Russia Just Declassified Footage of The Most Powerful Nuclear Bomb Blast in History

In October 1961, the Soviet Union dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb in history over a remote island north of the Arctic Circle.

Though the bomb detonated nearly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above ground, the resulting shockwave stripped the island as bare and flat as a skating rink.

Onlookers saw the flash more than 600 miles (965 km) away, and felt its incredible heat within 160 miles (250 km) of Ground Zero. The bomb's gargantuan mushroom cloud climbed to just below the edge of space.

This was RDS-220 – also known as the Tsar Bomba. Nearly 60 years after the bomb's record-shattering detonation, no single explosive device has come close to matching its destructive power.

Last week, Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation (Russia's state atomic agency) released 40 minutes of previously classified footage, showing the bomb's journey from manufacture to mushroom cloud. Now, you can watch it all on YouTube. (The countdown to detonation begins at 22:20).

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev personally commissioned the construction of the Tsar Bomba in July 1961, Popular Mechanics reported. While Krushchev wanted a 100-megaton nuclear weapon, engineers ultimately presented him with a 50-megaton version — equivalent to 50 million tons (45 million metric tons) of TNT detonated at once.

Even with half of the premier's requested payload, the bomb was unfathomably powerful. The bomb was thousands of times stronger than the nukes detonated by the United States over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and dwarfed the detonation of Castle Bravo — the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested by the United States — which yielded just 15 megatons (13 million metric tons).

As the new footage shows, the Tsar Bomba was enormous, weighing 27 tons (24 metric tons) and measuring about as long as a double-decker bus. An aerial bomber carried the massive weapon high over the Novaya Zemlya islands in the Russian Arctic, then dropped it via parachute before clearing the area.

The explosion was so powerful that it actually knocked the aircraft out of the sky, causing the plane to plummet 3,000 feet (900 meters) before the pilot could right it, according to Popular Mechanics.

Thankfully, no human casualties have been attributed to the Tsar Bomba detonation, and no bomb matching its power was ever tested again. In 1963, the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United Kingdom signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited airborne nuclear weapons tests.

Since then, atomic tests have carried on underground as nations continue to stockpile nuclear weapons, occasionally changing the geography of the Earth around them.

One 2018 nuclear test conducted in North Korea caused an entire mountain to collapse over the test facility — a reminder, perhaps, that the world hardly needs another Tsar Bomba in order to wreak devastating nuclear damage.

Originally published on Live Science.

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/russia-just-declassified-footage-of-the-most-powerful-nuclear-bomb-blast-in-history/

Dodder uses the flowering signal of its host plant to flower

The plant genus Cuscuta consists of more than 200 species that can be found almost all over the world. The parasites, known as dodder, but also called wizard's net, devil's hair or strangleweed, feed on other plants by attaching themselves to their hosts via a special organ, the haustorium, and withdrawing nutrients from them. They have neither roots nor leaves. Without leaves, they are hardly able to photosynthesize. Without roots they cannot absorb nutrients and water from the soil. On the other hand, they are integrated into the internal communication network of their host plants and can even pass on warning signals from plant to plant.

A team of scientists led by Jianqiang Wu, who has been the leader of a Max Planck Partner Group at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, now asked how the parasites manage to synchronize flowering with their hosts. They had observed that plants of the Australian dodder (Cuscuta australis) adjusted the time of their flowering to that of their respective host plant species.

Flower promoting signal FT from the host also determines the flowering time of the parasite

"The flowering time is controlled by leaves, as leaves can sense environmental cues and synthesize the flowering signal, a protein named FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), which travels through the plant vascular system. We therefore wondered how a leafless parasite such as Cuscuta australis controls the timing of its flowering," says lead investigator Jianqiang Wu. In 2018, his team had sequenced the genome of C. australis and found that many genes important for regulation of flowering time were lost in C. australis genome. Therefore, C. australis seems to be unable to activate its own flowering mechanism.

Based on the fact that FT proteins are mobile signals, the researchers hypothesized that dodder eavesdrops on the flowering signals produced by the leaves of its host and uses them for producing its own flowers. To prove this eavesdropping scenario, they used genetically modified host plants in which the expression of FT genes had been altered, and this indeed affected the flowering time of the parasite. They also coupled the FT protein to a green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a tag and detected the host plant's flower promoting signal in the parasite: The tagged FT protein had migrated from host to parasite.

For dodder, it is the best strategy to synchronize flowering with that of its host. If it flowers much later than its host does, it may not be able to produce seeds at all, as the nutrients in the host are rapidly drained by the host's reproductive tissues. The host may even rapidly die before the parasite can even starts to produce seeds. However, if dodder flowers too early, its growth is likely prematurely ended and it may not be able to produce as many seeds as the dodder plants whose flowering time is synchronized with that of their hosts.

Regressive Evolution: Gene loss as an advantage

In the course of evolution, plant parasites have lost certain traits and "outsourced" physiological processes. As a result, various genes in their genomes may be lost. "This work establishes that for a plant parasite, losing control over flowering processes can be advantageous, as it allows the parasite to hijack its host's mobile flowering signals for its own use. It can thereby readily synchronize its physiology with that of its host," says co-author Ian Baldwin, director of the Department Molecular Ecology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. Because of the gene loss, dodder may be able to better adapt to the parasitic lifestyle and ultimately increase its fitness.

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Materials provided by Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/dodder-uses-the-flowering-signal-of-its-host-plant-to-flower/

A Cable Snapped, and the Arecibo Observatory Went Dark. Here’s Why That Matters

Since it was installed in 1963, the gargantuan Arecibo Observatory has played a key role in the study of the universe. Formally known as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, the radio telescope consists of a huge saucer-like construction, suspended by cables 500 feet above a 1,000-foot-wide dish, all overlooking a panoramic view of the Puerto Rican rainforest.

At 2:45 a.m. in the morning on August 10, one of those supporting cables snapped. The three-inch-wide cable flailed around wildly, damaging the telescope’s Gregorian dome and slashing a 100-foot-long gash through the dish below, reports Dennis Overbye for the New York Times.

Luckily, no one was hurt, reports Daniel Clery for Science magazine. However, the observatory will be shut down temporarily for repairs, scientists announced in a statement from the University of Central Florida (UCF), which manages the observatory for the National Science Foundation.

The cable damaged the reflector dish, pictured here. It also damaged the platform used by scientists to access the main dome.


(University of Central Florida)

Officials do not yet know what caused the damage. In a news conference on August 14, researchers said they still needed to assess the full scope of the damage. Subsequent repairs could mean that the observatory is closed for weeks or possibly months, reports Hanneke Weitering for Space.com.

“We have a team of experts assessing the situation,” says Francisco Córdova, observatory director, in the UCF statement. “Our focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment, and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world.”

Ramon Lugo, director of the Florida Space Institute at UCF and principal investigator on the Observatory, tells Science that the cable in question had been added to stabilize the telescope when the Gregorian dome, a large antenna, was installed in the 1990s. The cable had been designed to last for 15 to 20 years, so it’s unclear why it failed, reports Space.com.

