The Death Knell Of Civilization

A recent article in Bloomberg is titled Goldman to Refuse IPOs If All Directors Are White, Straight Men, but the link shows that it was originally titled Goldman Rule Adds To The Death Knell Of The All White Male Board.

The era of the white, all-male board is coming to an end.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon issued the latest ultimatum Thursday from Davos. Wall Street's biggest underwriter of initial public offerings in the U.S. will no longer take a company public in the U.S. and Europe if it lacks a director who is either female or diverse. Asia is not yet included in the firm’s new policy.

There's so much to unpack from such a small paragraph. So much is being admitted! Most interesting is the use of the term diverse as a substitute for non-white. Diversity just means fewer whites. If a society is 99% nonwhite, the only way to increase diversity would be to eradicate the remaining 1%. Also of note is calling the change of policy an ultimatum. Diversity is no longer our strength; now it is something that you just have to do... or else! Finally we have the extraordinarily awkward mention that Asia is not yet included in the movement to eradicate white, all-male boards. Is that a big thing in Asia? I would have assumed that there were not many such outfits in Asia

As Goldman Sachs Group Inc. moves to increase diversity on corporate boards, the investment bank isn’t extending the initiative to a particularly challenged region: Asia.

“Nowadays there’s no excuse for companies to have non-diverse, all-male boards,” said Fern Ngai, CEO of Community Business, a Hong Kong-based group that advocates for responsible and inclusive business practices. Goldman “should include Asia. I don’t see why they don’t.”

It's still not clear what the demand is. Obviously fewer men, but do they mean fewer Asians on boards in Asia, or fewer whites? While the anti-white racist sentiment is made abundantly clear for the American and European sectors, it is left vague for Asia. I suspect what is meant for diversity for Hong Kong means more black and Muslims. Diversity means darker. You can bet we'll never hear outlets like Bloomberg advocate for more whites on the boards of non-white countries. That will never happen.

Perhaps you can see why I never sided with Hong Kong in their dispute with China. Actually, I side with China! They must assert their control over the exclave, because Globohomo has its tentacles all over the place and is squeezing it hard. After The Cult has installed trannies in every school library and castrated every child, they'll naturally move their focus onto places like Hong Kong. The parasite always must move to a new host after the old one has been destroyed.

Here's another one. It's the exact same story, only in a different context. NOAA is now receiving $4 million in funding to research geo-engineering efforts to block solar radiation, in response to climate hysteria. That same government that wants us to become dependent on solar power also wants to blot the sun from the sky! True absurdity. It's the same story because it's the deliberate effort to destroy civilization. Oh, and here's another one. Yale university will now be discontinuing a popular Renaissance art history course because Renaissance art is too white. The problem with that precedent is that whites have made 95% of all contributions to modern civilization (conservatively) thus civilization must be canceled because it is racist. That is what is happening, before our eyes. We are the people watching our entire civilization be destroyed, and frankly not doing much about it.

A question rises about the Goldman Sachs decision. Because it is deliberately prejudiced against whites and men, it should be easy pickings for a class-action lawsuit. But it's fairly safe to predict that this policy, this open rejection of the Civil Rights Act (but in a way that makes The Cult happy), will not be overturned by the courts. We aren't going to vote our way out of this crisis, nor will we litigate ourselves out if it.

NASA News #4 A Common Problem

Ethan has taken the week off, so we'll only be looking at a handful of article from the NASA site.

First Commercial Moon Delivery Assignments to Advance Artemis (link)

In preparation for the planned landing of astronauts on the moon - supposedly a mundane activity given NASA's exemplary track record in that regard - Artemis is sending sixteen scientific payloads to the moon for investigation.

The NDL is a LIDAR-based (LIght Detection And Ranging) sensor composed of a three-beam optical head and a box with electronics and photonics that will provide extremely precise velocity and range sensing during descent and landing of the lander that will tightly control navigation precision for a soft and controlled touchdown on the Moon.

That hardly seems necessary when a soft and controlled touchdown on the moon can be flawlessly performed (several times) with an unstable single-engine lander, a flight computer with less memory than the modern toothbrush, and some good old-fashioned American stick jokeying.

SEAL will investigate the chemical response of lunar regolith to the thermal, physical and chemical disturbances generated during a landing, and evaluate contaminants injected into the regolith by the landing itself. It will give scientists insight into the how a spacecraft landing might affect the composition of samples collected nearby.

Why is this necessary? We learned from Apollo that the lander will impart zero thermal or physical disturbances to the powdery surface, and any chemical contamination should easily be checked with the eight hundred pounds of moon rocks returned to the Earth.

SCALPSS will capture video and still image data of the lander’s plume as the plume starts to impact the lunar surface until after engine shut off, which is critical for future lunar and Mars vehicle designs.

No, it is not critical at all. You just make a standard exhaust nozzle and put the engine right in the crew compartment, which someone can use as a seat. It's not that difficult. Why does NASA act as if the Apollo landings never happened?

NIRVSS will measure surface and subsurface hydration, carbon dioxide and methane – all resources that could potentially be mined from the Moon -- while also mapping surface temperature and changes at the landing site.

What about the temperature measurements taken by Apollo? Surely they would be informative. Let's follow up with that in an article titled Learning from what Apollo astronauts left on the moon.

So Nagihara decided to examine all the temperature data collected through 1977. Sadly, the tapes that recorded these measurements were missing. This is a common problem. During the Apollo era, data were housed at the individual labs of scientists. Many measurements were never properly archived.

So not only were the original communications and navigation tapes all lost, but the scientific data is lost too! Thus, the Artemis mission has been forced to reproduce all that valuable data as if the Apollo landings had never happened at all.

For Hottest Planet, a Major Meltdown, Study Shows (link)

Massive gas giants called "hot Jupiters" — planets that orbit too close to their stars to sustain life — are some of the strangest worlds found beyond our solar system. New observations show that the hottest of them all is stranger still, prone to planetwide meltdowns so severe they tear apart the molecules that make up its atmosphere.

Called KELT-9b, the planet is an ultra-hot Jupiter, one of several varieties of exoplanets — planets around other stars — found in our galaxy. It weighs in at nearly three times the mass of our own Jupiter and orbits a star some 670 light-years away. With a surface temperature of 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit (4,300 degrees Celsius) — hotter than some stars — this planet is the hottest found so far.

Now, a team of astronomers using NASA's Spitzer space telescope has found evidence that the heat is too much even for molecules to remain intact. Molecules of hydrogen gas are likely ripped apart on the dayside of KELT-9b, unable to re-form until their disjointed atoms flow around to the planet's nightside.

In this article you'll read claims that hydrogen molecules are "ripped apart" on a faraway exoplanet, and quotes from the graduate student who was the lead author, but no link to the article itself. As is often the case, I had to go searching for it. I don't believe I have ever given commentary on any academic paper without providing a link to it, because I want you to know I'm not lying and to make it easy for you to verify for yourself. Why does NASA not do the same?

Anyway, here is the article (pdf). By my count, there are 22 authors representing 17 institutions and 51 bibliographic references to produce a paper that runs at about 5 pages if images and figures are removed. Does it really take four researchers and ten citations per page for this kind of analysis? Of course not. From our perspective (meaning the non-academic viewpoint) the excessive list of authors and references is amusing, but something we skim over to get to the substance of the article. In their world, consensus means factual, thus those signalers of consensus (author and citation lists) are given more attention than the substance of the article.

The first paragraph of the introduction reads,

Hot Jupiter phase curve observations have led to a wealth of data on energy transport in highly-irradiated planets. This information has spurred the development of theories to describe the resulting trends. The most influential hypothesis has been that the irradiation level is the primary factor controlling energy transport, with hotter planets having shorter radiative timescales and thus less heat redistribution. Lower heat redistribution would lead to increasingly larger phase curve amplitudes and smaller offsets. These trends with irradiation temperature are robust predictions that are born out in models with varying levels of sophistication.

Sophistication is just a synonym for complexity. Now, read the beginning of the next paragraph.

Recent phase curve observations, however, have shown deviation from these trends, which suggests that the radiative timescale may not be the only important factor controlling heat redistribution on hot Jupiters.

To normal people, the second paragraph would seem to refute the first. How are the predictions of the preferred hypothesis robust when multiple observations contradict it? If you can understand this little 2-paragraph dilemma, you understand the big problem with cosmology, which is that the preferred hypotheses remain "robust" no matter the extent of contradicting evidence. Once established, bad ideas are almost impossible to kill, and usually result in more bad ideas needed to keep the equations balanced.

The gist of the paper is that, upon observing both the day and night sides of the planet, it was determined that the night side is too hot to be accounted for by standard heat convection. Thus, they've hypothesized that hydrogen molecules are disassociated on the hot side and then recombining on the cold side. The effect is akin to the heat of vaporization seen in standard thermodynamics, such as when water is vaporized in a boiler and then transported to radiators, where the condensation of the steam releases much more heat than in systems with only hot water.

