#IRONY
A televangelist who referred to the coronavirus as a 'privilege' has died from it

Yelena Dzhanova, INSIDER•November 7, 2020

A nurse puts on her PPE before tending to a COVID-19 patient on October 21, 2020 in Essen, Germany. Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

Irvin Baxter, a televangelist who once called the coronavirus a "privilege," died of complications from the disease on Tuesday, according to a press release.

Baxter previously said he believed Americans having sex before marriage brought on the coronavirus pandemic.

"God may be using this as a wake-up call," Baxter said, suggesting God was using the coronavirus to punish people for having premarital sex.  

(GOD IS A SERIAL KILLER LIKE MICHAEL FROM HALLOWEEN,JASON FRIDAY THE 13TH, ETC.)

A televangelist who once described the coronavirus pandemic as a "privilege" died from the disease Tuesday.

Irvin Baxter died in the hospital at 75, according to a press release from Endtime Ministries, which Baxter founded.

Baxter was a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and had suggested premarital sex was the reason the coronavirus exists.

During a March discussion on "The Jim Bakker Show," a national TV show centered around the end of time, Baxter preached about "the sin of fornication" outside marriage.

"I thought about fornication and I did a little research," he said. "I hope this research is not correct, but I got it straight from the encyclopedia. It says that 5% of new brides in America now are virgins. That means 95 percent have already committed fornication!"

He said millions of unmarried American couples were living together and having sex, which he called sinful and punishable in the eyes of God.

"God may be using this as a wake-up call," Baxter then said about the coronavirus.

"This coronavirus may be a privilege, because I'll tell you right now, there is a much bigger judgment coming. It's in the Bible."

Baxter denounced people who "think we can just ignore God and live a sinful lifestyle." 

KARMA IS A BITCH

The coronavirus has infected more than 9.7 million people nationwide, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of that, more than 236,000 people have died from it.

Since his death, Endtime Ministries has received an outpouring of support for the organization and Baxter, the press release said.

Baxter was a Texas-based televangelist who hosted a biblical prophecy TV show, "End of the Age," which reached over 100 million people in North America, according to the release.

There will be a funeral service for Baxter on Monday.

Read the original article on Insider

As the pandemic's second wave digs in, Winnipeg's homeless shelters brace for a bleak winter

PRAIRIE WINTER STORM ALERT THIS WEEKEND 

 CBC Sat., November 7, 2020

Manitoba is struggling to contain a renewed surge of the COVID-19 pandemic by reimposing restrictions on businesses and public gatherings in Winnipeg and other parts of the province.

"We need to focus on going out for only essential reasons," said Manitoba's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin on Friday. "Protect yourself. Keep your distance from others."

But self-isolating is simply not an option for the homeless and many other members of vulnerable communities, or for the agencies that offer food and shelter to those who aren't always able to fend for themselves.

At 1JustCity, which runs three community drop-in centres in Winnipeg's downtown core, the pandemic has led to a growing number of people needing food, a shower or just a place to stay warm.

"We push out over 2,000 meals every week," the agency's executive director, Tessa Whitecloud, said in an interview airing Saturday on CBC's The House. "We're seeing a big increase in numbers. We're seeing more people being food insecure, of course, as layoffs and different things make it more difficult for them to feed themselves in the ways that they used to."

Kristi Beaune said the situation is much the same at the North End Women's Centre, which offers a wide range of supports for women in the community, including a drop-in space, parenting advice and transitional housing.

A pandemic compounded by poverty

"We are all experiencing this pandemic together, and the folks that access our services are facing that pandemic with those compounding factors of homelessness, the rising risk of overdose and those escalating situations of domestic violence and being trapped at home," Beaune, spokesperson for the centre, told The House.

"Those issues have not taken a back seat."

Manitoba considered imposing a curfew in Winnipeg after a spike in cases among young people linked to late-night gatherings and parties. Premier Brian Pallister has opted against the move for now, in favour of stricter enforcement of existing restrictions.

"There will be consequences for people when they put others in danger, when they put themselves in danger," Pallister told a briefing on Thursday.