As NASA researcher Ed Rivera-Valentín tells Maddie Sofia of NPR’s Short Wave, the Arecibo Observatory has been used for nearly 60 years to track asteroids as they careen toward Earth—a key part in our defense strategy against the interstellar objects, and a practice that helps us avoid the same fate as the dinosaurs.

“Most radio telescopes don’t have the ability to send out light. They only capture light,” Rivera-Valentín explains. “At the observatory, we can send and capture light. When an asteroid's coming by, we are pretty much a flashlight that we turn on. We send radar out to it, and that radar comes back.” That radar helps scientists measure how far an asteroid is from Earth, down to the meter, Rivera-Valentín adds.

The Observatory’s dish antenna was once the largest of its kind in the world, until it was surpassed by China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in 2016, per Science.

The site has also played a central role in scientists’ search for extraterrestrial life, reports the Times. In 1974, astronomers sent out the most powerful broadcast ever deliberately beamed into space from Arecibo, aimed at the globular star cluster M13. If any aliens ever encounter and decode the message—which scientists admit is unlikely—they’ll find images of Arecibo telescope, our solar system, DNA and a stick figure of a human, portrayed in sequences of ones and zeroes.

Arecibo Observatory has also long featured prominently in popular culture, showing up in films such as Contact (1997) with Jodie Foster and the James Bond flick Goldeneye (1995), as Passant Rabie reports for Inverse.

As the Times reports, the telescope has faced its share of troubles in the past: In 2017, Hurricane Maria severely damaged the observatory. The National Science Foundation has also been plagued by budget cuts in recent years, which means that funding for research at the Observatory has dropped precipitously from the 1970s to now, reports NPR.

“We’ve been tested before,” adds Córdova during the press conference, per the Times. “This is just another bump in the road.”

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/a-cable-snapped-and-the-arecibo-observatory-went-dark-heres-why-that-matters/

ULA investigating cause of Delta 4 Heavy mission abort

ULA statement: “Initial indications were with a ground system, and we are working to confirm the exact cause."

WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance has not yet confirmed exactly what caused a dramatic abort of a Delta 4 Heavy launch just three seconds before liftoff on Aug. 29.

“We are in the middle of conducting a thorough investigation to determine the root cause of the NROL-44 on-pad abort,” ULA spokeswoman Julie Arnold said in a statement to SpaceNews.

The rocket carrying a National Reconnaissance Office classified spy satellite remains on the ground at Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

During the ignition sequence before the planned 3:28 a.m. liftoff, fire was seen at the bottom of the rocket’s three engines but ULA said the engines never ignited and the automated control system aborted the mission.

“Initial indications were with a ground system, and we are working to confirm the exact cause,” said Arnold. “The system aborted at T-minus 3 seconds because the start conditions were not met to proceed with core engine startup.”

After a pad abort that occurs under five seconds from liftoff, ULA needs at least seven days to replace expended ground system hardware and validate flight systems, said Arnold.

The company will need more time to complete the investigation, said Arnold, before it sets a new target launch date for NROL-44.

“We will take our time to thoroughly review the Delta 4 Heavy to identify, repair and retest the system. Once that is complete we will identify a new launch date,” Arnold said.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/ula-investigating-cause-of-delta-4-heavy-mission-abort/

NASA rover glimpses a ghostly Martian dust devil whirling across the Red Planet

Mars may have only a thin atmosphere compared to other Solar System planets, but boy does it make the most of it. Water ice can rise high in the sky to form thin clouds. Wild winds can whip up into uncontrolled dust storms that shroud the entire planet, or create dust towers that extend almost into space.

So it should come as no surprise that NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, beavering away in the Gale Crater, sometimes lays its electronic eyes on Martian weather phenomena – and now, it's spotted a dust devil spinning across the rocky crater floor.

Seeing weather phenomena on Mars that we also see on Earth isn't just interesting, though - it can also tell us a lot about seasonal atmospheric changes on the Red Planet.

It's coming into Martian summer in the planet's southern hemisphere, where the Gale Crater can be found, and the atmosphere in the region is heating up. Just as uneven heating of the atmosphere on Earth generates atmospheric movement, so too is the Martian atmosphere affected.

"Stronger surface heating tends to produce stronger convection and convective vortices, which consist of fast winds whipping around low pressure cores," writes atmospheric scientist Claire Newman of Aeolis Research on the Mars Exploration blog.

"If those vortices are strong enough, they can raise dust from the surface and become visible as 'dust devils' that we can image with our cameras."

Dust devils are pretty well understood, and they come about the same way on both Earth and Mars. They form best in relatively flat, dry terrain, when the air at the surface level is warmer than the air above it.

This hot surface air rises through the cooler, denser air, creating an updraft. This causes the cooler air to sink. If a horizontal wind then blows through this vertical circulation, a dust devil whips into action.

They're extremely common on Mars, but we only know this because, as they move across the ground, they sweep up the dust in their path, leaving tracks behind them. Actually seeing them in action on the Red Planet is quite rare, since our observational capabilities are limited, and dust devils themselves are relatively short-lived.

The dust devil above, seen in the top centre of the image, was captured by Curiosity's Navcam on Sol 2847, and covers a span of about 5 minutes, Newman says. Even though it seems ghostly, the fact that we can see it means it was pretty powerful.

"We often have to process these images, by enhancing what's changed between them, before dust devils clearly show up," she writes. "But this dust devil was so impressive that - if you look closely! - you can just see it moving to the right, at the border between the darker and lighter slopes, even in the raw images."

Studying these movies can reveal a lot about dust devils on Mars - where they form, for instance, how they evolve, how long they last, the type of dust they pick up, and how they vary from location to location.

They can also reveal wind speed and duration, which, in combination with meteorological readings, can help scientists learn more about Martian weather, and how dust devils fit into it.

Curiosity is the only operational rover on Mars at the moment (InSight is a stationary lander), so whatever surface information can be gleaned on Martial dust devils is very limited. Mars also has operational orbiters, though, which cover a lot more ground.

These have caught the occasional dust devil in action from space, as well as the many, many tracks they have left behind after they fade away.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/nasa-rover-glimpses-a-ghostly-martian-dust-devil-whirling-across-the-red-planet/

Following African elephant trails to approach conservation differently

Elephant trails may lead the way to better conservation approaches.

"Think of elephants as engineers of the forests," said Melissa J. Remis, professor and head of anthropology at Purdue University, who is best known for her work in ecology and behavior of western gorillas and their ecosystems. "Elephants shape the landscape in many ways that benefit humans. We're talking thousands of miles of trails. If we think about the loss of elephants over time, then we will see the forest structure change and human activities also would shift."

These massive creatures trample thick vegetation through dense forests in the Central African Republic's Congo Basin as they move from the forests' fruit trees to more open water sources where they hydrate, bathe and socialize. African forest elephants, highly sociable animals, travel in small family groups to meet others at these muddy water sources, which are full of rich minerals that they can't find in the forests. By clearing routes to these destinations, elephants have created a very complex network of roads that residents, tourists, scientists and loggers still use today. If elephant populations decline, the forest grows over the trails.