It is worth keeping in mind that these same astronomers don't even understand our own cold Jupiter. They don't understand why the polar regions are so hot (even during their local winters) or why the planet emits much more radiation that it receives from the sun. Despite the what the title of the paper says, no evidence actually exists of this hypothesized heat of molecular dissociation. The existence of the problem is not evidence of the hypothesis. In this case, there is no evidence at all about the broken hydrogen molecules. But it was the best idea they could come up so that's all the evidence that is needed! (Can you imagine if our normal-people jobs were held to such low standards?) The whole paper amounts to an exercise in creative writing. It is a few pages of pretty graphs floating on a canvas of creative prose, bookended by a block of co-authors on one end and a block of citations on the other. The goal is to make the bookends so formidable that no one will dare question the contents the sits between them.

NASA's Kepler Witnesses Vampire Star System Undergoing Super-Outburst (link)

A new search of Kepler archival data has uncovered an unusual super-outburst from a previously unknown dwarf nova. The system brightened by a factor of 1,600 over less than a day before slowly fading away.

The star system in question consists of a white dwarf star with a brown dwarf companion about one-tenth as massive as the white dwarf. A white dwarf is the leftover core of an aging Sun-like star and contains about a Sun's worth of material in a globe the size of Earth. A brown dwarf is an object with a mass between 10 and 80 Jupiters that is too small to undergo nuclear fusion.

The brown dwarf circles the white dwarf star every 83 minutes at a distance of only 250,000 miles (400,000 km) – about the distance from Earth to the Moon. They are so close that the white dwarf's strong gravity strips material from the brown dwarf, sucking its essence away like a vampire. The stripped material forms a disk as it spirals toward the white dwarf (known as an accretion disk).

I can't find the paper for this one, but we know the convention. Most of those confident numbers are not actually observed but are inferences taken from a model of the mechanism they believe to have caused the unexpected super-outburst. You can probably guess what that mechanism is, too. (Hint, it's the same one they use to explain nearly every unexplained phenomena in the cosmos.)

Theories suggest that a super-outburst is triggered when the accretion disk reaches a tipping point. As it accumulates material, it grows in size until the outer edge experiences gravitational resonance with the orbiting brown dwarf. This might trigger a thermal instability, causing the disk to get superheated.

Yep, good old-fashioned accretion disks show themselves again. How do they explain the observed outburst? You see, a tipping point is reached when a gravitational resonance triggers a thermal instability. (In other words, they have no idea.)

"These dwarf nova systems have been studied for decades, so spotting something new is pretty tricky," said Ridden-Harper. "We see accretion disks all over – from newly forming stars to supermassive black holes – so it's important to understand them."

Correction: they see accretion disks nowhere. They hypothesize about accretion disks all over. Very big difference. But in their world, a hypothesis is as good as an observation, so long as there are enough co-authors listed. Seeing is believing but, to them, believing is seeing.

How Earth Climate Models Help Scientists Picture Life on Unimaginable Worlds (link)

Yes, this is a real headline from the NASA site, but is anyone surprised anymore? The same climate models that tell us Manhattan is currently underwater are sure to tell us a lot about planets so far away that they cannot be seen directly - only inferred by their effect on a host star.

In scanning the cosmos with large ground-based and space telescopes, astronomers have discovered an eclectic assortment of worlds that seem drawn from the imagination.

It's their symbolism, not mine, but I won't contest it. It's interesting how often their metaphors are inadvertently revealing. It's like a deep truth try to claw out however it can.

Models such as ROCKE-3D begin with only grains of basic information about an exoplanet: its size, mass, and distance from its star. Scientists can infer these things by watching the light from a star dip as a planet crosses in front of it, or by measuring the gravitational tugging on a star as a planet circles it.

These scant physical details inform equations that comprise up to a million lines of computer code needed to build the most sophisticated climate models. The code instructs a computer like NASA's Discover supercomputer to use established rules of nature to simulate global climate systems. 

That is a good description of the problem. A few scant data points are fed into models with up to a million lines of code. The result is... pretty much whatever you want it to be. If you're "established rules of nature" are really just establishment rules of nature, then your results align with the consensus and they give you money.

Discovering life on distant planets is a gamble, Del Genio noted: “So if we want to observe most wisely, we have to take recommendations from climate models, because that’s just increasing the odds.”

This is utter nonsense. They're just trying to find a way to latch on the climate change funding narrative. The only odds that are increased here are the the odds that more grant money will be incoming. Even if it somehow made sense that earthly climate models would help with the exoplanet searches, our climate models are wrong so they would only hinder progress. It's like saying that to find Earthlike planets, we need to factor in the polling models that showed Hillary Clinton taking an easy win. Not only does it make no sense, but it would still be wrong even it if did.

New Mission Will Take 1st Peek at Sun’s Poles (link)

Solar Orbiter, a collaboration between the European Space Agency, or ESA, and NASA, will have its first opportunity to launch from Cape Canaveral on Feb. 7, 2020, at 11:15 p.m. EST. Launching on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, the spacecraft will use Venus’s and Earth’s gravity to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane — the swath of space, roughly aligned with the Sun’s equator, where all planets orbit. From there, Solar Orbiter's bird’s eye view will give it the first-ever look at the Sun's poles.

An interesting probe that's about to launch. I don't have any predictions to offer, but expect that any novel observations made will only contrast the standard solar model (as has already occurred with the Parker probe).

The Senate Should Impeach

We've not been covering the impeachment proceedings here. One reason is that the event is completely mainstream. There's no shortage of commentary and analysis, so there's little left to say. Another reason is that I just can't compel myself to care about it. It's not very interesting. My limited exposure has been seeing the news headlines on the TVs at the gym (also over live footage of Schiff talking), and then this Viva Frei video discussing Schiff's closing arguments. I couldn't even make it 3 minutes into that video because I can't stand to hear Peter Schiff talk. Of course he's lying and the whole thing is a blatant sham, so who cares what he's saying? I notice that hardly anyone in the bloglist (on the sidebar) is talking about the impeachment either. All those writers are, if not outright pro-Trump partisans, at least savvy enough to understand political theater when they see it. You'd think such people would be quite livid at seeing the coup attempt now move into the Senate, but largely they are ignoring it for the same reason I am: it's just not that interesting.

It doesn't even seem like the goal of the hearings is to impeach. The goal of the hearings is to have the hearings. Schiff is up there getting his earthly reward. He gets to stand on the pulpit preaching as if he is the courageous defender of virtue, and everyone has to watch and pretend that it is so. He undoubtedly fancies himself as a Cicero, a great orator standing against the rising tyranny. It's an inversion of reality, of course, but to him it's as good as real. The Democrats have pursued the strategy largely for lack of anything better to do. The moment there was a reprieve in witch hunting, "the squad" started calling Pelosi a racist. Suddenly, impeachment proceedings sounded kinda nice. They know Trump won't be removed from office, and that the stunt is likely to backfire, but they hope that they can keep Trump on his heels with fake investigations until he is voted out in the fall.

Even if they succeed, then what? Trump is out and Pence is in. Not much will change. The oval office will still be occupied by someone considered an absolute heretic by The Cult. The only difference is that the Washington establishment will have demonstrated that unauthorized elections can be overturned. Who does that benefit? Not them. The illusion of democracy is the source of their legitimacy. No, it would benefit right-wing dissidents. If there is one principle that divides us from the rest of conservaties, it is that we will not win back our nation through elections. Democracy took our country, and will not give it back willingly. The sooner our fellow Americans realize this, the sooner we can at least stop the bleeding. Nothing would be more in our favor that having a president ousted for the crimes of his opponent.

In this case, the show of power can only backfire. It does not punish the voters whom they'd like to punish. It may punish Trump, but that won't deter ambitious men from seeking the office. If they fail, then Trump becomes stronger because the threat of impeachment will have already been exhausted. If thy succeed, then they make our case for us, which is that the democracy is a sham and we are vassals of the Empire of Columbia. It would destroy civic nationalism for us.

Because the outcome isn't that important, it's just not that interesting. Watching the Senate turn into a circus during the Kavanaugh hearings was interesting. It was an outrage! But that seal has been broken. After all that hysteria, watching the Senate now engage in a fake trial is hardly noteworthy. No one cares, and no one is watching. Whether the Democrats stab themselves in the eye or shoot themselves in the foot, and whatever lies they spew between now and the time they get there, is just not something anyone wants to waste their time on.

Real Climate Science

Tony Heller shows how government institutions like NASA misrepresent climate data.

It's very hard for reasonably intelligent people, when provided with this data, not to come to the conclusion that there is a clear trend of warming, and that anyone who refutes the trend is a "science denier" because the data is right there as clear as day. Their worldview suffers two major flaws.

First, they can't imagine that NASA would be dishonest, and assume that anyone confidently declaring "fake data!!!" is far more likely to be the dishonest party. However, NASA may actually be the most dishonest organization within the entire government (which is saying a lot these days). Because of NASA, people the world over look up at the night sky and marvel that man walked around on its surface half a century ago. It is the greatest lie ever fabricated. Compared to that, skewing some temperature data is pedestrian.