The number of COVID-related deaths in Manitoba climbed to 96 on Friday. Health officials also announced another 243 new cases of the virus as the rate of positive tests reached more than 9 per cent.

Whitecloud said she understands stricter measures need to be taken to try to slow down the spread of COVID-19, but cautioned that a curfew could amount to criminalizing the homeless.

"So, you know, it's great if you want to make sure that I'm home by 10 o'clock. But if you don't have a home, it's not OK to then insist that people have to figure that out. Some shelters don't open until 11 p.m.," she said.

"So if the curfew is married with an initiative to make sure that everybody has somewhere to be that's safe COVID-wise, that's safe in terms of substance abuse or, you know, domestic violence ... then great. But if it isn't paired with the initiatives that are going to address the inequalities that a curfew would further exacerbate, then I think that's a problem about human rights."

Homelessness as a public health issue

It's clear across Canada that the pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on marginalized people.

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs raised similar concerns about a curfew, saying it would have a punishing effect on Indigenous people living in urban centres.

In Toronto, public health statistics show that 83 per cent of reported COVID-19 cases are among people of colour.

Beaune and Whitecloud noted the federal government's recently announced Rapid Housing Initiative — a $1 billion program to cover the cost of building modular housing and converting existing buildings like motels into affordable housing.

"I'm hoping that we see more of that grow because we need to recognize that one person's experience of homelessness is actually a public health issue for everybody in the city that that person resides in," Whitecloud said.

Austin Grabish/CBC

Winnipeg's share of the program is $12.5 million dollars.

"There's just not enough transitional housing in and around Winnipeg and that's something that we knew before," Beaune added.

"COVID certainly shone a light on it even further … I mean, we have eight beds of transitional housing here. If we were funded in that way, we could easily accommodate 25, 40 women just in our immediate area that could really benefit from stable housing."

The approach of winter makes the need to address homelessness and other challenges posed by the pandemic even more urgent.

The good news is that many private donors are stepping up in Winnipeg to provide masks, meals and other goods. One donor provided 50 pizzas a day to the North End Women's Centre throughout the first wave of the virus — a program Beaune and Whitecloud are working to set up again for the coming months.

"It's empowering because of the support of people rallying around us to do these things for the folks who need it," Whitecloud said. "But it's going to be a nerve-wracking winter."

This 80-year-old Toronto shelter resident thought she was losing her mind. Turns out, she had COVID-19 — with none of the typical symptoms

Victoria Gibson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Fri., November 6, 2020

Mary Moore never felt the typical symptoms of COVID-19.

The 80-year-old resident of Toronto’s shelter system never came down with a fever, never felt her chest tighten or a cough tickle her throat. Despite sharing a room at an Etobicoke women’s shelter with three others, and despite the risk of her age, she hadn’t been scared of contracting the virus — reasoning that her only real exposure to the outside world was walking regularly, about a mile away then back.

But then, last month, she got sick — and fast. At first, it was hard to pinpoint precisely what was wrong.

“You know when you feel there’s something just not right?” Moore said. She asked staff to help her get to a nearby hospital. Then things started to deteriorate.

“I can remember being in the ambulance outside, and vaguely remember being in the emergency room,” Moore recalled.

A test confirmed that she’d contracted COVID-19. But for the next few weeks, as she battled the virus in hospital, her primary symptom still wasn’t one that she recognized from warnings. She was hallucinating — imagining small animals in her hospital room, or that she’d been discharged, and was sitting down to a meal in Toronto’s Chinatown neighbourhood.

That kind of delirium is one of the atypical ways that COVID-19 can show up, particularly in older adults, said Toronto geriatrician Dr. Nathan Stall. But because it doesn’t look like a typical case, it’s also the kind of situation where the virus can go undetected.

In Stall’s view, Moore’s case is evidence that the bar for older adults to get tested for COVID-19 should be “extremely low” as cases have risen this fall.

The risks are particularly high in the shelter system as a congregate environment that caters to vulnerable populations, he said. Symptoms like Moore’s may end up incorrectly attributed to other causes that show up more regularly among shelter users — addictions, mental illness or even dementia, he added.