"The fabric and way of life of local communities, and even for the industries and conservation organizations that exist in African forests, have largely been shaped by elephant landscape design," said Carolyn A. Jost Robinson, a former Purdue doctoral student and current visiting scholar who also is director of sociocultural research and engagement at the nonprofit Chengeta Wildlife. "People rely on these elephant highways, and they also are invaluable at understanding and explaining the networks."

Remis and Jost Robinson focus on these massive trail networks and the ecosystem and local foraging community, called the BaAka, as they evaluate how biological anthropology plays a role in conservation. Their research is specific to the elephant trails leading to Dzanga Saline, a famous forest clearing with a large water source in the Congo area. Their findings are published online in American Anthropologist.

"Anthropologists are very famous for critiquing conservation but not always for coming up with effective solutions," Remis said. "The area of conservation is dominated by biological sciences, and you can't make change just tending to ecosystems. Conservation messages focus on flagship species, like elephants, and rarely do they consider the knowledge or needs of people relying on or living with those species. Attention on both could help further conservation and human rights issues."

Framing the big picture

More than 30 years ago, Purdue University's Melissa Remis visited the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas for the first time as a biological anthropologist to study gorillas. She became known as the gorilla lady as she visited the site dozens of times. Her fieldwork showed her that to know and study the gorillas, she had to learn about the forest and other wildlife from the local residents who share the land for food, shelter and medicines. Now Remis' work focuses on the big picture -- how the effects of conservation affect people, and what role biological anthropology can play.

"We're broadening the conversation about conservation," said Jost Robinson, who became known as the child of the gorilla lady by local residents at their African research site. "When you see a picture in a magazine story about ivory trafficking and elephant hunting, it is unlikely that the article will capture the entire experience of the community, as well as tourists, researchers and companies with local interests. As part of this change -- whether you want to talk about climate change, forest access or wildlife protection -- these relationships have evolved and taken on new shapes. We looked back on years of data and stories and realized there was a story to tell."

By focusing on the local BaAka community, especially the hunters known as tuma, the scientists capture information from local residents about interaction and living with elephants that is usually not a part of conservation plans.

"We want this to be a model for showing how to get additional insights when addressing how to conserve forests in better collaboration with those people who rely on them for cultural and material sustenance," Remis said. "Being able to tell their stories and share their deep knowledge about the area, and what closing off an elephant trail or part of the forest can due to cut off access to food, medicines or social networks, is usually not part of the conservation approach. We need to hear the BaAka in their own words."

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Materials provided by Purdue University. Original written by Amy Patterson Neubert. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/following-african-elephant-trails-to-approach-conservation-differently/

Here's how extreme wildfires can unleash thunderstorms and 'fire tornadoes'

It might sound like a bad movie, but extreme wildfires can create their own weather – including fire tornadoes.

It happened in California as a heat wave helped to fuel hundreds of wildfires across the region, many of them sparked by lightning. One fiery funnel cloud on 15 August was so powerful, the National Weather Service issued what's believed to be its first fire tornado warning.

So, what has to happen for a wildfire to get so extreme that it spins off tornadoes?

As professors who study wildfires and weather, we can offer some insights.

How extreme fire conditions form

Fires have three basic elements: heat, fuel and oxygen.

In a wildland fire, a heat source ignites the fire. Sometimes that ignition source is a car or power line or, as the West saw in mid-August, lightning strikes. Oxygen then reacts with dry vegetation to produce heat, ash and gases.

How dry the landscape is determines whether the fire starts, how fast it burns and how hot the fire can get. It's almost as important as wind.

A wildfire raging near the eastern Sierra community of Loyalton, Northern California grew to 2,300 acres on August 15, 2020 and triggered a rare fire tornado warning from the National Weather Service https://t.co/qhghhXNQzi [more: https://t.co/sSmUcxtxTa] pic.twitter.com/YH9P6DU1Qm

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 16, 2020

Fire weather conditions get extreme when high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds combine with dead and live vegetation to produce difficult-to-fight, fast-spreading wildfires.

That combination is exactly what the West has been seeing. A wet winter fed the growth of grasses that now cover large areas of wildland in the western US. Most of this grass is now dead from the summer heat. Combined with other types of vegetation, that leaves lots of fuel for the wildfires to burn.

The remnants of Hurricane Elida also played a role. The storm increased moisture and instability in the atmosphere, which triggered thunderstorms further north. The atmosphere over land was pretty dry by then, and even when rain formed at the base of these clouds, it mostly evaporated due to the excessive heat. This led to "dry lightning" that ignited wildfires.

Wildfires can fuel thunderstorms

Fires can also cause convection – hot air rises, and it moves water vapor, gases and aerosols upward.

Wildfires with turbulent plumes can produce a "cumulus" type of cloud, known as pyrocumulus or pyrocumulonimbus. Pyrocumulus clouds are similar to the cumulus clouds people are used to seeing.

They develop when hot air carries moisture from plants, soil and air upward, where it cools and condenses. The centers of these "pyroclouds" have strong rising air.

Pyrocumulus cloud from the #LoyaltonFire from NW Reno. This seems bad. pic.twitter.com/U19h99cqT9

— John Porter (@el_maletero) August 15, 2020

It's pretty common, and it's a warning sign that firefighters could be facing erratic and dangerous conditions on the ground from the indraft of air toward the center of the blaze.

In some cases, the pyroclouds can reach 30,000 feet (9 kilometres) and produce lightning. There is evidence that pyrocumulus lightning may have ignited new blazes during the devastating fire storm in Australia in 2009 known as "Black Friday."

Where do fire tornadoes come from?

Similar to the way cumulonimbus clouds produce tornadoes, these pyroclouds can produce fire‐generated vortices of ash, smoke and often flames that can get destructive.

A vortex can form because of the intense heat of the fire in an environment with strong winds. This is similar to a strong river flow passing through a depression. The sudden change in the speed of the flow will force the flow to rotate.

Similarly, the heat generated by the fire creates a low pressure, and in an environment with strong winds, this process results in the formation of a vortex.

One fire tornado, or fire whirl, that developed during the deadly 2018 Carr Fire devastated parts of Redding, California, with winds clocked at over 143 miles (230 km) per hour.

These vortices can also increase the severity of the fires themselves by sucking air rich in oxygen toward the center of the vortex. The hotter the fire, the higher the probability of stronger updrafts and stronger and larger vortices.

Persistent heat waves that dry out the land and vegetation have increased the potential of wildfires to be more violent and widespread.

Is extreme fire weather becoming more common?

Global warming has modified the Earth's climate in ways that profoundly affect the behavior of wildfires.

Scientific evidence suggests that the severity of prolonged droughts and heat waves has been exacerbated not only by rising temperatures but also by changes in atmospheric circulation patterns associated with recent climate change. These changes can enhance extreme fire-weather behavior.

A study published Aug. 20 found that the frequency of California's extreme fire weather days in the autumn fire season had more than doubled since the early 1980s. Over that four-decade period, autumn temperatures in the state rose by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and autumn precipitation decreased by about 30 percent.

Firefighters and people living in wildfire-prone areas, meanwhile, need to be prepared for more extreme wildfires in the coming years.