Second, people don't understand the difference between raw data and model outputs. To a certain extent that is understandable because NASA (whom they trust) is doing everything it can to sew confusion on that matter. In the most recent NASA News column on this blog, we dove into a few papers being promoted by the NASA homepage. They were peer-reviewed by major journals, and yet routinely passed off model outputs as measurements. Most of the people who follow the NASA newsfeed, and even many who dig into the journals as well, are left with the impression that NASA has measured the size of a neutron star... and that's that. It's a cold fact that cannot be argued against. But it isn't actually a fact. It's an opinion! It is not a fundamental measurement, but the result of a process which takes completely different set of data and tries to infer what certain measurements would be, based on the modeler's understanding of the domain. If it is the modeler's opinion that pulsars are caused by neutron stars, then the model is going to return some opinionated measurements of those stars.

This is the same phenomenon that caused the great polling fiasco of 2016. For many months, we said the polls were wrong. (I actually made a good chunk of change because of it.) The liberals told us not only that we were wrong, but that it was absurd to call polls wrong, which are just a collection of data and thus - facts. Well, they were wrong because the polling data that gets released to the public are model outputs. Because it's impossible to get a perfectly accurate poll of American voters without questioning every single one, they scale the data to try to make it representative of the larger group. For instance, if they find that 60% of those who respond are women, they'll attempt to adjust the results to account for that. It's the adjusted data that gets promoted, not the raw numbers. That works fine as long as the pollster is competent, knowledgeable, and not biased to prefer a particular outcome.

The same flawed logic causes huge problems in such disparate fields as astrophysics, climate studies, and political punditry. But ask yourself, of these groups of people, which do you expect to understand the implications of viewing adjusted data rather than raw data?

• Facebook users
• political activists
• naive college graduates
• news anchors reading a teleprompter
• high school science teachers
• pundits on corporate talk shows
• politicians
• esteemed scientists representing renown research institutions who are published in premier Journals

It is, of course, the scientists whom we should most expect to know better. That has been why this blog has slowly shifted focus from politics, towards the narratives promoted by the press, and now more towards the scientists and their institutions. Because, if even the scientists aren't even held to the standard of understanding the difference between raw data versus the inferences made from that data, then there's no way we can expect the people of those other groups to do so as well.

While I have been following Tony Heller for a while on YouTube, I only just realized he keeps a blog with an RSS feed. It is very active, and has been added to the bloglist on the sidebar. I recommend following and sharing his videos, as they are very accessible to the general public.

Contrabang! #35 Surprising Not Surprising

Astronomers Find A Galaxy Of Unusual Size (G.O.U.S.), And Discover Why It Exists (link)

Above a certain size, spiral galaxies shouldn’t exist. A single major merger — where two galaxies of comparable mass interact to form a larger one — will almost always destroy that spiral structure, producing a giant elliptical instead. The only ultra-large spiral galaxies we typically find are in the process of gravitationally interacting with a neighbor, producing an extended but temporary “grand spiral” structure.

But for every rule, there are remarkable exceptions.

There it is. To cosmologists, rules are not really rules. They are way beyond the point of demanding that their theories explain observations, and can happily discard contradictions as "remarkable exceptions."

The fact that a galaxy this large and massive is so regularly shaped, with such low levels of star formation and so few globular clusters (1600) for its incredible size really does make this a cosmic unicorn.

A cosmic unicorn...what an apt metaphor for a science that has devolved into little more than mysticism and fairy tales.

Did LIGO Just Discover Two Fundamentally Different Types Of Neutron Star Mergers? (link)

No, they didn't, because neutron stars don't exist.

LIGO just announced the second neutron star-neutron star merger ever seen in gravitational waves. It doesn’t match the first.

That they don't match is of little surprise.

Still, the April 25, 2019 signal that showed up in the LIGO Livingston detector — the one that was online at the time — was extremely strong, achieving a detection signal-to-noise significance of 12.9, where 5 is the “gold standard” for a robust detection. The form of the signal was incredibly analogous to what was seen back on August 17, 2019 in both LIGO detectors, but had an inherently greater amplitude, indicating a higher set of masses for both neutron stars, as well as a higher combined mass.

The signal-to-noise numbers are not true measurements, but guesses based on their noise cancelation methods. There are no strong signals seen in the raw data.

The lack of [an accompanying gamma ray] signal appears, on its surface, to suggest something absolutely remarkable. Perhaps lower-mass neutron star mergers produce gamma rays, ejecta, the Universe’s heaviest elements, and a multi-wavelength, long-lasting afterglow. And perhaps, above a certain mass threshold, higher-mass neutron star mergers simply interact and go directly to a black hole, swallowing up all of the matter associated with both stars, producing no heavy elements and emitting no further observable signal at all.

This is an eminent possibility from a theoretical perspective. If two neutron stars merge together and don’t immediately create an event horizon, an enormous, runaway fusion reaction will begin to occur.

I'm not spun up on the intricacies of neutron star merger theory (because it doesn't matter) but it's not clear what sort of fusion could occur. Fusion, as normally understood, is the merger of two separate atomic nuclei into one larger nucleus. How does that apply to the hypothetical neutronium...have they invented new hypothetical physics for that state of matter too?

What falls out of this article is speculation that the reason the more recent neutron star merger detection wasn't accompanied by a gamma ray burst observation is that an event horizon formed too quickly for any signal to escape. So they already have an excuse handy for when the highly touted multisignal messenger search fails to pan out.

The Milky Way Is Gaining New Stars From A Collision That Hasn’t Even Occurred Yet (link)

In the second paragraph, Ethan shares the surprise of the recent discovery of a dense collection of stars discovered in the far fringes of the Milky Way galaxy in the direction of the Magellanic Clouds (emphasis added)

Thanks to the all-sky coverage of ESA’s Gaia satellite — designed to measure properties of stars such as parallax, motion through the sky, stellar colors, etc. — humanity has gained the ability to measure more than a billion stars within about 100,000 light-years of home: almost the entire extent of the Milky Way galaxy. When scientists used this data set to search for new, blue stars, they got quite a surprise: 94,000 light-years away, deep in the galactic halo’s outskirts, a giant collection of young stars was found. It’s the first of its kind, and scientists think they understand why.

A few lines later, he re-emphasizes the rarity of the finding.

Remarkably, all of these factors line up, and this new star cluster really is a finding like nothing ever before.

And yet, just a few lines further, the surprise has already worn off.

It’s no surprise that the gravitational interactions between the Milky Way and each of the Magellanic Clouds would lead to the formation of new stars; the tidal forces between gas-filled objects often triggers new star-formation events.

It's common in the cosmology world to see new observations called surprising, only to soon be explained away as somehow predicted by the standard models. It is less common to see that process unfold in the span of only a few paragraphs!

From the standard gravity-dominated view of the cosmos, the recent observations amount to a "remarkable conclusion that changes the way we think our local galactic neighborhood" because "new gas is already being funneled into the Milky way from satellite galaxies that are still nearly 200,000 light-years away."

From an EU-perspective, it is understood that the Milky Way is related and coupled to the other objects within the local group, and the discovery of plasma flowing between the Milky Way and the Magellanic clouds is little different than the recent (surprising) discoveries of massive current sheaths connecting galaxies over enormous distances.

Ask Ethan: Does A Time-Stopping Paradox Prevent Black Holes From Growing? (link)

A reader asks

[F]or any object falling into a black hole, time slows down upon approach and comes to a standstill as the object reaches the event horizon. Reaching and passing that border would take an infinite amount of time measured by a distant observer… if ‘eating’ matter would take infinite time… how could supermassive black holes come into existence?

Yet another black hole paradox, this one asks how we can observe the growth of black holes when infalling matter will appear forever in suspended animation. From our perspective, once a black hole is formed there is no reason for us to ever observe it grow any larger, thus we could have no evidence of the supermassive black holes alleged to exist at galactic centers.

It sounds like a paradox, but relativity explains how it all really happens.

Ethan's track record of clarifying black hole paradoxes is not stellar. Regular readers may recall that some time ago he offered up the existence of ring singularities to explain the paradox of infinite densities in black holes...but that was the wrong paradox! The ring singularity is a construction meant to explain the infinite angular velocity paradox of black holes. It's hard to keep them all straight! Perhaps he will redeem himself with this newer attempt.

Imagine that we begin with a black hole of one solar mass, that doesn’t rotate, with an event horizon of the exact size that our Sun would be if it collapsed into a Schwarzschild black hole: a sphere of about 3 kilometers in radius. Now, let’s take another one solar mass object — perhaps another star just like our Sun — and let’s allow it to fall in to this black hole.

Never mind...another epic fail. Why does Ethan specify a Schwarzschild black hole, rather than using the term black hole in a more general sense? To convey that he is smart and knows what he's talking about, most likely. (Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.) The Schwarzschild solution is valid for a universe with only a single, massive body. This can be confirmed easily enough merely by browsing Wikipedia.

This solution pertains when the mass M of one body is overwhelmingly greater than the mass m of the other.

Thus, his hypothetical setup is inherently invalid. There cannot be both a Schwarzschild black hole of one solar mass and another object of one stellar mass. His answer is that once the new mass is at the event horizon, then that is good enough because the event horizon will expand with the addition of the new mass to the system. Perhaps he should re-work the example for a single particle falling in.

New Book Says Trump Really Mean To Generals

A forthcoming book by a Washington Post reporter is fully dedicated - unsurprisingly - to attacking the current President. Vox Day provides of snippet of some DailyBeast coverage of the new book.

