [2007] annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society. A French mathematician has analyzed the dates meteorites have been seen to fall over the past 200 years and found clear trends, at the 90% confidence level: more meteorites than usual tend to fall every 3 years, every 10 years, and every 17 years. His analysis is standard, straightforward stuff; but I don’t believe it. Nor did anyone else in the audience. Two hundred years just doesn’t seem long enough to show such periodicities. And we’ve been burned before with theories that had only a 10% … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists: Abbess St. Hildegard of Bingen OSB (1098-1179), Doctor of the Church

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This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

For this entry in the series, we go back in time almost a thousand years, to a period where modern science as we know it had not yet been established. How can we talk about a “religious scientist” before the age of modern science? In this case, by holding up an exemplar who, though not formally a scientist, made significant contributions to our knowledge based on the systematic experimental study of the natural world. The exemplar I have in mind is Hildegard of Bingen, a Benedictine abbess who recorded, preserved, and disseminated much knowledge about medicine, pharmacology, and plants and animals that served as sources for medicines and remedies. Biographical Sketch Hildegard was born in 1098, the 10th child in a large wealthy family. At an early age (somewhere between ages 8-12, depending on sources) she was tithed to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg.  There, Hildegard received her education. It is possible that she served as either infirmarian or pigmentarius … Continue reading →

Solar Power in Ruin

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The sun puts of 3.8×1026 Watts of power.  That is its luminosity: 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Watts, or 380 septillion Watts.  As best science can tell, this power comes from nuclear fusion reactions occurring in the sun’s core.  These reactions are converting the sun’s mass into energy via E=mc2.  The sun devours billions of kilograms of mass every second.  If you read this blog regularly, you saw this all discussed—with math!—in my post from earlier this month (click here for it). Since the Earth is small, and 93 million miles from the sun, we receive a minuscule fraction of that power.  Nevertheless, each square meter (an area the size of a large bath towel) of sun-facing surface on Earth receives over 1000 Watts of solar power.  “Sun-facing” means, of course, that the night side of Earth, for example, is not receiving any direct solar power.  Moreover, the effect of those solar Watts depends on many factors; consider the difference on a summer day … Continue reading →

Lunar Eavesdropping: Two Men, a Radio, and Apollo 11 (re-run)

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In honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, I am today “re-running” this slightly edited combination of two posts that originally ran last summer. Today we celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.*  I wish those celebrations included more recognition of a unique accomplishment that is part of the Apollo 11 story but that is widely unknown: the work of Larry Baysinger—a man from my home town of Louisville, Kentucky—who independently detected signals from the Apollo 11 astronauts as they walked on the lunar surface.  Baysinger’s accomplishments were recorded and promptly published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, by another Louisvillian by the name of Glenn Rutherford, who later went on to be editor of the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, The Record. Rutherford was a 23-year-old reporter for the Courier-Journal, and his article about Baysinger was published under the headline “Lunar Eavesdropping:  Louisvillians hear moon walk talk on homemade equipment”.  Baysinger was a … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Three Lunatic Answers

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This entry is part 80 of 186 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in July 2009. We first ran it here in 2016. As everyone has been told, countless times this month, July 20 – the 21st, in Rome – marks the 50th anniversary of the landing of the Apollo 11 astronauts to the Moon. Here are a few lunar topics probably not covered by most folks remembering that event… I saw a photo of Pope Paul VI looking at the Apollo 11 Moon landing through a telescope. Why didn’t he watch it on TV like everyone else? For the Moon landings, world leaders were invited to address the astronauts on a world-wide television link-up, and the Pope read his greetings (in front of a TV) from the Vatican Observatory dome in Castel Gandolfo (in the gardens near the Pope’s summer palace). In fact, the system of geosynchronous satellites to send TV pictures live around the world was still pretty new; those of us of a certain age … Continue reading →

Kentucky Science Conversations – Teaching Our Faith (and Science)

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The Archdiocese of Louisville (Kentucky) has been talking science.  During the month of May, five articles on faith and science appeared in our diocesan newspaper, The Record.  They were part of the “Teaching Our Faith” series that the paper runs periodically.  I do not think such things are common in the pages of diocesan papers.  I do think more science in diocesan papers would be a great thing. The “Teaching Our Faith” articles were the idea of Louisville’s Archbishop, Joseph Kurtz.  Archbishop Kurtz contributed a guest post to The Catholic Astronomer (now Sacred Space Astronomy) last November.  At that time I told the story about how in September 2017, with astronomy “in the air” thanks to the August 2017 eclipse, Prof. Gerry Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky, sent an invitation to Archbishop Kurtz to attend some of the talks that are part of the Public Astronomy Lecture Series hosted by UofL’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.  Archbishop … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook: January 5, 1910 – Vincenzo Cerulli and Giorgio Abetti

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This entry is part 8 of 15 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints. Today’s guestbook entry is from January 5, 1910, when Vincenzo Cerulli and Giorgio Abetti made a visit. Next to his name, Vincenzo Cerulli (1859-1927) wrote “di Collurania.” He was the founder and director of the Collurania-Teramo Observatory, located in Teramo, Italy.  With the 40-cm refractor installed there, he made observations of the planet Mars, and concluded that the “canali” were optical illusions.  He discovered the asteroid (704) Interamnia. The Martian crater Cerulli is named after him, as are the asteroids (366) Vincentia and (31028) Cerulli. Next to his name, Giorgio Abetti (1882-1982) wrote “Istituto di Fisica Terrestre della R. Università – Napoli” (Institute of Terrestrial Physics of the Royal University of Naples).  He made many later visits, most of which were signed with the affiliation Collegio Romano, … Continue reading →