Charles Jones, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of California, Santa Barbara and Leila Carvalho, Professor of Meteorology and Climatology, University of California, Santa Barbara.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/heres-how-extreme-wildfires-can-unleash-thunderstorms-and-fire-tornadoes/

A galaxy far, far away looks like a TIE Fighter, astronomers discover unexpectedly

Space has never been a one-size-fits-all affair. Our Universe is littered with gas and dust forming the shapes of faces, jellyfish, butterflies, giant pillars that look like a hand, and so much more.

And now, for those Star Wars fans out there, there's TXS 0128+554 – a galaxy that looks very much like a TIE Fighter.

We've known about TXS 0128+554 for a few years now, but NASA scientists have recently done a deep dive to discover just how it came to be, and in so doing revealed this eerily familiar-seeming shape in its radio waves.

"We zoomed in a million times closer on the galaxy using the VLBA's radio antennas and charted its shape over time," said Purdue University astrophysicist Matthew Lister.

"The first time I saw the results, I immediately thought it looked like Darth Vader's TIE Fighter spacecraft from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. That was a fun surprise, but its appearance at different radio frequencies also helped us learn more about how active galaxies can change dramatically on decade time scales."

TXS 0128+554 is around 500 million light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.  It's an active galactic nucleus (AGN), meaning it's a galaxy theoretically hosting a great big supermassive black hole in the middle.

In this case the black hole – which is around a billion times the mass of the Sun - is hidden behind dust and gas in the 'cockpit' of the TIE Fighter.

The dust and gas around the black hole heats up because of friction and gravity, and produces a wide spectrum of energy in the process – radio, X-ray, and gamma rays are all being released.

The black hole itself though is also helping produce the 'wings' of the ship. Around one in ten black holes produces jets – giant beams made up of high-energy particles – out of both ends, which travel close to the speed of light directly towards those two wings (or lobes, to be a little more scientific).

When the jets hit the gas on the edges of the galaxy, those high-energy particles begin to slow down, and eventually the energy starts to flow back towards the black hole. These moving particles spiral around the magnetic fields caused by the black hole, and create bright emissions we can see in radio frequencies.

TXS 0128+554 at six radio wavelengths. (NRAO/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

Interestingly enough, though, there's a big gap in some frequencies between the cockpit (aka the core) and the lobes. The researchers think that the galaxy's jets turned on around 90 years ago, stopped around 40 years ago, and then just in the last decade turned back on again, creating the gap in the middle on either side of the core.

"The lack of compact, inverted spectrum hotspots and an emission gap between the bright inner jet and outer radio lobe structure indicate that the jets have undergone episodic activity, and were relaunched a decade ago," the team write in their new paper.

We don't yet know what caused the jets to turn on and off, but the more AGNs we're able to find and investigate, the more chance we'll have of finding out.

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/a-galaxy-far-far-away-looks-like-a-tie-fighter-astronomers-discover-unexpectedly/

Russia Declassifies Video From 1961 of Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Detonated

Hydrogen bombs are so destructive, their impact has been described as unthinkable throughout history. Recently declassified Russian footage of the 1961 Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb test shows why.

The 40-minute documentary, which was posted on YouTube on August 20, shows footage of the largest bomb ever detonated on Earth, Thomas Nilsen reports for the Barents Observer. Video footage shows the blast from several angles, sometimes struggling to show the entire mushroom cloud in the frame. Later, the documentary compares the ice-covered archipelago before the blast to the scorched, red and brown landscape left behind afterward.

The Soviet Union tested the 50-million-ton hydrogen bomb, officially named RDS-220 and nicknamed Tsar Bomba, in late October 1961, Matthew Gault reports for Vice. This test occured during the height of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the United States competed to build the largest and most destructive nuclear weapons.

“There was a megatonnage race — who was going to have a bigger bomb,” atomic age historian Robert S. Norris tells the New York Times’ William Broad. “And the Soviets won.”

The bomb was 26 feet long and almost seven feet tall. It was so large that engineers had to modify the bomber aircraft used to carry it by removing the plane’s bomb bay doors and some of its fuel tanks, according to Vice. The documentary adds to other information that Russia has declassified, but nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein tells the New York Times that the video carefully avoids revealing technical details “despite appearing to show the innards.”

The bombers used a parachute to slow Tsar Bomba’s descent to Earth so that they could detonate it relatively high in the atmosphere and reduce its impact on the ground, according to the video. But the blast created a mushroom cloud 42 miles high, about seven times the height of Mount Everest.

"A mushroom cloud forms when an explosion creates a very hot bubble of gas. In the case of a nuclear detonation, the bomb emits a blast of x-rays, which ionize and heat the surrounding air; that hot bubble of gas is known as a fireball,” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist David Dearborn told Scientific American in 1999 of smaller blasts.

“The fireball from an H-bomb rises so high that it hits the tropopause, the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere… [then] the fireball flattens out; it can no longer expand upward, so it expands to the side into an exaggerated mushroom cap.”

But the Tsar Bomba mushroom cloud expanded through the stratosphere and formed its cap in the atmospheric layer above it, the mesosphere.

The Soviet Union detonated Tsar Bomba just months after the construction of the Berlin Wall, and days after a tense 16-hour standoff between U.S. and Soviet troops at the wall’s Checkpoint Charlie.

The Tsar Bomba detonation went in history as the largest bomb ever detonated on Earth. It had a destructive force over 3,000 times as destructive as the bomb used by the U.S. to destroy Hiroshima. And it was three times as large as the biggest bomb ever detonated by the U.S., dubbed Castle Bravo.

The Barents Observer reports that military border guards on Jarfjord Mountain in northern Norway reported seeing the flash. The documentary claims that the flash could be seen about 620 miles away, about the distance between Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Illinois.

The documentary also claims that radiation levels around the blast site were negligible, and it even shows people getting out of their vehicles and walking around the scorched landscape. But as the Barents Observer reports, radioactive fallout swept over Scandinavia and drew international condemnation on the Soviet Union.

But the United States was largely dismissive of the development of the giant bomb, Norris tells the New York Times. Days before the test, the 1961 deputy secretary of defense Roswell Gilpatric said in a speech that American nuclear experts had determined that the value of such a large weapon was “so questionable that it was not worth developing.” Instead, nuclear development continued on a path toward miniaturization, which allowed weapons to be placed on the tips of missiles and transported on trucks and submarines.

From a different perspective, as Carl Sagan wrote in former President Jimmy Carter's farewell address, this same technology has been used to launch rockets into space.

"Nuclear weapons are an expression of one side of our human character,” Sagan wrote at the time. “But there's another side. The same rocket technology that delivers nuclear warheads has also taken us peacefully into space. From that perspective, we see our Earth as it really is—a small and fragile and beautiful blue globe, the only home we have. We see no barriers of race or religion or country. We see the essential unity of our species and our planet. And with faith and common sense, that bright vision will ultimately prevail."

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/russia-declassifies-video-from-1961-of-largest-hydrogen-bomb-ever-detonated/

NASA increases cost estimate for SLS development

WASHINGTON — NASA has increased the cost estimates for the Space Launch System and its ground systems to the point where a formal congressional notification is required.

In an Aug. 27 blog post, Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said the agency was moving ahead with SLS development with the goal of a first launch of the heavy-lift rocket no later than November 2021.