That Moore’s case could have slipped through the cracks isn’t lost on her. “If I hadn’t gone to the hospital that day, God knows how long I would have been walking around with it,” she said.

Unknown to her, one of her roommates would later test positive for the virus as well, without showing any symptoms — prompting a Toronto shelter worker at the time to call for broader-scale testing.

The most recent screening tool from Toronto’s Shelter, Support and Housing Administration asks staff to check if their adult clients have a fever; any new or worsening symptoms including a cough, difficulty breathing, sore throat, difficulty swallowing, runny nose, lost sense of taste or smell, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea; or fatigue, increased falls, chills or headaches.

The document includes a link to a longer list of symptoms from the province, which includes delirium unrelated to “known causes or conditions” including alcohol withdrawal or other substance uses. But Dr. Stefan Baral, a physician with Toronto’s Inner City Health Associates, said they’ve been trying to stress that any unexplained change in a person is worth flagging.

That’s where shelter workers’ familiarity with their clients can play a major role, Baral said — and where assessing unfamiliar clients can present a challenge.

Anyone with atypical symptoms would be connected to “clinical partners,” said shelter system director Gord Tanner.

But street nurse Cathy Crowe worries about the task being assigned to shelter staff: “We know that shelter workers are swamped, so how much attention can really be paid properly to screening?”

Back in the hospital, Moore struggled to come to terms with her diagnosis. It didn’t seem to sink in, because she didn’t feel physically ill.

“I kept saying ‘No, there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong,’” she said.

The worst part of the experience was feeling like she was losing her mind. She was scared, but said the hospital nurses were attentive, and gently pointed out when she veered into hallucinations.

“’Honey, there’s nobody there. You’re talking and getting your own answers,’” she recalls one saying.

She tried not to panic or consider the grimmest outcomes, fearing it would make things worse.

Stall, who didn’t treat Moore, said auditory or visual hallucinations are consistent with delirium. Earlier in the pandemic, he and his colleagues at Mount Sinai hospital wrote a case report about an 83-year-old, who arrived in the emergency department after a fall at home.

The woman’s only complaint was a vague sense of dizziness. She was deemed a low risk for COVID-19 at triage, but diagnostic tests later revealed she was infected.

Atypical presentation of illness is actually common in older adults, the doctors wrote — with symptoms like falls, functional decline or delirium. For that reason, like Baral, Stall stressed that any change from a person’s baseline health should be cause for alarm, especially with seniors.

After being discharged from hospital, Moore spent several days at an isolation site for people with no fixed address. While she was lonely — “you have nobody to talk to, maybe your own walker or your walls,” she said — she had a comfortable bed, a TV and her own washroom.

Now back at the shelter, she’s urging more understanding about the different ways a COVID-19 infection can show up.

“Don’t take something for granted. If you think you have a sick stomach, or something like that, get it looked after right away, because there are different ways of feeling it,” she said.

“To me, I didn’t feel right. And after that, everything is a blur.”

Victoria Gibson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Toronto Star

'You're fired': Thousands taunt Trump with his own catchphrase after election loss


Joel Shannon, USA TODAY
Sat., November 7, 2020

In this Jan. 16, 2015 file photo, Donald Trump, then-host of the television series "The Celebrity Apprentice," mugs for photographers in Pasadena, Calif.

President Donald Trump faced a predictable taunt from thousands of social media users on Saturday after he lost his bid for reelection: You're Fired.

It's the catchphrase he used to kick off contestants when he hosted the reality show "The Apprentice" for years — a show that brought him pop-culture fame that helped boost his 2016 bid for president.

NBC cut ties with Trump in 2015 after he made "derogatory statements" about Mexican immigrants as he began his bid for president.

Media coverage of high turnover in his administration often invoked the phase, although, as the Associated Press noted in the year after Trump was elected, Trump often delegated the task of firing someone or publicly shamed those he wanted out, so they would simply quit.

As president in 2017, Trump invoked the catchphrase in a tweet saying football players who did not stand for the national Anthem should be told "YOU'RE FIRED."