The president reportedly called Afghanistan a “loser war,” and told his military leaders: “You’re all losers... You don’t know how to win anymore... I want to win... We don’t win any wars anymore... We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.” It’s reported that Trump was so angry at this point that he wasn’t breathing properly.

In his most incendiary comment, Trump—a man who, remember, managed to get out of military duty in Vietnam due to a supposed bone-spur problem—is said to have told the assembled forces, “I wouldn’t go to war with you people... You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

The comment reportedly left the room dumbfounded. Tillerson was “visibly seething,” and decided to speak up. The secretary of state said, “No, that’s just wrong... Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.” When the meeting ended soon afterward, Tillerson reportedly stood with a small group of confidants and said, “He’s a fucking moron.”

One senior official summed up the meeting: “We needed to change how he thinks about this, to course correct... They were dismayed and in shock when not only did it not have the intended effect, but he dug in his heels and pushed it even further on the spectrum, further solidifying his views.”

It's always amusing when they try to appeal to red-state America with their TDS. Flyover country loves muh military more than anything, right? Supposedly, Trump's brusque handling of the generals should dampen his support among his red-blooded base. What they don't realize is that most Americans' hatred for the Washington Post is stronger than their loyalty to Washington's armies. This book won't move the needle at all and, if it did, it will only serve to lower the military's approval rating.

How is he wrong? The liberals, who only a decade or so ago were holding anti-war rallies across the globe, are now attempting to humiliate the president for not understanding the virtues of perpetual warfare. The portion that Vox quoted is not even the most condescending aspect of the article.

The book states that the meeting took place six months into Trump’s presidency after his generals became concerned about “gaping holes” in Trump’s knowledge of America’s key alliances. The idea was to bring Trump to the Pentagon’s Situation Room, where military leaders, so the plan went, would give him a crash course on who America’s allies were, why they were worth keeping on side, and where on earth they were located.

The account states Trump repeatedly interrupted the lesson after apparently being triggered by a word or phrase uttered by the military leaders. One example given is that he heard the word “base” during the lesson, which sparked him into launching a tirade about how “crazy” and “stupid” it was that the U.S. paid to build and maintain bases overseas.

Because of the rabid anti-Trump coloring of the Washington Post and the DailyBeast, it's impossible to tell what the actual attitude of the generals was but, if they were even a fraction as condescending as his described here, then it's no wonder he grew angry with the proceedings. One can imagine about how the meeting went. "And if you look at this spot on the pretty map, Mr President, this is where the Kurds live. The Kurds are a key asset to US interests because blah blah blah."

It's hard for the Washington Post elites to understand that most Trump supporters have served in the military or have close friends & family who have. The rank-and-file somewhat despise the general staff. It's well understood that there is some strange magic in getting promoted to general, which somehow involves passing over all the highly competent and charismatic Colonels & Lt Colonels and picking slimy, weaselly careerists. Vox calls them "mediocre perfumed princes," which errs on the side of being polite. These people really are self-appointed royalty who are largely disconnected from their troops and their missions.

The worst story I heard had to do with human remains (HR) flights, which I heard from someone who was directly involved. Every so often, the Air Force was tasked with sending a cargo plane to gather the bodies of deceased servicemen to return them to the US for burial. A general had planned to travel within theater for a golf trip, but his personal jet went down for maintenance. There were no other similar planes available, so he ordered that a cargo jet tasked with HR duty be re-assigned for his use. This caused quite a stir in the office responsible for processing those requests. Ultimately, the shop lead - a master sergeant - dismissed the request. It's unheard of for an enlisted man to contradict a general, but in this case the general's request was too much for any of the people tasked with carrying it out to stomach. They were shocked that a general would so callously display that dead soldiers and airmen were less important than his golf outing.

Those are the same generals that the Washington Post just can't believe the president would treat harshly. They're the same strategists who have implemented the current strategy of subverting whichever faction seems to be the strongest. That's why they can't ever leave, because the region was de-stabilized when Hussein was ousted and order has only been maintained by constant outside intervention. There are now Americans old enough to vote who were born after the Afghanistan war started. What we don't need is another anti-Trump harangue but a book titled something like How To Win A War In Under Two Decades and provide a copy to every general in the country.

The Inverse Of Vice

It is often assumed that virtue is the opposite of vice, in the way that good is the opposite of bad. That comparison does not hold, because good/bad is an abstract polarity that may not actually exist in nature. A character attribute becomes a virtue when it exists in the correct proportions rather than in some extreme. The opposite of ice-cold bath water is not tepid, but scalding-hot. The balance is somewhere in the middle, and depends on context. If a bully is hurling insults, it may be virtuous to ignore him; if he is hurling stones, then no good will come of ignoring it.

This turns out to be a significant problem in general. People - who mostly prefer virtue to vice - are nevertheless led to one vice in the course of rejecting another. This turns out to be an acute problem in liberal democracy. It takes a certain threshold of sophistication to understand that virtues are proportional rather than extremal, that history is cyclical rather than linear, and that cause/effect dynamics are probabilistic rather than deterministic. The voting public is not up to that level of sophistication, as can be evidenced by the political messaging.

The moral dilemma is that the quest for virtue is apt to lead to vice. They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I always thought that meant that people are lazy, in the way that the gyms are always busy for a few weeks after New Year's resolutions are declared, and then thin out. But that's not right. Hell is the domain of real vice, not half-assed virtues. Few people are motivated by calls to be evil, but may with great enthusiasm take on anti-vice crusades which have the effect of injecting great energy into the cause of the opposing vice. Good intentions, misapplied, are far more dangerous than neutrality or even evil intentions.

How does evil take hold in people, who are generally good? By inversion. We know that the left is inverted. They reject the West as evil, and so seek its opposite. Of course they are misguided, as Western civilization has given more good to the world than probably all other civilizations combined. But the West is a collection of people, and thus flawed. Many of our opponents these days are working in reaction to the horrors of the two World Wars. Obviously there was no virtue in sending Europe's young men off to a pointless meat-grinder. So they have sought the opposite of that vice, which has lead to the fervent adoption of anti-nationalism and the rejection of traditional European identities of any sort. It's the reason that Hitler has replaced Satan, and Nazis the forces of evil. It's why they avow that Europeans have no culture, because to acknowledge that would lead invariably to the suggestion that those cultures are worth fighting for.

Perhaps it could be argued that the West became too Puritanical. The reaction has been militant atheism. This blog practically obsesses over what a disaster materialism has been for us. The West without a doubt was - and still is - overly imperial. The reaction to that has been to open up our own borders to the world. Invade the world, invite the world. Vice, vice. The inverse of vice is more vice, and those two opposing vices do not cancel each other out. Perhaps you think the old West was too disenfranchising to women. Maybe it was. The opposite has been the emerging matriarchy of today. Sweden boasts that they are the world's first feminist government. They are now under existential threat due to the immigration of foreigners and their own anemic birth rates. It's not nice or fair to tell women they can't vote, or probably even ideal, as they possess a great deal of social acuity, attention to detail, and risk aversion that men often lack. And yet, Sweden was never destroyed by chauvinism or militarism or empire, but a few decades of feminism may ruin the nation entirely.

A similar dynamic is seen with the historical oppression of homosexuality. Whatever your thoughts on that, it should be clear that the answer should not be the sexualization and castration of schoolchildren. That's the problem with the inverse of vice, is there is no proportionality. Slight & perceived vices are countered by extreme & actual vices. Extremism is always reactionary. This is why we must have a positive identity. We must have a firm understanding of the virtues we strive for, rather than the vices we oppose. If the virtue is not clear, then the reaction will lead surely from one vice to another. Ever since the West abandoned Christ - the ideal embodiment of virtue - we have reeled from one vice to the next. The young men of Europe were crushed between the gears of opposing ideologies that rose to fill the vacuum left by God - just as Nietzsche predicted. We'll never get to a good place by walking backwards. We must face fully towards the light to have any hope of getting to a better place.

Farmers Rejecting Modern Machinery

After serving a few years overseas in the military, the cars being driven in America seemed quite conspicuous. Our vehicles are big, shiny, and expensive. Even in other rich countries, such as Japan and Western Europe, the cars are simpler, smaller, and boxier. It was quite clear that, compared to other countries, we spend a lot of money on vehicles, for little gain in practicality (and probably a loss). I returned around the time of the Great Recession. For two years I had heard endlessly about the tough times, people out of work, kicked out of their homes, etc. I was then surprised to see the highways not just full of $50,000 trucks and SUVs, but numerous toys as well: RVs, sport cars, powerboats, motorcycles, and the like. There were even trikes!

I see something similar these days whenever I drive through the countryside. The farm equipment is very expensive. Farmers like to leave their tracked Cat tractors and half million dollar John Deere combines out for people to see. Such vehicles are many times more expensive than the shiny passenger vehicles driving by, and could be traded for two or maybe three decent homes in the area. I always wonder if such monstrous modern machines are worth the investment. I assume the farmers have done their numbers, although there is reason to wonder if they actually haven't and the pricey machines are not economical.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that many farmers now believe they are poor investments, and are instead buying up 40-year-old machinery.

Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren’t as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software.

