TotalEnergies Splurges $27 Billion On Iraqi Oil And Solar Projects

By Irina Slav - Sep 06, 2021, 10:30 AM CDT

TotalEnergies has inked a deal with the Iraqi government to invest $27 billion in the country's energy industry over 15 years, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the deal.

According to the WSJ's sources, among the projects considered would be a seawater injection project aimed at boosting the rate of oil recovery at several fields in southern Iraq as well as a solar farm project. The initial sum TotalEnergies will invest in Iraq is $10 billion.

These projects should help improve Iraq's highly unreliable electricity supply, which is plagued by shortages that cause unrest among the population. It could also reduce its dependence on imports of natural gas from neighbor Iran, for which Baghdad has several times come under fire from the United States.

Currently, Iraq imports a third of the electricity and natural gas that it consumes from Iran and has accumulated debts of some $6 billion for the energy it purchased.

"This is the largest investment in Iraq by a Western company," said Iraqi oil minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar Ismail, as quoted by the AFP. "Implementing these projects is the challenge we face now."

According to the AFP, the collaboration will see the output from the Artawi field increase from 85,000 bpd to as much as 210,000 bpd. It will also reduce flaring and direct the gas that would have otherwise been flared to electricity production.

The gas recovery project will see associated gas collected from five Basra oil fields, including Ratawi, West Qurna 2, Majnoon, Luhais, and Tuba, and processed at a rate of 600 million cu ft daily, Argus reported. The result will be some 12,000 bpd of condensate and 3,000 tons daily of liquid petroleum gas.

As for the solar project, the AFP cited an unnamed Iraqi source who said the plans are to build a 1-GW solar farm at the Artawi field. According to the Iraqi government, electricity produced at solar farms "costs 45 percent less than that produced by traditional power stations".

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

e.e.cummings would approve
Calgary professor won't use capital letters unless it's to acknowledge Indigenous people


Jeremiah Rodriguez

CTVNews.ca Writer
Monday, September 6, 2021 



A photo of linda manyguns, associate vice-president of Indigenization and decolonization at Mount Royal University. (Courtesy of Mount Royal University)

TORONTO -- A Calgary professor says she won’t use capital letters in her name or anything she writes, unless it pertains to Indigenous people.

linda manyguns, associate vice-president of Indigenization and decolonization at Mount Royal University, made the decision to “support the movement for equality,” following the ongoing discoveries of unmarked graves at residential schools in Canada.

CTV News will not be using capital letters for manyguns’ name or quotes attributed to her.

Related Stories
Recovery of children in unmarked graves at the top of First Nations election priorities
Pamela Palmater: How serious are the federal leaders about reconciliation with Indigenous people?
What is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and who gets the statutory holiday?

Related Links
See more on linda manyguns' decision here

She is refusing to use capital letters because she said it shows complicity with systems of oppression. She called on people to reject symbols of hierarchies, such as churches and the government, and be more critical of them because “these institutions have been responsible for atrocities.”

“i'm joining that [lower case] movement in order to create a resistance to their oppression; identify and bring attention to the fact that these entities are the oppressors of Aboriginal people,” manyguns told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Monday.

So far, there have been more than 1,000 unmarked graves found at the former sites of church and government-run residential schools. The Truth And Reconciliation Commission estimates that between 4,100 to 6,000 children died while they attended these schools.

For decades, more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forcibly removed from their families to attend these schools which sought to strip away their culture and languages.

So out of respect for them, manyguns said she’ll only use capital letters when it comes to words, such as “Indigenous,” “Indigeneity,” or references to the “Indigenous struggle for recognition.”

Although her specific university department will follow her example, manyguns doesn’t want to force anything on anyone else. But she did urge institutions pledging to bring in more Indigenous voices or perspectives in their decision-making to first deeply think about de-colonization and how systemic oppression persists today.

Last week, she announced her decision to only use lowercase in a post on the university’s website, where she said, “Indigenous people have been actively engaged in a multidimensional struggle for equality, since time immemorial.”

“we strive for historical-cultural recognition and acknowledgment of colonial oppression that persistently devalues the diversity of our unique cultural heritages,” she wrote.

“these sites of struggle are generally found at blockades, where demonstrations against racism occur, where racialization and cultural domination, and discrimination leave the mark of imbalance and abuses of power.”

--

If you are a former residential school student in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419

Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.

WE MAY FINALLY KNOW WHERE HIGH-ENERGY COSMIC RAYS COME FROM


High-energy cosmic rays have proven elusive ... but we may have found their source.