While the catchphrase has faded in popularity in recent years, Trump's critics have not forgotten it:

                                 

 'You're fired': Thousands taunt Trump with 'Apprentice' catchphrase

UK TV/PBS
Obituary: Geoffrey Palmer


Fri., November 6, 2020

With his hangdog expression and lugubrious delivery, Geoffrey Palmer was one of the best-known actors of his generation.

He cut his teeth on the stage before launching a career as a character actor in a variety of roles in film and TV.

He was perhaps most famous for a series of TV sitcoms including Butterflies, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and As Time Goes By.

A reserved man, he usually remained out of the public gaze when not appearing on stage or screen, and rarely gave interviews.

Geoffrey Dyson Palmer was born in London on 4 June 1927, the son of a chartered accountant.

After attending Highgate School he did his National Service in the Royal Marines, where he became an instructor, taking recruits through field training and the intricacies of using small arms.

He qualified as an accountant, but he'd always had a hankering for the stage and his girlfriend persuaded him to sign up with a local dramatic society.

There was a job as assistant stage manager at the Grand Theatre in Croydon, before he set out on the traditional actor's apprenticeship, touring in rep.
World-weary demeanour

In 1958 he moved into television with roles in the ITV series The Army Game, a sitcom based on the lives of National Service soldiers that launched the careers of a number of famous actors and led to the first Carry On film.

There followed a variety of TV character parts in episodes of The Avengers, The Saint, Gideon's Way and The Baron.

He also appeared as a property agent in Ken Loach's hard-hitting BBC play, Cathy Come Home.

His world-weary demeanour made him instantly recognisable although it did not reflect his real character. "I'm not grumpy," he once said. "I just look this way."

Despite an increasing amount of TV and film work he continued to perform in the theatre, where he received critical acclaim for his role in John Osborne's play, West of Suez, appearing alongside Ralph Richardson.
Reserved and conservative

He went on to work with Paul Scofield and Laurence Olivier before being directed by John Gielgud in a production of Noel Coward's Private Lives.

In 1970 he played Masters in Doctor Who and the Silurians. It was the first of three appearances he would make in the franchise, returning in 1972 in Mutants and in 2007 in Voyage of the Damned.
He gained a wider audience in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

His world-weary expression made him perfect for the role of Ben in Butterflies

He came to the attention of a wider audience as Jimmy Anderson, the clueless brother-in law of Leonard Rossiter in the sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, which first aired on the BBC in 1976.

He followed this up with the part of the reserved and conservative dentist Ben in Carla Lane's bittersweet comedy, Butterflies.

Palmer's character sat gloomily at the end of the dinner table, unable to comprehend his adolescent sons or his wife's midlife crisis. His world-weary take on events acted as his defence against the mayhem happening around him.
Memorable appearance

He was still much in demand as a character actor. His film appearances included A Fish Called Wanda, The Madness of King George and Clockwise.

On the small screen he played Dr Price in the Fawlty Towers episode The Kipper and the Corpse, and appeared in The Professionals, The Goodies and Whoops Apocalypse.

His role as a doctor in The Madness of King George was one of many cinema performances

He also made a memorable appearance as Field Marshal Haig in Blackadder Goes Forth, casually sweeping model soldiers off a plan of the battlefield with a dustpan and brush.

In 1992 he began a role in the sitcom As Time Goes By, alongside his great friend, Judi Dench.

It followed the progress of former lovers who rekindled their relationship after a 38-year gap. It became one of the BBC's most popular comedies and was still being shown to appreciative audiences 25 years later.

Fly fisherman

Palmer also shared the billing with Dench in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and as Sir Henry Ponsonby in Mrs Brown, the story of the relationship between Queen Victoria and her servant.

With a voice as distinctive as his appearance, Palmer was much in demand as a narrator. He was heard on the BBC series Grumpy Old Men and he recorded a number of audio books including a version of A Christmas Carol for Penguin.

As Time Goes By became one of the BBC's most popular sitcoms

He also voiced some notable adverts, urging people to "slam in the lamb", in a commercial for the Meat & Livestock Commission and he introduced a British audience to "Vorsprung durch Technik" in adverts for Audi cars.