This past summer I put out an article called Maintenance Free Means Unmaintainable. This was in the context of windows, as I was looking to replace my 50-year-old wooden windows with modern, more efficient windows. The tipoff came in the form of door-to-door window salesmen, who were aggressive - which meant there were juicy profit margins to be had. It didn't take a lot of number crunching to realize that the plastic replacement windows - with their 20-year lifespans - would never recoup their costs in energy savings before being tossed into a landfill. Not only are the old wooden windows more economical, they are more environmentally conscious. (The major upside to modern windows is that they are easier to clean. That may be a perk to lazy people, but not to me. Because I'm very lazy and rarely clean windows anyway.)

My old storm windows - particularly those on the southern exposure, were in very rough shape. Exposed wood, cracked glass, and sections where the glazing had decayed to nothing at all... plus some shoddy maintenance by the previous owners. After watching a handful of YouTube videos and a trip (or five) to the hardware store, I was able to strip the windows, replace broken glass, sand, glaze, and re-paint all of them by hand - for the total cost of probably a couple hundred bucks and lots of hours in the garage. I'm now trained in home window maintenance and can handle most common problems that will arise. On the other hand, what would I have done if one of the new fancy windows cracked and leaked out all the argon gas? I could do nothing. Perhaps hire a window technician to take a look at it but, even then, it may turn out that the whole sash must be thrown into a landfill and replaced with a new one. A similar trend occurs in modern farming.

There are some good things about the software in newer machines, said Peterson. The dealer will get a warning if something is about to break and can contact the farmer ahead of time to nip the problem in the bud. But if something does break, the farmer is powerless, stuck in the field waiting for a service truck from the dealership to come out to their farm and charge up to $150 per hour for labor.

The trend across the board is towards products that are either completely unmaintainable, or at least unmaintainable to the owner. It's not just the money spent on technicians, but the loss of control over the operation. The farmer finds himself at the mercy of the technician. Hopefully he gets out here soon. Hopefully he's not an idiot. The only justification for the massive machinery is that planting & harvesting windows can be short. The longer it takes, the more the risk of a change in the weather. Not only is his equipment liable to break down right when he needs it most, by everyone else's will too... and they'll all need a technician. A few days' delay could risk the kind of disaster that the pricey machines were supposed to prevent anyway.

If I have a modern-window problem in the house, I must hope that there is a competent repairman in the area who charges a fair rate and isn't booked out for half the summer. Then I must still dedicate time to the task by being available to supervise the operation - probably taking off work to do so, at a time that may not be ideal. On the other hand, I can repair wooden storm windows at my leisure, on nights & weekends when the garage temperature is bearable. Having control of the operation is an even bigger benefit than the money saved on parts & labor.

There is also a pride of ownership aspect that doesn't come with hiring out the work. It is far more gratifying to have labored to provide a home for the family, rather than only writing a check. I get more satisfaction now gazing at the house I've spent so many hours on, even than if a professional had come and done more quality work (which is often not the case, in my experience). The farmers feel a similar motivation in their operations.

“That goes against the pride of ownership, plus your lifetime of skills you’ve built up being able to fix things,” Peterson said.

The major perks of farming are the independence and self-reliance that comes with the job. Not one farmer out there wants to have to tell his wife that harvesting is on hold until the kid from the dealership can come bail him out with a firmware upgrade. He wants to say he's going to go do some impromptu welding, or rewire a switch, or anything but wait for a kid with an iPad.

We should take a note from the farmers in Minnesota. There is a hefty, invisible cost of unmaintainable products, and most new products these days are less maintainable than the old ones.

NASA News #3 Cosmic Makeovers and Speed Limits

Ethan's blog was boring this week, but there's an abundance of NASA material following the holiday season lull. I've picked three and given more substantial (and technical) treatments than normal.

NASA's Great Observatories Help Astronomers Build a 3D Visualization of an Exploded Star (link)

The headline is not a lie, as the multi-spectrum image of the nebula is phenomenal.

Of special interest are the core x-ray emissions, shown here in isolation.

In the electric universe (EU) world, this is a canonical plasma torus. In the mainstream viewpoint, it is unexpected and must be explained. In their view, the central star is the source of power for the whole structure and, since the system pulsates at 30 beats per second, the star is assumed to be a pulsar - a rapidly spinning neutron star.

It's worth keeping in mind that every aspect of neutron stars is either theoretical or unknown. The only reason they exist is because scientists could offer no other explanation for rapid oscillations of powerful light sources other than some rapidly spinning star. Everything from that point on is conjecture. They reckon that any object which rotated many times per second must be very compact and dense, thus they proposed it was made of neutronium - a substance of pure neutrons which were chosen to avoid the problems with rapidly spinning and mutually repulsive charged particles like protons. There are problems with neutrons too. For instance, they are known to be quite unstable outside of a balanced atomic nucleus. It is assumed that they act differently when compressed under intense gravity.

The other problem with neutron stars - besides the flights of theoretical fantasy and the suspension of reasonable skepticism - is that all aspects of them are refuted by observations. For one, neutron stars exhibit copious amounts of synchrotron radiation, which is emitted by high-velocity particles when they are accelerated by a magnetic field. Thus, cosmologists state that pulsars have the strongest known magnetic fields in the universe, which are caused by the spinning neutron star - but they have no idea how. Also, pulsars are observed to "glitch" and shift pulsating frequencies. The Crab Nebula's most significant glitch was a noticeable increase in frequency that persisted for two days, before returning to the normal rate.

The theory that the central star powers the whole nebula is refuted by evidence. For instance, several years ago a study on Crab Nebula gamma rays showed that they were emitted some distance away from the central star. This observation is actually congruent with the X-ray image shown above, since most of the x-rays come from the plasma torus and jets.

With all that background, the NASA statements can be read with some level of amusement.

This neutron star is the super-dense collapsed core of an exploded star and is now a pulsar that rotates at a blistering rate of 30 times per second. A disk of X-ray-emitting material, spewing jets of high-energy particles perpendicular to the disk, surrounds the pulsar. The infrared light in this image shows synchrotron radiation, formed from streams of charged particles spiraling around the pulsar's strong magnetic fields. The visible light is emission from oxygen that has been heated by higher-energy (ultraviolet and X-ray) synchrotron radiation. The delicate tendrils seen in visible light form what astronomers call a "cage" around the rich tapestry of synchrotron radiation, which in turn encompasses the energetic fury of the X-ray disk and jets. These multiwavelength interconnected structures illustrate that the pulsar is the main energy source for the emission seen by all three telescopes.

Somehow, the existence of "tendrils" - their term for plasma filaments - are proof that the nebula is powered by a central neutron star.

These nested structures are particular to the Crab Nebula. They reveal that the nebula is not a classic supernova remnant as once commonly thought. Instead, the system is better classified as a pulsar wind nebula. A traditional supernova remnant consists of a blast wave, and debris from the supernova that has been heated to millions of degrees. In a pulsar wind nebula, the system's inner region consists of lower-temperature gas that is heated up to thousands of degrees by the high-energy synchrotron radiation.

In all likelihood, the Crab Nebula is not so different from other supernovae. Even this description hints at the problems of those, such as the outer "debris" being heated to millions of degrees by collision with interstellar gases (which is asinine, since the thin plasmas don't behave like normal gases). In their model of a pulsar wind nebula, the synchrotron radiation heats up the system and causes secondary emissions. But the synchrotron radiation is already a secondary effect of the neutron star's magnetic field. This all amounts to what I call Backdoor EU, as the nebula is the result of magnetic fields and electric currents in either case, but the neutron star comes with all sorts of added complexity, since they are always striving to explain observed electric effects as having a basis in conventional, gravity-driven dynamics (but they get very unconventional anyway).

"It is truly via the multiwavelength structure that you can more cleanly comprehend that it's a pulsar wind nebula," Summers said. "This is an important learning objective. You can understand the energy from the pulsar at the core moving out to the synchrotron cloud, and then further out to the filaments of the cage."

Synchrotron cloud is a way of not saying magnetic field. The term pulsar wind nebula should be interpreted as an inadvertent admission that the mainstream models of supernovae and pulsars are failed. The wind nebula is a way to take the EU explanation but wrap it in conventional terms. Under EU, the plasma torus & jets, the synchrotron radiation, and the pulsating are all easily understood. If you've ever had the pleasure of sitting under a flickering fluorescent light, then you've experienced a pulsating plasma.

What this articles exemplifies is very good astronomy coupled with very bad science. The visualization of the nebula from several advanced observation platforms is an incredible application of technology. It may seem wasteful then that the results are shoe-horned into a false understanding of the cosmos, but eventually the dam will have to burst.

Astronomers Spot Distant Galaxy Group Driving Ancient Cosmic Makeover (link)

An international team of astronomers funded in part by NASA has found the farthest galaxy group identified to date. Called EGS77, the trio of galaxies dates to a time when the universe was only 680 million years old, or less than 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

More significantly, observations show the galaxies are participants in a sweeping cosmic makeover called reionization. The era began when light from the first stars changed the nature of hydrogen throughout the universe in a manner akin to a frozen lake melting in the spring. This transformed the dark, light-quenching early cosmos into the one we see around us today.

Those first two paragraphs of the NASA article make the claims. For a more technical analysis, we'll look at the referenced article (pdf).