Shutterstock

MATT WILLIAMS
9.5.2021 

Roughly a century ago, scientists began to realize that some of the radiation we detect in Earth’s atmosphere is not local in origin.

This eventually gave rise to the discovery of cosmic rays — high-energy protons and atomic nuclei that have been stripped of their electrons and accelerated to relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light).

However, there are still several mysteries surrounding this strange (and potentially lethal) phenomenon. This includes questions about their origins and how the main component of cosmic rays (protons) are accelerated to such high velocity.

Thanks to new research led by the University of Nagoya, scientists have quantified the number of cosmic rays produced in a supernova remnant for the first time. This research has helped resolve a 100-year mystery and is a major step towards determining precisely where cosmic rays come from.

While scientists theorize that cosmic rays originate from many sources — our Sun, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), and active galactic nuclei (sometimes called quasars) — their exact origin has been a mystery since they were first discovered in 1912. Similarly, astronomers have theorized that supernova remnants (the after-effects of supernova explosions) are responsible for accelerating them to nearly the speed of light.


Showers of high-energy particles occur when energetic cosmic rays strike the top of the Earth’s atmosphere. Cosmic rays were discovered unexpectedly in 1912.

Illustration Credit: Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), NASA.

As they travel through our galaxy, cosmic rays play a role in the chemical evolution of the interstellar medium (ISM). As such, understanding their origin is critical to understanding how galaxies evolve.

In recent years, improved observations have led some scientists to speculate that supernova remnants give rise to cosmic rays because the protons they accelerate interact with protons in the ISM to create very high-energy (VHE) gamma rays.

However, gamma-rays are also produced by electrons that interact with photons in the ISM, which can be in the form of infrared photons or radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Therefore, determining which source is greater is paramount to determining the origin of cosmic rays.

Hoping to shed light on this, the research team — which included members from Nagoya University, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), and the University of Adelaide, Australia — observed the supernova remnant RX J1713.7?3946 (RX J1713).

The key to their research was the novel approach they developed to quantify the source of gamma-rays in interstellar space. Past observations have shown that the intensity of VHE gamma-rays caused by protons colliding with other protons in the ISM is proportional to the interstellar gas density, which is discernible using radio-line imaging.

On the other hand, gamma-rays caused by the interaction of electrons with photons in the ISM are also expected to be proportional to the intensity of nonthermal X-rays from electrons.

For the sake of their study, the team relied on data obtained by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS), a VHE gamma-ray observatory located in Namibia (and operated by the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics). They then combined this with X-ray data obtained by the ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) observatory and data on the distribution of gas in the interstellar medium.

They then combined all three data sets and determined that protons account for 67 ± 8% of cosmic rays while cosmic-ray electrons account for 33 ± 8% — roughly a 70/30 split. These findings are groundbreaking since they are the first time that the possible origins of cosmic rays have been quantified. They also constitute the most definitive evidence to date that supernova remnants are the source of cosmic rays.

These results also demonstrate that gamma-rays from protons are more common in gas-rich interstellar regions, whereas those caused by electrons are enhanced in the gas-poor regions. This supports what many researchers have predicted, which is that the two mechanisms work together to influence the evolution of the ISM. Said Emeritus Professor Yasuo Fukui, who was the study’s lead author:
“This novel method could not have been accomplished without international collaborations. [It] will be applied to more supernova remnants using the next-generation gamma-ray telescope CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) in addition to the existing observatories, which will greatly advance the study of the origin of cosmic rays.”

In addition to leading this project, Fukui has been working to quantify interstellar gas distribution since 2003 using the NANTEN radio telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the Australia Telescope Compact Array.

Thanks to Professor Gavin Rowell and Dr. Sabrina Einecke of the University of Adelaide (co-authors on the study) and the H.E.S.S. team, the spatial resolution, and sensitivity of gamma-ray observatories have finally reached the point where it is possible to draw comparisons between the two.

Meanwhile, co-author Dr. Hidetoshi Sano of the NAOJ led the analysis of archival datasets from the XMM-Newton observatory. In this respect, this study also shows how international collaborations and data-sharing are enabling all kinds of cutting-edge research. Along with improved instruments, improved methods and greater opportunities for cooperation are leading to an age where astronomical breakthroughs are becoming a regular occurrence!

This article was originally published on Universe Today by MATT WILLIAMS. Read the original article here.

NOTHING IS TRUE, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED

New Physics Experiment Indicates There's No Objective Reality

Turns out, reality is at odds with itself.

By Brad Bergan Sep 01, 2021 

A 3D generated background of abstract spiral patterns.

akinbostanci / iStock

Someone once said: "The world is all that is the case."