Away from stage and screen he was a keen fly fisherman, once appearing in a DVD series, The Compleat Angler, in which he retraced Izaak Walton's classic 17th-Century book.

In 2011 he joined the campaign to try to halt plans for the HS2 railway line, the proposed route of which ran close to his home in Buckinghamshire.

He married Sally Green in 1963 and the couple had two children.

In 2000 the British Film Institute polled industry professionals to compile a list of what they felt were the greatest British TV programmes ever screened.

Palmer was the only actor to have appeared in all of the top three - Fawlty Towers, Cathy Come Home and Doctor Who.

Geoffrey Palmer had no formal training as an actor but his innate skills kept him in almost continuous work for more than six decades.

His policy was never to turn down a part. "I love working," he once said, "and, if I'm not working, I'm not earning."

UK Comedy Legends Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders Close Their Production Company After 28 Years

Jake Kanter
Fri., November 6, 2020


EXCLUSIVE: Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are shuttering their production company, Saunders & French Productions, after it has been operating for more than 28 years.

The UK comedy heroes first set up their TV company in 1992 and it co-produced the iconic BBC series Absolutely Fabulous, which was adapted into a movie by BBC Films four years ago.

French and Saunders have filed for voluntary liquidation, and Mustafa Abdulali and Neil Dingley of insolvency company Moore, have been appointed to wind down the production outfit’s affairs.

According to a notice to creditors, the process is a solvent liquidation, meaning that people or businesses owed money by Saunders & French Productions are expected to be paid in full.

Saunders & French Productions’ latest earnings for the year ended July 2019 showed that it had £281,622 ($369,852) of cash at the bank and in hand. It owed creditors £2,461, according to the Companies House document.

French and Saunders’ agent Maureen Vincent, who also serves as a director at the production company, did not respond to Deadline’s repeated requests for comment at the time of publication.

There were signs of change at Saunders & French Productions when Jon Plowman, the prominent UK comedy producer who launched Absolutely Fabulous, stepped down as a non-executive director in August.

French and Saunders continue to collaborate and in 2017 made a special episode of their sketch show, 300 Years Of French And Saunders, for the BBC through BBC Studios. They both star in Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming Agatha Christie adaptation Death On The Nile.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Pope moves against secretariat of state amid finance scandal

Thu., November 5, 2020



ROME — Pope Francis is giving the Vatican secretariat of state three months to transfer all of its financial holdings to another Vatican office following its bungled management of hundreds of millions of euros in donations and investments that are now the subject of a corruption investigation.

Francis summoned the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, his deputy as well as the Vatican’s top finance officials for a meeting Wednesday and gave them a three-month deadline to complete the transfer, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.

The Vatican released the letter that Francis wrote to Parolin on Aug. 25 in which he announced he was stripping the secretariat of state of its ability to independently manage the money.

Francis cited the “reputational risks” incurred by the department's investments in a London real estate venture and other speculative operations that have lost the Holy See tens of millions of euros, some of it money from the Peter's Pence donations from the faithful.

Francis’ decision was an embarrassing blow to the secretariat of state's standing as the most powerful Holy See office, reducing it to essentially any other department that must propose a budget and have it approved and monitored by others.

Its financial holdings are now to be held by the Vatican's treasury office, known as APSA and incorporated into the Holy See's consolidated budget, Francis wrote. The economy ministry will oversee spending.

The outcome is essentially that which was sought years ago by Cardinal George Pell, Francis’ first economy minister who clashed with the secretariat of state over his financial reforms and efforts to wrest control of the department's off-the-books funds. Pell famously boasted in 2014 that he had “discovered" hundreds of millions of euros that were “tucked away in particular sectional accounts and did not appear on the balance sheet" — a reference to the secretariat of state's in-house asset portfolio.

Pell had to abandon those reform efforts in 2017 to face trial for sexual abuse in his native Australia, but he was acquitted and returned triumphantly last month to Rome, where he was granted a well-publicized audience with Francis.