In her statement, Lueders said NASA had increased the cost estimate for the development of the SLS and Exploration Ground Systems (EGS), the ground infrastructure needed to support SLS launches. For SLS, the “development baseline cost” is now $9.1 billion, while for EGS that cost estimate is now $2.4 billion.

NASA didn’t state by how much the programs’ costs increased. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report published in April assessing NASA’s major programs estimated the development cost of SLS at $8.75 billion and EGS development cost at $2.33 billion, both as of January. The new estimates represent increases of 4% for SLS and 3% for EGS over those in the GAO report.

However, both programs have seen their costs soar since NASA estimated baselines in 2014. At that time, NASA estimated an SLS development cost of $7.02 billion and EGS development cost of $1.84 billion.

The new estimates are both approximately 30% above the original baseline cost estimates. That is the threshold to trigger a formal congressional notification and rebaselining of the program. “NASA has notified Congress of these new commitments,” Lueders said in her statement.

A March report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General argued that the SLS program had already hit the 30% threshold required for notification and review. That report argued that NASA had removed nearly $1 billion in costs for the vehicle’s solid rocket boosters and RS-25 engines, but did not adjust the baseline cost estimate accordingly.

It’s unlikely Congress would make any major changes to the SLS or EGS programs as a result of the notification. A House appropriations bill for fiscal year 2021, passed in late July, provides $342.9 million more for SLS and $75 million more for EGS than the administration’s request. The Senate has yet to take up its version of a spending bill, but the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), is a powerful advocate for the SLS.

While Lueders reaffirmed a first SLS launch of no later than November 2021, she said a firm date had not yet been set for the mission. “While it is too early to predict the full impact of COVID-19, we are confident a November 2021 date is achievable with the recent pace of progress, and a successful Green Run hot fire test will enable us to better predict a target launch date for the mission,” she wrote. That test of the SLS core stage is projected to take place by the end of October, she said this week.

She said that, despite cost increases and significant delays in SLS development, the agency expected production of future vehicles to be smoother. “We are well into builds for future missions, and we are seeing significantly improved build rates, high quality work, and efficiencies across the board,” she said. “Moving forward, we aim to continue to reduce production costs for the world’s most capable launch system, as we take on new challenges of our lunar exploration program.”

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/nasa-increases-cost-estimate-for-sls-development/

SpaceX launches Argentine radar satellite, rideshare smallsats on Falcon 9 rocket

WASHINGTON — SpaceX completed its first Cape Canaveral polar launch Aug. 30, delivering an Argentine radar satellite and two smallsats into low Earth orbit using a Falcon 9 rocket. 

Falcon 9 lifted off at 7:19 p.m. Eastern, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, overcoming a 60% chance of a weather delay from extensive cloud cover. The rocket deployed the Saocom-1B synthetic aperture radar satellite for the Argentine space agency CONAE approximately 14 minutes after liftoff, followed by the Tyvak-0172 smallsat and PlanetiQ’s Gnomes-1 commercial weather smallsat about an hour after liftoff. 

SpaceX was waiting to launch until after United Launch Alliance completed the Delta 4 Heavy launch of the National Reconnaissance Office’s NROL-44 satellite, also from Cape Canaveral. However, a ULA mission abort triggered three seconds before liftoff Aug. 29 delayed that mission by a minimum of seven days, creating an opportunity for SpaceX to launch first. 

SpaceX landed the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster on land at Cape Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1, recovering that booster for a fourth time. The company plans to recover the rocket’s payload fairing halves out of the Atlantic Ocean, since SpaceX’s usual fairing recovery ships were deployed in different locations for a since-scrubbed Starlink Falcon 9 mission. 

SpaceX was attempting to launch two Falcon 9 missions from Cape Canaveral Aug. 30, starting with a batch of its own Starlink broadband satellites at 10:12 a.m. Eastern, but inclement weather delayed that mission until at least Sept. 1.

SpaceX intended to launch Saocom-1B in March, but was delayed at CONAE’s request because of the coronavirus. Synthetic aperture radar startup Capella Space planned to launch a satellite on that mission as a rideshare, but shifted its satellite to a dedicated flight on a Rocket Lab Electron because of that delay. Capella Space’s Sequoia satellite is scheduled to launch no earlier than Aug. 30 at 11:05 p.m. from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand launchpad. 

SpaceX’s Saocom-1B mission marks the first polar launch from Cape Canaveral since 1969. 

Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess, commander of the 45th Space Wing, which oversees Florida space coast launch ranges, said Aug. 25 during a video call with reporters that SpaceX requested to launch Saocom-1B on the polar trajectory from the Cape instead of from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, as originally planned. 

“Some of their processing was here and it made more sense,” Schiess said. 

Polar orbits are popular for weather and remote sensing satellites to enable coverage of the Earth’s full surface. SpaceX launched the first Saocom satellite, Saocom-1A, into a polar orbit from Vandenberg in October 2018 on a Falcon 9. 

The Aug. 30 launch of Saocom-1B completes Argentina’s Saocom system, comprised of twin 3,000-kilogram satellites equipped with L-band phased array antennas that can image day and night and through clouds. 

The Saocom satellites are designed to detect soil moisture and strengthen Argentina’s agricultural sector. 

CONAE signed its launch contract with SpaceX for the Saocom satellites in 2009, for launches expected in 2012 and 2013, but the Saocom program experienced setbacks that prevented meeting those launch targets. 

In an interview, Raúl Kulichevsky, technical director at CONAE, said the Saocom satellites proved more difficult to build than expected for INVAP, Argentina’s state-owned satellite manufacturer, since the company had never built a radar satellite before. 

“It was a more challenging mission than we expected at the beginning,” he said. 

The Saocom satellites collectively cost $600 million, covering manufacturing, two Falcon 9 launches and a new ground station, Kulichevsky said. Financing the program was also difficult at times, he said. 

The Argentine government, which sought to avoid a default on its ballooning national debt during the 2010s, didn’t always fund the Saocom program “exactly at the time that we needed it,” Kulichevsky said. 

One of the most challenging technical parts of the program was building an L-band phased array antenna for each satellite, Kulichevsky said. CONAE was in charge of developing the antenna, and partnered with the National Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina to work together on the element. 

“They have a very strong research and development branch on materials,” Kulichevsky said of the National Atomic Energy Commission. “When we started the design of the antenna, we signed an agreement with them” to test new materials and evaluate some component mechanics.

Gabriel Cristian Absi, vice president of INVAP’s aerospace division, said radar imagery collected from Saocom-1A shows the antenna works as expected. 

“The quality of the image that we obtained with the Saocom-1A is very amazing,” he said. “There are a lot of companies and governmental [entities] in Argentina that are very interested in the information that Saocom can provide to them.”

Absi said INVAP will seek to sell synthetic aperture radar satellites outside of Argentina to retain its knowledge of how to build such satellites. He said government customers are interested in X-band synthetic aperture radar satellites for border monitoring and defense applications. 

In addition to domestic use, Argentina uses the Saocom satellites as part of the Italian/Argentine satellite system for emergency management, or SIASGE, which pairs CONAE’s two Saocom satellites and Italy’s four Cosmo-Skymed first-generation satellites, enabling more rapid imagery collection of fires, earthquakes and other natural disasters. 