We obtained deep NB [narrow band] imaging observations of the Extended Groth Strip (EGS) field (RA14:19:16 DEC +52:52:13), as part of the DAWN survey. This is a uniquely deep survey given its sensitivity as well as area coverage, with a primary objective of identifying galaxies at redshift z = 7.7.

The study was setup explicitly to find z = 7.7 galaxies. The narrow band observations were calibrated to detect a wavelength that is equivalent to a know UV emission line of hydrogen that has been redshifted into infrared. They also considered other observations of the candidate galaxies in visible and near-infrared spectra.

The data reduction was primarily done using the NEWFIRM science data reduction pipeline. However, for generating the final stack of all the images produced by the pipeline (sky subtracted, cosmic rays cleaned, re-projected) we used our own scripts to remove bad frames that were visually inspected in order to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of astronomical objects.

This is vague and questionable. What scripts were used, and what data was considered to be bad? Would an independent researcher be able to duplicate their findings given the same data?

Each of our candidates had to satisfy all of the following criteria: 1) 5σ detection in the NB filter, 2) 3σ significant narrowband excess (compared to the F125W image), and 3) non-detection (< 2σ) in the individual optical images (F606W, F814W). Criteria 1 & 2 ensure real emission line sources while criterion 3 eliminates most low-redshift sources.

To clarify the criteria 1) the signal in the target wavelength must be very strong, 2) if the signal is much stronger than the near-IR signal, it must indicate emissions lines, and 3) if visible light is not detected, it is proof of a high-redshift source.

The second and third criteria both depend on assumptions. There are objects in the sky that shine brightly in infrared only, such as CW Leo, which is interpreted to be a highly obscured red dwarf star located right here in our own galaxy.

To measure the photometric redshifts, we made use of spectral energy distribution (SEDs) templates. We obtained the best-fit SEDs using EAZY which provides photometric redshift probability distribution p(z) by finding the best-fitting combination of redshifted galaxy spectral templates to the observed photometry.

The most abused word in all of astrophysics is measurement. Here they say the redshift is measured, which is not true. They have used modeling software to determine redshift probabilities based on the data. The data is a strong signal at a wavelength of a strong emission line of hydrogen as it would be observed at a redshift of 7.7, and several weak & null signals. The result then is a redshift of 7.7, as would obviously be the result for such a setup. What else would be possible? This all amounts to data laundering. A few photometric data points have been transformed into a spectral signal model, from which a redshift has been "measured." If CW Leo was much dimmer, it may well be assigned a 7.7 redshift by this method.

The paper goes on to provide direct spectrographic data which seems to confirm the redshift, and some other analysis. If the spectrographic data is sound, why bother with the faulty probability modeling at all? Why not go straight to the spectrograph for candidates that fit their criteria? I suspect the authors felt compelled to make some novel contributions besides simply matching a finding in one project with data from another.

Famous Black Hole Has Jet Pushing Cosmic Speed Limit (link)

For years, astronomers have observed radiation from a jet of high energy particles – powered by the black hole – blasting out of the center of M87. They have studied the jet in radio, optical, and X-ray light, including with Chandra. And now by using Chandra observations, researchers have seen that sections of the jet are moving at nearly the speed of light.

Anytime cosmologists talk about observations pushing theoretical limits, there is almost certainly an error. In this case, the limits have actually been broken, and are explained away as an illusion of general relativity. Further, the cosmic speed limit is said to have been broken (or nearly so) by the infamous M87 black hole. It's always fun to watch them explain why black holes are the opposite of black - emitting copious amounts of the most powerful types of radiation - and the opposite of holes - pushing matter away at the highest possible velocities. As usual, they take time to explain the basic premises of why black holes are neither black nor holes.

When matter gets close enough to a black hole, it enters into a swirling pattern called an accretion disk. Some material from the inner part of the accretion disk falls onto the black hole and some of it is redirected away from the black hole in the form of narrow beams, or jets, of material along magnetic field lines. Because this infall process is irregular, the jets are made of clumps or knots that can sometimes be identified with Chandra and other telescopes.

There are no magnetic field lines in nature. Saying that particles are accelerated along magnetic field lines shows that they are grasping to explain the unexpectedly coherent jets which extend millions of light years into the cosmos.

By observing the changes in the jets over time, they estimated their velocities and came up with some surprising numbers.

The researchers used Chandra observations from 2012 and 2017 to track the motion of two X-ray knots located within the jet about 900 and 2,500 light years away from the black hole. The X-ray data show motion with apparent speeds of 6.3 times the speed of light for the X-ray knot closer to the black hole and 2.4 times the speed of light for the other.

Anyone's initial reaction to such a statement would be that something is wrong with the measurements. However, NASA has explained the aberration as an artifact of general relativity.

“One of the unbreakable laws of physics is that nothing can move faster than the speed of light,” said co-author Brad Snios, also of the CfA. “We haven’t broken physics, but we have found an example of an amazing phenomenon called superluminal motion.”

Superluminal motion occurs when objects are traveling close to the speed of light along a direction that is close to our line of sight. The jet travels almost as quickly towards us as the light it generates, giving the illusion that the jet’s motion is much more rapid than the speed of light. In the case of M87, the jet is pointing close to our direction, resulting in these exotic apparent speeds. 

That's a lot of complexity, when other factors could be at play. For one, the galaxy may be closer than believed, with a larger angle of jets. Or, it may just be that the image analysis is junk, which I believe to be the case. The NASA article links to related paper (pdf).

Chandra HRC-I observations were examined for evidence of proper motion in the jet of M87. Any changes are expected to be subtle at the resolution of Chandra as movement at the speed of light over a 5 yr time span in M87 would produce a shift of only ∼ 0.02′′. In the difference map (Figure 1, bottom left), the outward shift of a knot with constant brightness would produce positive residuals (blue) at its outer margin and negative residuals (red) at its inner margin. These features can be seen in the difference image of Knot D, providing clear evidence that it has moved outward along the axis of the jet. No other knot shows such clear evidence of movement, although this may be attributed in part to significant changes in brightness, such as those seen in HST-1 and Knot A.

Assuming that the motion of the knots is equal in velocity to the movement of the particles (which is questionable), then those motions would be very "subtle" over 5 years at the resolutions provided by Chandra. So what we see is the normal process, where signals are massaged out of noisy data by statistical methods, and then those outcomes trumpeted as actual data. In this case, only one of the knots - Knot D - was observed to have clearly drifted in the expected direction, thus it was used for the analysis. (Some people would call that cherry-picking the data.) The knot nearest the galactic center, HST-1, was analyzed using statistical modeling techniques.

The proper motion results from Section 4 provide two equally probable interpretations of the system. The first interpretation is that the measurements are due to motion of the X-ray knots, while the second assumes that brightening and/or fading of substructure within the knots gives the appearance of motion at Chandra’s resolution.

Supposedly this is resolved by comparing to archival Hubble imagery and showing that the knot drifts were congruent in both datasets. What question that is supposed to answer is beyond me, but it does raise another: what is the point of the x-ray imagery then, if it merely confirms what was already observed by Hubble?

Interestingly, the conclusions section takes on an assumption we challenged earlier.

Our determination of the minimum magnetic field strength from the synchrotron cooling model relies on the same electron population being responsible for the X-ray emission at both observing epochs, requiring the knot material to move at relativistic speeds between the observations. This is noteworthy because it implies that the speeds of the jet knots reflect bulk relativistic motion of jet plasma, not just of a disturbance, such as a wave or shock front in the jet. To avoid this conclusion, the jet plasma emitting at the initial knot position would have to cool even faster than assumed, requiring a substantially greater magnetic field. Since the required field strength would then be larger than the equipartition value, this seems unlikely. The simplest conclusion is that the motion of the jet knots directly reflects the bulk speed of the jet plasma

Suddenly they're worried about simplest conclusions! The trend these days is that the scientists are perpetually being shown to have underestimated the effects of magnetic and electric fields. The simplest conclusion is actually that the estimates of equipartition values (performed in 2005) are not accurate. The insistence that knot velocities and particle velocities must be the same is not sound. There's no reason why they can't be an artifact of the larger plasma sheath structures, rather than the individual particles themselves (except their need to validate the black-hole accretion theory). For instance, the northern lights put on mesmerizing displays of dancing wisps of glowing and pulsating atmospheric plasmas. No one believes that the observed movements reflect the velocities of the inbound particles. It's understood that they are an artifact of the electric circuit as a whole.

Also significant is what is missing from the paper. Despite the bold headlines of a cosmic speed limit being "pushed," and the PI claiming, “Our work gives the strongest evidence yet that particles in M87's jet are actually traveling at close to the cosmic speed limit”, there is never a calculation for a near-c value. The calculations are for greater-than-c values, and it's just assumed that they are really near-c and the math would work out of anyone bothered to do it. While the results - if accurate - are evidence of relativistic jets, that much has been known since the mid 1950s when the synchrotron radiation was measured. The results here don't seem to offer any refinement on what is known about them.

We'll finish by analyzing how they finished.

The preference for the synchrotron cooling model together with the agreement in positions and speeds between the X-ray and optical/UV emission provide a strong case that the observed knot speeds reflect the relativistic speed of the jet plasma, not just of a disturbance propagating along the jet.