Francis moved against his own secretariat of state amid a year-long investigation by Vatican prosecutors into the office's 350-million-euro investment into a luxury residential building in London's Chelsea neighbourhood .

Prosecutors have accused several officials in the department of abusing their authority for their involvement in the deal, as well several Italian middlemen of allegedly fleecing the Vatican of tens of millions of euros in fees.

The scandal has exposed the incompetence of the Vatican's monsignors in managing money, since they signed away voting shares in the deal and agreed to pay exorbitant fees needlessly to Italians who were known in business circles for their shady dealings.

Just this week, a judge in Italy authorized financial police searches at the homes of one of the Vatican monsignors and two Italian businessmen implicated in the deal, as well as some of their relatives and three related businesses, according to a warrant seen by The Associated Press.

In his letter to Parolin announcing his decision, Francis cited the London venture as well as the secretariat of state’s investment in a Malta-based investment vehicle, Centurion Global Fund, headed by the Vatican’s longtime external money manager.

According to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Centurion invested in such ventures as the “Rocketman” film on Elton John as well as a holding company headed by Lapo Elkann, one of the more flamboyant members of Italy’s Agnelli clan.

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press

Looking for Another Earth?

Here Are 300 Million, Maybe

Dennis Overbye, Thu., November 5, 2020,  The New York Times

In an undated image from NASA, an artist's concept of Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the "habitable zone." 

(T. Pyle/NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech via The New York Times) 

A decade ago, a band of astronomers set out to investigate one of the oldest questions taunting philosophers, scientists, priests, astronomers, mystics and the rest of the human race: How many more Earths are out there, if any? How many far-flung planets exist that could harbor life as we know it?

Their tool was the Kepler spacecraft, which was launched in March 2009 on a 3-1/2-year mission to monitor 150,000 stars in a patch of sky in the Milky Way. It looked for tiny dips in starlight caused by an exoplanet passing in front of its home star.

“It’s not E.T., but it’s E.T.’s home,” said William Borucki when the mission was launched in March 2009. It was Borucki, an astronomer now retired from NASA’s Ames Research Center, who dreamed up the project and spent two decades convincing NASA to do it.

Before the spacecraft finally gave out in 2018, it had discovered more than 4,000 candidate worlds among those stars. So far, none have shown any sign of life or habitation. (Granted, they are very far away and hard to study.) Extrapolated, that figure suggests that there are billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. But how many of those are potentially habitable?

After crunching Kepler’s data for two years, a team of 44 astronomers led by Steve Bryson of NASA Ames has landed on what they say is the definitive answer, at least for now. Their paper has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

Kepler’s formal goal was to measure a number called eta-Earth: the fraction of sunlike stars that have an Earth-size object orbiting them in the “goldilocks” or habitable zone, where it is warm enough for the surface to retain liquid water.

The team calculated that at least one-third, and perhaps as many as 90%, of stars similar in mass and brightness to our sun have rocks like Earth in their habitable zones, with the range reflecting the researchers’ confidence in their various methods and assumptions. That is no small bonanza, however you look at it.

According to NASA estimates there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, of which about 4 billion are sunlike. If only 7% of those stars have habitable planets — a seriously conservative estimate — there could be as many as 300 million potentially habitable Earths out there in the whole Milky Way alone.

“We want to be very conservative in case nature has any surprises regarding habitability,” said Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the authors of the report. “So we are lowballing the estimates intentionally.”

On average, the astronomers calculated, the nearest such planet should be about 20 light-years away, and there should be four of them within 30 light-years or so of the sun.

“It took 11 years from launch to publication, but this is it,” said Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who directed the Kepler mission during most of its life and was one of the authors of the new paper, in a triumphant email. “This is the science result we’ve all been waiting for — the reason that Kepler was selected for flight in December 2001.”

The new result means that the galaxy is at least twice as fertile as estimated in one of the first analyses of Kepler data, in 2013. That finding, by Andrew Howard, Erik Petigura and Geoffrey Marcy, who were not part of the Kepler team, concluded that about one-fifth of sunlike stars harbored planets in their habitable zones.