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/spacex-launches-argentine-radar-satellite-rideshare-smallsats-on-falcon-9-rocket/

'Swapping bodies' with a friend swaps your beliefs, strange experiment reveals

Spend some time in someone else's body, and your sense of self and your memory starts to shift, new research shows – almost as if your brain is adapting to better fit its new form. It's a fascinating insight into the link between the physical and the psychological.

Researchers haven't actually worked out how to carry out a real physical 'body swap' – not yet – but in this case, 33 pairs of friends were able to virtually swap bodies using headsets. As they looked round, they saw themselves in their friend's body.

The experiments only ran for a few minutes, but they showed that the pals very quickly felt like they were inhabiting each other's bodies – when one of the pair was threatened with a prop knife, the other would tend to break out in a sweat.

What's more, based on questions asked before and during the tests, participants quickly began to feel more like their friends rather than themselves, in measures such as talkativeness, cheerfulness, independence, and confidence.

"We show that the self-concept has the potential to change really quickly, which brings us to some potentially interesting practical implications," says neuroscientist Pawel Tacikowski from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

"People who suffer from depression often have very rigid and negative beliefs about themselves that can be devastating to their everyday functioning. If you change this illusion slightly, it could potentially make those beliefs less rigid and less negative."

Several depersonalisation disorders, where there's a disconnect between the mental state and the physical body, could be better understood by the findings, the researchers think.

The experiments also showed effects on memory too: participants performed worse in episodic memory tests once they had taken part in the body swapping exercise. It's almost as if our memories fade as our sense of self does.

(Pawel Tacikowski et al, iScience 2020)

"There is a well-established finding that people are better at remembering things that are related to themselves," says Tacikowski. "So, we thought if we interfered with one's self-representation during the illusion, that should generally decrease their memory performance."

The researchers note that the people who more fully embraced the body switch – the ones whose self-perception shifted the most significantly towards that of their friends – did better in the memory tests.

That could be because their "self-incoherence" was lower, say the researchers. In other words, there was less of a gap between the sense of self and the physical body – even if that sense of self and physical body had switched. This incoherence appears to interfere with how we encode episodic memories.

The study raises all sorts of interesting questions about how much our sense of self is based on our perceptions of the body that we inhabit – not least because that body changes and ages over time, which has to have psychological consequences too.

There's plenty of more research to be done here to investigate the physical and psychological, covering a broader range of people over a longer period of time. But now we know at least a little more how a real-life version of Freaky Friday might play out.

"As a child, I liked to imagine what it would be like to one day wake up in someone else's body," says Tacikowski. "Many kids probably have those fantasies, and I guess I've never grown out of it – I just turned it into my job."

The research has been published in iScience.

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/swapping-bodies-with-a-friend-swaps-your-beliefs-strange-experiment-reveals/

Report: Space Force improving delivery of orbit monitoring software

Congress in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act requires an annual update on the $150 million Space C2 program.

WASHINGTON — Space-monitoring software apps used by U.S. military are now being updated every 90 days, says a new report delivered to Congress Aug. 21.

The apps are developed under a program known as Space C2, short for space command and control.

Congress in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act requires an annual update on the $150 million-a-year Space C2 program.

According to the report, Space C2 has transitioned from a slow military procurement effort to agile software development practices.

Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett in the report said the Space C2 program office drops new software every 90 days and the Space Force is providing orbit monitoring apps to operators “using the most current industry software development practices.”

Space C2 is also known as the Kobayashi Maru project, named after a training program in Star Trek’s Starfleet Academy. It was started in 2018 by the Space and Missile Systems Center in an effort to replace the failed Joint Space Operations Center Mission System.

Congress for years was highly critical of the JMS program for failing to provide operators with modern tools to monitor what is happening in space. Space C2 software helps identify potential hazards to satellites, predict conjunctions and avoid collisions in space.

Although Kobayashi Maru has made progress, the program is not all smooth sailing, according to the report. One of the difficulties is finding enough qualified software engineers and programmers. “The talent pool across the Department of the Air Force is difficult to track and the assignments or hiring actions take longer than desired,” says the report.

Another issue that slows down the development of software is the Pentagon’s budgeting system which allocates funding for software into three different budget categories for development, procurement and maintenance. That means that when software transitions from one phase to the next, there are lengthy bureaucratic processes to move money, for example, from development to procurement.

The report said the Pentagon is aware of this issue and has asked Congress to allow a handful of software programs, including Space C2, to become test cases for a different budgeting process for software that consolidates all three “colors of money” into a single account.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/report-space-force-improving-delivery-of-orbit-monitoring-software/

We just found another obstacle for quantum computers to overcome - and it's everywhere

Keeping qubits stable – those quantum equivalents of classic computing bits – will be key to realising the potential of quantum computing. Now scientists have found a new obstacle to this stability: natural radiation.

Natural or background radiation comes from all sorts of sources, both natural and artificial. Cosmic rays contribute to natural radiation, for example, and so do concrete buildings. It's around us all the time, and so this poses something of a problem for future quantum computers.

Through a series of experiments that altered the level of natural radiation around qubits, physicists have been able to establish that this background buzz does indeed nudge qubits off balance in a way that stops them from functioning properly.

"Our study is the first to show clearly that low-level ionising radiation in the environment degrades the performance of superconducting qubits," says physicist John Orrell, from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

"These findings suggest that radiation shielding will be necessary to attain long-sought performance in quantum computers of this design."

Natural radiation is by no means the most significant or the only threat to qubit stability, which is technically known as coherence – everything from temperature fluctuations to electromagnetic fields can break the qubit 'spell'.

But the scientists say if we're to reach a future where quantum computers are taking care of our most advanced computing needs, then this interference from natural radiation is going to have to be dealt with.

It was after experiencing problems with superconducting qubit decoherence that the team behind the new study decided to investigate the possible problem with natural radiation. They found it breaks up a key quantum binding called a Cooper pair of electrons.

"The radiation breaks apart matched pairs of electrons that typically carry electric current without resistance in a superconductor," says physicist Brent VanDevender, from PNNL. "The resistance of those unpaired electrons destroys the delicately prepared state of a qubit."

Classical computers can be disrupted by the same issues that affect qubits, but quantum states are much more delicate and sensitive. One of the reasons that we don't have genuine full-scale quantum computers today is that no one can keep qubits stable for more than a few milliseconds at a time.

If we can improve on that, the benefits in terms of computing power could be huge: whereas classical computing bits can only be set as 1 or 0, qubits can be set as 1, 0 – or both at the same time (known as superposition).

Scientists have been able to get it happening, but only for a very short space of time and in a very tightly controlled environment. The good news is that researchers like those at PNNL are committed to the challenge of figuring out how to make quantum computers a reality – and now we know a bit more about what we're up against.

"Practical quantum computing with these devices will not be possible unless we address the radiation issue," says VanDevender. "Without mitigation, radiation will limit the coherence time of superconducting qubits to a few milliseconds, which is insufficient for practical quantum computing."

The research has been published in Nature.