No, this is not a strong case at all. This paper has taken weak signals, cherry-picked data where it fit expectations, and applied statistical modeling where it didn't. The argument for particle speeds equaling knot speed is based on estimates of magnetic field strength made a decade and a half ago. Most importantly, there is nothing in the paper about particles being determined to be moving near the speed of light, and yet that is the headline that NASA promoted. That is, even if the paper wasn't junk, the NASA headline would still be a lie.

There Are No Open Communities

One of Z's best posts yet was Open And Closed from earlier this week. It begins with the main thesis.

Communities, by definition are closed.

Of all the lies being promoted in the Disinformation Era, the myth of openness is probably the most dangerous; the one that will cause the most pain in the long run. For all our technological achievements, modern western society is not very sophisticated, as it has forgotten what the Greeks called logos - which embodies an understanding of limits and proportions. Virtues taken to the extreme are vices. Too much of a good thing is always a bad thing. Farmers want rain, but not too much. You want the bath water to be hot, but not too hot. A society can be either too open, or too closed. Ideally it should be open enough to prevent stagnation, but not open to invasion or abuse. The ten million Swedes in Sweden can let in ten million Arabs and still be Sweden. The society must be closed enough to maintain itself, in the way cells close themselves off with cell membranes, but allow for the passage of necessary materials. In nature, there is no equivalent of an open society.

Openness in modern society is not a virtue; not only because it is applied without limit, but because it is applied selectively, which means it deployed as a weapon. In the US, there are multitudes of communities permitted for all races but one. When students at the University of Illinois attempted to for a white student's association - similar to the many dozens of racial organizations that already existed - it sparked national outrage and they backed down. The LGBTQP pantheon of celebrated sexual identities is difficult to track, as new identities are constantly created in Gender Studies' PhD dissertations. The reason for the unwieldy list is that it is promoted as a whitelist, but is really a blacklist. It could simply be called the AF - or Anti-Family - alliance. LGBTQP is open to all forms of sexuality except traditional family values, which means LGBTQP is actually a closed community.

Similarly, all colleges and corporations have organizations that explicitly promote the careers of women. Male equivalents are not tolerated...there many not be any at all. Under rule of Equality, Girls Scouts is a community for girls, but Boy Scouts is not a community for boys.

Most alarming is that white countries are not permitted, but all other races and ethnicities are permitted a homeland. There is no great outcry that China is a Chinese country or Saudi Arabia is Arabian. They say America is a melting pot on stolen land, but that is a lie because European countries are not allowed an ethnic heritage either. Brexit was widely denounced as racist because many leave votes were motivated by immigration reform. The rule is that no white communities are allowed, anywhere, in any context. England is not for the English, America is not for the Americans. The single exception to the rule depends on whether Jews are classified as whites or as Semites. In the future, whites wishing to organize should pick a particular ethnicity. For instance, the University does have one white RSO, which is a Polish club. Thus, the white students should have attempted to register an English club, or German club, with the understanding that it is an RSO for Americans, other Anglos, and perhaps Germanics at large.

The 72-Hour Rule

The rule of thumb is that, if the world is up in a hysteria about something Trump did, give it about three days before joining the chorus. The response to the Soleimani assassination has interestingly muddled. We're used to hear the mainstream media operate on a common frequency, often co-ordinating on the verbiage of their headlines and whatnot. Following the strike, responses ranged from a refusal to condemn but vague questioning of Trump's ability to handle the situation, to full-on renunciations of American imperialism. The narrative now seems to be that Trump should have informed Congress before authorizing the strike. Of course, that would not actually be possible, as the Democrats would leak the top secret information in whatever way would derail Trump's decision.

It's not particularly instructive to over-analyze the mainstream media response, since we know they'll simply report in whatever way they believe will be most damaging to the president. Let's look at someone more on our side of things. The Economic Collapse blog (linked on sidebar) is prone to hyperbole and doom scenarios. Let's look at the headlines that unfolded in the course of about a week.

• Iran, It’s Your Move – Trump’s Takedown Of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani Is Likely To Start A Global War
• Iran Vows Revenge Against The United States, And The Phrase “World War 3” Is Now Trending…
• Why Is Iran Flying A Blood Red Flag Over A Famous Mosque That Is Directly Associated With The Mahdi?
• Americans Are Debating About Whether We Will Go To War With Iran, But The Iranians Say The War Has Already Started
• Welcome To World War 3 – Just Pray That You Will Be Able To Survive It
• Everybody In America Should Stand Up And Applaud President Trump, Because He Just Changed The Course Of History

Doom, doom, doom...Trump's a savior! That last one begins,

If someone else had been in the White House, this crisis could have easily turned out much differently.  Sadly, most Americans have no idea that we were literally on the brink of the beginning of World War 3 this week.

While tensions were high and war was certainly possible, there were many indications that the various involved factions were posturing and war was not the likely outcome. The first hint came immediately after the event, when Iran pledged to take the matter before the UN. That is not an indication of a side determined to plunge into a very costly - perhaps regime-ending - war. Then the event was condemned by the Iraqi Parliament - in a non-binding resolution in which the Sunnis and Kurds abstained. Not quite the strong reaction the media was making it out to be. Then, when Iran sent a volley of missiles towards bases hosting US troops, many were certain that it was the beginning of a hot war. But the missiles caused little damage and no casualties (similar to Trump's missile attacks on Syria a couple years ago).

The posturing is as follows:

• Trump was determined not to have his Benghazi moment, and established a red line that US embassies are to be left alone
• The Iraqi Shia were compelled to show an effort to rebuke US attacks on Iran
• The Iranians could not offer a meek non-response. Their leadership can sell their phony military response being a strong enough show of strength to cause the Great Satan to back down in its aggression

The result is a scenario where all sides can achieve their goals without war, which no one actually desires. Trump didn't pull back the US from the brink of war, because we were never at the brink of war.

Also, very interesting to note, is that Israel broke ranks, declaring that the US would be alone if war broke out with Iran. That is a curious development, and I don't currently know what to make of it.

The RIP Of Habeas Corpus

Martin Armstrong reports that Julian Assange is being left to waste away in solitary confinement, with the intention that he will never be publicly tried.

The US prosecutors are conspiring with the British to ensure that Julian Assange never goes to trial and what is taking place is the collapse of civility and Justice which has become sheer vengeance and political prosecution. The British will not allow independent doctors to visit Assange meanwhile they have been keeping him like Jeffrey Epstein in solitary confinement. This is where they keep people who are really political enemies of the states who will never be given a fair trial.

Rulers don't clamor for power to put themselves on trial, and do not subject themselves to the rule of law any more than is necessary. (In a corrupt system, that means hardly at all.) The principle applies to the system more so than individuals; it does not mean that dissidents are always tried, for example. In a fair trial, the prosecution is exposed for public scrutiny as much as the defendant. If the government makes someone out to be a public enemy for decades and then imprisons him for years, they better have a case to make. Otherwise the tyranny is exposed, the illusion of justice fades.

The government wants to imprison Assange and make an example of him. They don't want to drag him to court to charge him with first-degree journalism, and they absolutely do not want him put under oath to testify in regards to Russiagate. Instead, they'll maneuver to detain him indefinitely, with no opportunity for defense. Habeas corpus, the bedrock of the Anglo legal tradition, is no more.

Other examples abound. A Navy Seal team was raided bin Laden's compound with orders to kill. A public trial of 9/11 was never going to happen. Similar was the recent assassination of the Iranian general. Nabbing him was not an option; not necessarily because of technical limitations, but because putting a foreign military leader on trial for interfering with America's imperial projects is not possible when the official line is still that we went to Iraq to liberate its people, who now hold sovereign domain over their territory.

If Epstein really was a Mossad agent running a blackmail ring in America, then that dirty laundry was certainly never going to air. Hillary Clinton evaded the courts too, and Comey made a mockery of the justice system in the process by detailing all the reasons she should be prosecuted before announcing that no reasonable prosecutor would take up the case. He was right: no reasonable lawyer would dare violate the edict that the rulers don't go to trial. No one associated with FISAgate - which was treasonous - has been charged or even terribly inconvenienced. They won't be tried because the people in charge don't want a play-by-play court transcripts of how the Democrats and their federal allies were able to fabricate intel and then launder it to the point that a high-ranking Senator was passing it directly to the director of the FBI and an elected president was subjected to a special counsel shakedown has his first term. If you are ever tempted to commit a crime, choose one such that its revelation will embarrass the ruling class. You'll skate.

It's the reason the Democrats ramrodded an impeachment vote through the House only to freeze stiff at the reality of passing it on to the Senate for a trial. It will never go to trial because that would be a disaster for these enemies of truth. They are trying to leverage the illusion of pending legal proceedings to gain access to Trump's records (and the classified findings of the Mueller report) to gain something damaging to use in the upcoming election. They are (once again) using the federal justice system to execute their opposition research for them. The desperation must be high to risk the one outcome that the corrupt rulers avoid at all cost: to be subjected to a public trial - even as prosecutors.