Batalha said that one improvement this time around was the addition of data from the European GAIA satellite, which has measured the position and brightness of 1 billion stars. That knowledge allowed the Kepler scientists to more precisely chart the habitable zones of their stars.

Another improvement was better handling of the statistics, although, as Batalha noted, “surveys are inherently incomplete. You can’t call up every citizen; you can’t observe every star.”

In the case of Kepler, that limitation was serious. The spacecraft’s orientation system failed before Kepler could complete its prime survey, which limited it to detecting planets that had orbital periods of less than about 700 days — about twice the duration of an Earth year.

In an email, David Charbonneau, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said he was slightly skeptical of the results: “The Kepler Mission didn’t detect many (arguably, any) true Earth analogues, i.e. planets with the same radius as Earth AND orbiting at the same period, and hence receiving the same amount of light, AND orbiting sun-like stars.”

As Batalha said at the time, “We don’t yet have any planet candidates that are exact analogues of the Earth in terms of size, orbit or star type.” We still don’t. As a result, the astronomers had to extrapolate data from the planets they did see.

Although these Kepler planets are Earth-size — one-half to 1 1/2 the radius of Earth — and are presumably rocky, nobody knows what they are like in any detail, nor whether anything does, or could, live on them. They are too far away for further study. So far we know of only one planet, our own, that harbors life.

But there are plenty of opportunities yet to find one. The Kepler measurement of eta-Earth only pertains to stars like the sun, but in the galaxy those stars are vastly outnumbered by smaller, dimmer stars known as red dwarfs. One-quarter to one-half of red dwarfs also harbor habitable-zone planets, according to work by Courtney Dressing, now at the University of California, Berkeley, although some astronomers worry that radiation flares from such stars would doom any life trying to get started there. Red dwarf planets were not included in the new analysis of eta-Earth.

The red dwarf planets are relevant to the search for life because Kepler has passed the torch to a spacecraft called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which was launched in 2018 to scour the entire sky for exoplanets within a few hundred light years of Earth — the local neighborhood. So far TESS has discovered 66 new exoplanets and has cataloged more than 2,000 candidates.

Most of those planets were expected to be found circling red dwarfs, said George Ricker, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and principal investigator for the mission, in an email: “Since about three-fourths of the stars in the solar neighborhood are M dwarfs, that leaves open a very large discovery space for TESS in the decade ahead!”

Batalha said that young scientists in the future might yet find a way to improve the value of eta-Earth; “until then, this will be the de facto standard.”

The value of eta-Earth is an important and hitherto unknown factor in a mathematical expression known as the Drake equation. It is used by astronomers to estimate how many technological civilizations might exist in the galaxy — and that we might be able to contact by radio or other means some cosmic day.

It’s time to move on the next factor in the Drake equation for extraterrestrial civilizations: the fraction of these worlds on which life emerges. The search for even a single slime mold on some alien rock would revolutionize biology, and it is a worthy agenda for the next half-century as humans continue the climb out of ourselves and into the universe in the endless quest to end our cosmic loneliness.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

Astronauts could be put into hibernation to travel to Mars

Phoebe Southworth  The Telegraph
Thu., November 5, 2020

An astronaut about to fly to the International Space Station 

- Roscosmos Press Office /TASS

Astronauts could be put into hibernation to travel to Mars, European Space Agency scientists have revealed, as they call for further research on its impact on the brain.

Being cooped up in a confined spacecraft for a long period of time could take its toll on their physical and mental health, according to Prof Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, who is leading the research.

He said these "huge implications" could be mitigated if astronauts were put into a "state of stasis", and said further investigation is needed to establish what effect this might have on their brains.

"Hibernation is a fascinating biological phenomenon. Sometimes it is confused with sleep because when an animal is hibernating it looks like it is sleeping, but it's a fundamentally different state," said Prof Vyazovskiy, an associate professor of neuroscience at Oxford University.

"Imagine you had to take a very long-haul flight to Mars, for example, and how much fuel, water supply, air you'd need to take along. If you were awake all the time, there are also huge implications for mental health, spending so much time in a highly confined environment - so it would be really advantageous to put the astronauts in a state of stasis.