#Physics | https://sciencespies.com/physics/we-just-found-another-obstacle-for-quantum-computers-to-overcome-and-its-everywhere/

This weird creature is the first we know of that hibernated - 250 million years ago

Animals have been hibernating for a long, long time, a new study shows. Researchers have analysed 250 million-year-old fossils and found evidence that the pig-sized mammal relation, a genus called Lystrosaurus, hibernated much like bears and bats do today.

Finding signs of shifts in metabolism rates in fossils is just about impossible under normal conditions – but the stout, four-legged Lystrosaurus had a pair of tusks that grew continuously during its life, leaving behind a record of activity not dissimilar to tree rings in a trunk.

By comparing cross-sections of tusks from six Antarctic Lystrosaurus to cross-sections of tusks from four Lystrosaurus from South Africa, the researchers were able to find periods of less growth and greater stress that were exclusive to the Antarctica samples.

How Lystrosaurus may have looked while hibernating. (Crystal Shin)

The marks match up with similar depositions in the teeth of modern day animals that hibernate at certain points during the year. It's not definitive proof that Lystrosaurus hibernated, but it's the oldest evidence of it we've found to date.

"Animals that live at or near the poles have always had to cope with the more extreme environments present there," says vertebrate palaeontologist Megan Whitney, from Harvard University. "These preliminary findings indicate that entering into a hibernation-like state is not a relatively new type of adaptation. It is an ancient one."

The hibernation state, or torpor, may well have been essential for animals living near the South Pole at the time. Though the region was much warmer in the Triassic period, there would still have been big seasonal variations in the number of daylight hours.

It's very possible that Lystrosaurus wasn't the only hibernating animal of the time, and some of the dinosaurs that came afterwards may well have hibernated too. The problem is that most species of the time didn't have continuously growing tusks or even teeth.

"To see the specific signs of stress and strain brought on by hibernation, you need to look at something that can fossilise and was growing continuously during the animal's life," says biologist Christian Sidor, from the University of Washington. "Many animals don't have that, but luckily Lystrosaurus did."

There's plenty that this could teach us about the evolutionary history of species, lending support to the idea that a flexible physiology – being able to adapt bodily functions to suit the seasons – may be vital to surviving periods of mass extinction.

Scientists continue to discover more about how hibernation works and how it can be triggered in animals. If we can figure out how to get the same biological trick working in humans, it might give us new ways of fighting disease.

Further studies will be able to look in more detail at the question of whether or not the Lystrosaurus was able to enter a deep state of torpor, but this new analysis is already drawing some interesting parallels that span hundreds of millions of years.

"Cold-blooded animals often shut down their metabolism entirely during a tough season, but many endothermic or warm-blooded animals that hibernate frequently reactivate their metabolism during the hibernation period," says Whitney.

"What we observed in the Antarctic Lystrosaurus tusks fits a pattern of small metabolic reactivation events during a period of stress, which is most similar to what we see in warm-blooded hibernators today."

The research has been published in Communications Biology.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/this-weird-creature-is-the-first-we-know-of-that-hibernated-250-million-years-ago/

Marine sergeant named U.S. Space Command’s top enlisted leader

Marine Corps Mastery Gunnery Sgt. Scott Stalker will take over for Space Force Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman

WASHINGTON — Marine Corps Mastery Gunnery Sgt. Scott Stalker on Aug. 28 will assume duties as the senior enlisted leader of U.S. Space Command, a spokesperson for U.S. Space Command said Aug. 27,

Stalker will take over for Space Force Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman who has been dual-hatted as senior enlisted advisor of the U.S. Space Force and senior enlisted leader of U.S. Space Command. Towberman will continue to serve in the Space Force.

The new command senior enlisted leader will report to Army Gen. James Dickinson, who was sworn in last week as chief of U.S. Space Command.

Stalker previously served as the chief senior enlisted leader of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/marine-sergeant-named-u-s-space-commands-top-enlisted-leader/

NASA Map Shows Devastation Caused By Beirut Blast

This damage map of a massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon on Aug. 4, 2020 was created by NASA's ... [+] Advanced Radpid Imaging and Analysis team and the Earth Observatory of Singapore. The most severe damage is in dark red.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Earth Observatory of Singapore/ESA

On the evening of August 4, two powerful explosions rocked the harbor of Beirut in Lebanon. Buildings near the explosion's epicenter were flattened in an instant. Cars in the street were thrown through the air like toys and even ships, anchored in the harbor, capsized. A huge shockwave thundered through the city. Rolling over the earth at the speed of sound, the sudden pressure burst shattered windows up to 20 kilometers (or 15 miles) away from the explosion's epicenter. More than 300,000 families have lost their homes due to the explosions, 6,000 people were injured, and 220 people were killed.

Using satellite imagery and RADAR data obtained by the European satellite program, a NASA team mapped the extent of the devastation. Synthetic aperture radar data shows changes to the ground by overlapping subsequent height measurements; this technology is usually used to map terrain changes after major events, such as earthquakes. Each square in the map represents an area of 30 x 30 meters (approximately 33 x 33 yards). In the red zones, the explosion caused the most damage, flattening buildings. Orange areas have moderate damage, as buildings partially collapsed, and areas in yellow are likely less affected.

According to ongoing investigations the explosion was caused by the deflagration of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, stocked unsafely in Beirut's port district. An energy equivalent of 1,100 tons of TNT was released in an instant, excavating a 43-meter (140 ft) deep crater in the ground.

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Eyewitness accounts describe widespread shacking of buildings in a radius of 50 kilometers (30 miles), and trembling of the ground felt still 250 kilometers away from the explosion center. The seismic waves were recorded by the seismographic network of the Geological Survey of Israel and seismic stations along the Syrian border to Turkey, almost 400 kilometers away.

According to first estimates by geologists, the blast was equivalent to a magnitude 4.5 earthquake, comparable to the energy released by the detonation of 1,000 to 3,000 tons of TNT. The USGS gives a lower magnitude of 3.3; typically, people report feeling earthquakes larger than about magnitude 3.0, so this could fit the eyewitness accounts.

The calculated magnitude is not directly comparable to an earthquake of similar size because the explosion occurred at the surface where seismic waves are not as efficiently generated. During a surface blast, like the Beirut explosion, most of the energy goes into the air and not enough energy is transmitted into the rocks in the ground. If the explosion had occurred below the surface of the earth, the magnitude picked up be the seismographic stations would have registered higher.

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/nasa-map-shows-devastation-caused-by-beirut-blast/

In Canada, people are fighting to save a majestic tree that's older than Canada

In the shadow of Canada's largest cluster of skyscrapers, Toronto is looking to preserve a majestic, centuries-old oak tree - but efforts have been complicated by the pandemic.

The towering 24-meter (79-feet) high Northern Red Oak is one of the oldest trees in these parts, having sprouted an estimated 300 years ago, around the time that French explorers set up a trading post on the nearby shores of Lake Ontario.

The tree now finds itself in the back yard of a nondescript bungalow on a winding street in the heart of a residential North York neighborhood.

Its huge trunk has a circumference of five meters and brushes up against the back of the 1960s house.

(Olivier Monnier/AFP)

In summer, its long leafy branches shade the entire lot from the sun's rays.

But in recent years, a new homeowner expressed concerns about being able to afford proper tree maintenance and its roots cracking the house's foundation.