Contrabang! #34 How We'd All Die Instantly

Is Betelgeuse About To Explode? (link)

One of the brightest stars in the sky, Betelgeuse has recently dimmed by a surprising amount. This has prompted scientists to surmise that the orb may be about to go supernova. It is the kind of upside-down logic that only an academic could love. The theory goes that supernova is caused when the star hits a critical mass of fissionable material, just as happens in a nuclear bomb. In bombs, the collapse is caused by carefully placed and precisely time explosives. In stars, they reckon, it occurs when they run out of fissionable material. The lower thermal output reduces "radiative pressure" and the star collapses under its own gravity, and eventually goes boom. So stars explode when they run out of fuel, is the short description.

However, they say that even if the star is going supernova, it could be hundreds of thousands of years until the event happens. Thus, they can't be disproven in any case. However, I would offer a more general prediction: if a known star goes supernova, it will brighten, not dim, prior to the event.

Antimatter Mystery Likely Due To Pulsars, Not Dark Matter (link)

This article contains a lot of words of a highly technical nature. The only ones that really matter are in the last sentence.

Right now, it appears that pulsars may be responsible for 100% of the observed excess, requiring scientists to go back to the drawing board for a direct signal that reveals our Universe’s elusive dark matter.

Another theory of dark matter has been shot down. They must be running thin on them at this point.

This Is How We’d All Die Instantly If The Sun Suddenly Went Supernova (link) 

A favorite past time of Ethan and his ilk is to fantasize about the cataclysmic destruction of all humanity. This one does not disappoint.

While our Sun isn’t massive enough to experience [a supernova], it’s a fun and macabre thought experiment to imagine what would happen if it did. Yes, we’d all die in short order, but not from either the blast wave or from radiation. Instead, the neutrinos would get us first.

Gosh, that is fun.

That energy goes into a mix of radiation (photons), the kinetic energy of the material in the now-exploding stellar material, and neutrinos. All three of these are more than capable of ending any life that’s managed to survive on an orbiting planet up to that point, but the big question of how we’d all die if the Sun went supernova depends on the answer to one question: who gets there first?

I bet $100 it's photon radiation. I hope I'm right!

But any living creature would surely die even before the light or the blast wave from the supernova arrived; they’d never see their demise coming. Instead, the neutrinos — which interact with matter so rarely that an entire star, to them, functions like a pane of glass does to visible light — simply speed away omnidirectionally, from the moment of their creation, at speeds indistinguishable from the speed of light.

Ah! I was wrong, but that's a way cooler way for humans to go extinct.

It’s horrifying to think that an event as fascinating and destructive as a supernova, despite all the spectacular effects it produces, would kill anything nearby before a single perceptible signal arrived, but that’s absolutely the case with neutrinos. 

The only reason he finds it horrifying that humans would not be subjected to awaiting their disastrous fate is that he wouldn't have the opportunity to gloat about being right about physics before everyone gets blasted to smithereens. These people fantasize about hearing everyone remark "you were right the whole time, Ethan; we should have listened" just before being internally incinerated by an elusive form of stellar radiation.

Ask Ethan: Did God Create The Universe? (link)

An interesting question to take on, since the ultimate point of the moderns is to remove God and appoint themselves as deity.

Science cannot prove the existence of God, but it cannot disprove God either; it can only disprove the notion of a specific, poorly conceived God. If you claim that your God lives in the clouds, you can disprove that God by simply observing the clouds. If you claim that God lives in our Universe, you can disprove that God by observing the entire Universe. But if your God exists in an extra dimension, before cosmic inflation, or outside of space and time altogether, neither proof nor disproof is possible.

A reasonable scientific stance on God. But he's not done yet.

In a fundamental way, it is purely a matter of what your faith is. All we can control, at the end of the day, is how we treat one another. Do we welcome those who believe different things than we do into our hearts, communities, and lives? Or do we shun, exclude, and “other” them?

Ethan, a guy I know is moving to Portland. He's a neo-Nazi who believes the Holocaust was a hoax, but he's really tidy and nice. Can he stay with you for a bit while he gets himself established in your community?

Regardless of what you believe, I have the same advice for you: choose kindness. It costs nothing, while benefitting the giver, the recipient, and those who simply witness it. Whether you say that God made us or not, I would say the same thing: the wonders and joys of science and the Universe are for you, exactly as you are, too.

And there is the materialist's prayer. Whether God exists or not doesn't matter, because you the individual can choose what you believe and that is all that is important. It doesn't matter if there is God because man is God.

The problems with the materialistic approach, of course, have been detailed endlessly on this blog. Not only that, but the major tenets of that belief system - that the cosmos evolved by random processes, and lifeforms by random genetic mutations - are not supported by evidence. Thus, his own "neutral" viewpoint is actually a religious position in itself. It is every bit as religious to say that life evolved as a quirk of nature as to say that it was created by a higher intelligence.

Equality is Aquality

With the fall of Christianity in the west, politics has become the major religion, the DIE values (diversity, inclusion, equality) have become the moral code, and voting has become the holiest of rituals. As a general rule, the rejection of reasonable religion ensures the adoption of unreasonable religion. The old religions were tempered to co-exist with their societies so that the benefits were useful and the costs were limited. Christian doctrine reduces conflict spiraling and encourages co-operation and truthfulness. It's major ritual is weekly communion. Progressive doctrine encourages rage, blame, and envy. It's major ritual is voting, which transforms a system of rationale societal decision making into a display of piety. Democracy is possible under Christianity (perhaps), but it must fail under Progressivism.

Under the tenets of Equality, outcomes are expected to be equal since there are no innate differences between any groups. Thus, any perceived inequality is the result of wrong-doing. Not only can a group with some perceived advantage be punished on principle, they must be punished to uphold proper moral order. Businesses - which seek a profit - are assumed to be engaged in cheating. Property owners are assumed to have stolen their possessions. Thus, we see in liberal strongholds a ceaseless attack on business, which adversely affect the smallest and most vulnerable businesses that cannot afford the prog public relations and lobbying/bribing operations of the big corporations. If you asked Progressives if they thought public policy should favor locally owned businesses or global corporations, every last one of them will say locally owned businesses. And yet they implement the policy that has the opposite effect, because they aren't voting rationally.

In California, parcel taxes have become popular, which are arbitrary and usually regressive taxes levied on real estate used to raise money for various causes. The California Supreme Court has ruled against them, and so they must be passed by a two-thirds vote - hardly a problem in places like San Francisco. Some are now blaming those taxes for the recent report of four hundred restaurants closing in San Francisco. Perhaps that isn't a lot in such a populous city, but the witness accounts are that it's part of an observable trend.

“The trend is more restaurants are closing than are opening and that’s historic,” said Chris Tavelli from Pause and Yield Wine Bars. “I’ve never seen that in my ten years in the restaurant business.”

Witness testimonies also indicate that properties are remaining vacant longer. Restaurant owners blame the business environment of the city for the hard times.

Restauranteurs said many factors are to blame, like the high cost of operating in San Francisco, high crime rates, dirty streets and long wait times for permits. Plus, new challenges in this digital age like the ease of being able to order food online. “All these tech companies with free food and wine available to their employees day and night,” said Tavelli.

Offering lunch is not some new "digital-age" innovation, nor are the tech companies to blame. They're the ones keeping the region afloat, and they're doing what they must to retain talent. They can't say, "Come work in San Francisco. We're near some great restaurants. Lunch will cost you $30. Watch out for all the poop and needles."

I've known tech workers who were lured out to the Bay Area by job offers from prestigious corporations like Google, only to return back to the Midwest...sometimes within a year! Most tech workers are number-savvy enough to realize that the high-dollar west coast salaries are a worse deal and, if not, they quickly learn upon arrival. Companies that offer on-site services like reasonably priced food and complimentary buses to the suburbs are trying to spare their employees from the worst aspects of an area that's grown a reputation as a terrible place to start a family.

Equality means we can't have nice things, because nice things cause envy and claims of unfairness, to which the hordes of Progressives swoop in to fix things via more government intervention. However, the approach fails because the tech workers - already raked over the coals for rent - can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars a week eating out, and the restaurants don't enjoy Apple-level profit margins. The Progressives don't care, and will vote the same even when they know what the reality is. A Voat comment is enlightening.

It really is only a matter of time and completely unstoppable. People in the Bay Area are so intensely politicized that they unconsciously feel voting to be purely a moral issue. They don't vote to increase School funds via Parcel Taxes because it makes sense, it's because it is a moral issue, and most importantly, it is a moral issue on two fronts. One is obvious, but the other is they believe it is always moral to vote against the interests of property owners. They seriously would vote to just raise Parcel Taxes for no reason, as they would see it as moral. I've even talk to real estate agents about this who absolutely know what I'm saying is true, but will only respond with, "well, we all have opinions." You see, they know it's going to destroy everything, but they also don't want to transgress their politicized morality.

Stupidity is not to blame here. Even in the absence of stupidity, the irrational behavior persists. The real estate agent is probably taking the smart approach because a transgression against the moral code could be very bad for business. The problem is the Progressive religion and its DIE fervor. The real tragedy isn't watching the great American city of San Francisco collapse, but watching all those yuppie prog voters scurrying to Austin and Denver, turning those locales a solid shade of dark blue. Flee for capitalism, vote for socialism.