"A lot of research on hibernation has focussed on the body because it is a physiological state and biochemical processes in the body are slowed down, but very little has looked into what happens to the brain in this state. The brain could experience something similar to anesthesia or a sleep-like or comatose state, but we need more research to know what it means to be in this state."

Hibernating hedgehogs - Cornelia Doerr /Getty Images

Hibernation is an extended period of physical inactivity often lasting months, during which physiological functions such as metabolic and respiratory rate slow down significantly and the body temperature drops.

In contrast, sleep is a gentle resting state lasting hours rather than months, during which these physiological functions do not change to such a great extent.

"Hibernation is a widespread phenomenon and many animals hibernate," said Prof Vyazovskiy.

We know that some primates are able to. So I can't think what is special about humans that means they can't hibernate. We just need to find the secret.

"We can produce an artificial state of hibernation by administering drugs, but I don't think this is the most promising approach. We should learn from other animal species and how they trigger that process spontaneously - they know the trick but we have lost it for reasons we don't know yet."

SpaceX executive says the Starship rocket system could help clean up the 760,000 pieces of space junk in orbit



Kate Duffy
Sat., November 7, 2020

SpaceX's Starship rocket system could help clear out junk that has been left in Earth's orbit, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and CEO.

"It's not going to be easy, but I do believe Starship offers the possibility of going and doing that," Shotwell said in an online interview with Time Magazine.

Daniel Oltrogge, director at the Center for Space Standards and Innovation, told Business Insider: "Space debris is increasingly of concern and the collision of two massive space debris objects... pose the greatest environmental risk."

Oltrogge said it's estimated that there may be around 760,000 objects larger than a centimeter in size in orbit today.


SpaceX's Starship rocket system could help solve the problem of space junk, according to the company's president and chief operating officer.

"There's rocket bodies littering the space environment, and dead satellites," said Gwynne Shotwell in an online interview with Time Magazine.

SpaceX, which was founded by Elon Musk in 2002, believes its Starship rocket could help clear out space debris left in Earth's orbit, according to Shotwell. The rocket is designed to hold as many as 100 passengers and carry heavy payloads.

Shotwell said: "It's quite possible that we could leverage Starship to go to some of these dead rocket bodies – other people's rockets, of course – basically, pick up some of this junk in outer space. It's not going to be easy, but I do believe Starship offers the possibility of going and doing that."

When asked if SpaceX are introducing any new policies to combat the issue of space debris, Shotwell said the company is bringing "the entire constellation to a lower altitude so that the satellites decay much quicker." The satellites would then break up and fall back down to Earth, she added.

SpaceX has rocketed nearly 900 Starlink satellites into orbit already, although they may not all still be operating. As of October, at least 820 working Starlink satellites are actually orbiting. This is because a small amount have failed, or been taken out of orbit completely, according to The Verge. SpaceX wants to launch around 12,000 more by mid-2027, though this could increase to 42,000.

Daniel Oltrogge, director at the Center for Space Standards and Innovation (CSSI) told Business Insider: "Space debris is increasingly of concern, and the collision of two massive space debris objects – ranging from one to ten metric tons – pose the greatest environmental risk."

According to Oltrogge, estimates vary, but the CSSI believes there may be 760,000 objects larger than a centimeter in size in orbit today. The frequency of close approaches has nearly doubled in the last four years as a result of big constellations, and the tracking of more space objects with advanced government systems, Oltrogge said.

The depictions that Oltrogge has seen of the rocket show "a substantial amount of cargo space, so the Starship vehicle could in principle facilitate Active Debris Removal (ADR) of many potentially large space objects," he said.

Starship's cleanup operation could be at least two years off though, according to Oltrogge. Musk said on October 19 that SpaceX has a "fighting chance" of sending an uncrewed Starship rocket to Mars in 2024. This would be two years later than previously expected.

"Starship could prove to be an important way to combat the threat of collision between massive space debris objects," Oltrogge added.

Read the original article on Business Insider