Neighbors also worry that this awesome specimen may one day be damaged by strong winds or felled in a storm.

To protect it and make it accessible to everyone in this city of 6 million people, Toronto's city council voted in 2018 to buy the property, raze the house and turn the land into a small public park.

Takes your breath away

A deal was reached with the homeowner last year to sell the property to the city.

That outcome delighted Edith George, a local resident who lobbied over 14 years to preserve the oak tree, whose beauty she says "just takes your breath away".

"It's the Rolls-Royce of heritage trees. No other tree in Canada has the heritage value that this tree has," the 68-year-old retiree told AFP.

Experts say that with care and under the right conditions, the tree could live another 200 years or more.

"A tree like this is expensive to maintain. If the lot is a public space, the city will be able to take care of it better than I can," says Ali Simaga, who purchased the home in 2015.

"I don't want to be selfish and keep it to myself, either," he adds.

The deal, however, is not done yet. The city's purchase offer is conditional on private donations to cover half of the price tag for the property.

Fund-raising started in December 2019, with a target of raising CAN$430,000 (US$325,000) by the end of this year.

After a promising start, including a CAN$100,000 pledge by a couple of local philanthropists, contributions slowed to a trickle during the pandemic.

As of mid-July, about CAN$125,000, or nearly 30 percent of the goal, had been collected. If the target is missed by the deadline, without an extension, the monies collected would be used to support tree planting across the city while the future of the historic oak tree would be in doubt.

Canadian heritage

The tree sits along a former Humber Valley trail used by indigenous peoples and later by European fur traders portaging between lakes Ontario and Simcoe - a leg of a trade route that spanned the continent from the Gulf of Mexico to the north shore of Lake Superior, according to historian Madeleine McDowell.

Travellers used large trees as landmarks, she said. This oak was probably already pretty big when the French lost the territory to the British, who established the Town of York - which would later become Toronto - in 1793.

It is "a wonderful tree," commented Manjit Jheeta, director of the City of Toronto Partnership Office.

"It is part of Toronto's heritage, it is part of Canada's heritage and it tells the story of our country," she said.

Last year, the city unveiled a plaque in its honor, a first for a single tree in the nation's largest metropolis.

Its ecological value is no less: the oak tree has absorbed and stored more than 11 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.

"When bad things happen," said George, "I don't go to church, I come here because this is like my cathedral.

"It's a survivor and it gives us hope for a planet that's in peril."

© Agence France-Presse

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/in-canada-people-are-fighting-to-save-a-majestic-tree-thats-older-than-canada/

SpaceX may attempt 3 rocket launches this Sunday

SpaceX is aiming to launch three rockets on Sunday, including two back-to-back Falcon 9 launches in Florida and a Starship test flight in Texas, if weather permits.

The aerospace company said it intends to launch its twelfth Starlink mission at 10:12 am EST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending 60 Starlinks into orbit.

The second Falcon 9 launch is scheduled to occur nine hours and six minutes later, taking off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:18 pm and sending a SAOCOM 1B spacecraft into orbit.

Both the Starlink and the SAOCOM 1B launches will be live-streamed.

Good chance something will slip, but, yeah, Sunday is intense

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2020

Separately, SpaceX is also reportedly aiming to launch the Starship SN6 from Boca Chica, Texas, for a low-altitude test flight. Earlier in August, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted that the company is planning to do "several short hops to smooth out launch process, then go high altitude with body flaps."

Though it's unclear what time the Texas launch - if it goes forward - will occur, Cameron County in Texas has announced highway closures between 8 am and 8 pm CST "due to anticipated test launch activities for SpaceX."

On Friday, Musk acknowledged the efforts for the multiple launches on Twitter, saying there was a "good chance something will slip, but, yeah, Sunday is intense.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

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#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/spacex-may-attempt-3-rocket-launches-this-sunday/

SpaceX to launch Masten lunar lander

WASHINGTON — Masten Space Systems announced Aug. 26 that it signed a contract with SpaceX for the launch of its first lunar lander mission carrying a suite of payloads for NASA.

Masten said SpaceX will launch its Masten Mission One, or MM1, lunar lander mission in late 2022. The companies did not disclose the value of the contract.

In an Aug. 27 interview, Sean Mahoney, chief executive of Masten, said the contract does not cover a specific launch vehicle, but rather a service to get the spacecraft to the moon on the company’s desired schedule. “We’re buying the performance that we need,” he said. SpaceX will have the ability to place other spacecraft on the launch on a noninterference basis.

The mission will carry payloads for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program under a $75.9 million contract awarded by the agency in April. The XL-1 lander will deliver nine science and technology demonstration payloads to the south polar region of the moon.

The lander has passed a preliminary design review, Mahoney said, and the company is starting to purchase long-lead items needed to build the spacecraft. Masten is also holding biweekly meetings with teams representing the nine CLPS payloads.

NASA will be an anchor customer for the mission but Masten intends to sign up others. “There is a tremendous amount of interest,” he said, including from both the public and private sector, although he didn’t mention any specific potential customers.

Mahoney said the level of customer interest soared after Masten won the CLPS award and had a firm schedule for the mission. “Once the CLPS award was made and we crossed from speculative to having a schedule, the tenor and tone of our conversations have changed dramatically.”

The limiting factor for the lander mission has not been the amount of mass available for payloads, he said, but instead positions on the lander that have views of the surface desired by payloads. “There’s a game of positioning among the various instruments so that they can get the view angles that they need and not interfere,” he said.

However, he said the company isn’t considering major changes in the lander’s design to accommodate payloads. “The design principle is the ‘pickup truck’ that can haul a bunch of different things,” he said. “We’re trying to escape the completely unique, bespoke system that does one job and one mission really well.”

Masten joins a growing list of companies and organizations using SpaceX to launch lunar lander missions. Intuitive Machines, which won one of the first NASA CLPS awards last year, selected SpaceX to launch its IM-1 lunar lander mission on a Falcon 9 in 2021. Intuitive Machines said at the time that it would be part of a rideshare mission, but didn’t state if its lander would be considered the primary payload or not.

Japanese company ispace selected SpaceX in 2018 to launch its first two lunar missions, which at the time were to be an orbiter and lander launching in 2020 and 2021 respectively on Falcon 9 rockets. The company now says both will be lander missions, launching in 2022 and 2023.

SpaceX has already launched one lunar lander mission. Beresheet, the lunar lander built by Israel Aerospace Industries for Israeli organization SpaceIL, flew as a secondary payload on the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch of an Indonesian communications satellite in February 2019. Beresheet used its onboard propulsion to move from a geostationary transfer orbit to lunar orbit, but crashed attempting a landing in April 2019.

Astrobotic, which won a CLPS award last year for its Peregrine lunar lander, selected United Launch Alliance to launch that mission on the first flight of ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket in 2021. Astrobotic had previously contracted with ULA to launch Peregrine as a secondary payload on an Atlas 5 before winning the CLPS award.

Astrobotic won a second CLPS award June 11 when NASA selected the company to deliver its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission to the lunar south pole in late 2023. Astrobotic said at the time it would select a launch vehicle for the VIPER mission later this year.

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