But, is it?

Researchers performing a long-awaited experiment created different realities that are irreconcilable, proving that objective facts can be made to exhibit properties that cannot cohere, according to a recent study shared on a preprint server.

Sound confusing? You're not alone in thinking so, as this all involves some pretty complicated physics. But in short, the takeaway is this: Reality is at odds with itself.
Two facts, no ultimate reality

Nobel Prize-winner Eugene Wigner described a thought experiment in 1961 that highlighted an uncommon paradox of quantum mechanics. Specifically, it reveals the strangeness of the universe when two observers, like Wigner and his friend, observe two distinct realities. Since the thought experiment, physicists have used it to explore the very nature of measurement, in addition to the bizarre idea of whether objective facts actually exist or not. This is a pretty crucial feature of science, since empirical inquiry works to establish objective facts.

But if there aren't any facts, how can science presume to describe a real world in the first place?

For decades (and philosophically, much longer), this has served as a great bit for entertaining dinner guests, but Wigner's thought experiment wasn't really anything more than that. Until now.

In 2020, physicists realized that recent quantum technology advances had made it possible to create Wigner's Friend test in a real-world experiment. In essence, we can create different realities, and compare them in a lab to see if they can be reconciled, or cohere, in one system. And researcher Massimiliano Proietti of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, along with a handful of researchers, said they performed this long-awaited experiment for the first time: Creating distinct realities, compare-and-contrasting them, and discovering that they are, in fact, irreconcilable.

Quantum entangled photons reproduced Wigner's thought experiment

Wigner's initial thought experiment was simplistic in principle, starting with a single polarized photon that can have either vertical or horizontal polarization, upon measuring. The laws of quantum mechanics hold that a photon exists in both states of polarization simultaneously, in what's called superposition. In his thought experiment, Wigner imagined a friend measuring the state of a photon in a different lab and recording the result while Wigner watched from afar. He has no clue what his friend's measurement is, and is thus forced to assume that the photon and its measurement are in a state of superposition of every possible outcome for the experiment.

Wigner can say, however, that the "fact" of the superposition's existence is real. And, strangely, this state of affairs suggests that the measurement can't have taken place. Obviously, this stands in direct contradiction to Wigner's friend's point-of-view, who just measured and recorded the photon's polarization. He can even call Wigner and tell him the measurement was taken, without revealing the results. This means there are two realities at odds with one another, and it "calls into question the objective status of the facts established by the two observers," explained Proietti and colleagues, in an MIT Technology Review report.

And the new research reproduced Wigner's thought experiment by using entanglement techniques for many particles at the same time.

This is a breakthrough experiment from Prioretti and his colleagues. "In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realize this extended Wigner's friend scenario," they added in the report. And it raised some baffling questions that have forced physicists to confront the nature of reality. There might be a loophole to some assumptions that made this unknowable reality conclusion necessary, but if everything holds up to future scrutiny, it turns out reality does not exist.

So the next time your friends think something is or isn't the case, consider interjecting with an argument from quantum physics: they're both wrong, and so are you, because even the simple fact of the disagreement itself is just another illusion.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Successfully Cores Its First Mars Rock – “A Phenomenal Accomplishment!”

By NASA SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

The drill hole from Perseverance’s second sample-collection attempt can be seen, in this composite of two images taken on September 1, 2021, by one of the Perseverance rover’s navigation cameras. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Perseverance will obtain additional imagery of the sample tube before potentially completing the process of collecting its first scientifically-selected Mars sample.

Data received late September 1 from NASA’s Perseverance rover indicate the team has achieved its goal of successfully coring a Mars rock. The initial images downlinked after the historic event show an intact sample present in the tube after coring. However, additional images taken after the arm completed sample acquisition were inconclusive due to poor sunlight conditions. Another round of images with better lighting will be taken before the sample processing continues.

Obtaining additional imagery prior to proceeding with the sealing and storing of Mars rock sample is an extra step the team opted to include based on its experience with the rover’s sampling attempt on August 5. Although the Perseverance mission team is confident that the sample is in the tube, images in optimal lighting conditions will confirm its presence.

This September 1, 2021 image from NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a sample tube with its cored-rock contents inside. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Perseverance’s Sampling and Caching System uses a rotary-percussive drill and a hollow coring bit at the end of its 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm to extract samples slightly thicker than a pencil. Within the bit during coring is a sample tube. After completing yesterday’s coring, Perseverance maneuvered the corer, bit, and open end of the sample tube in order to be imaged by the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. The target for the sample collection attempt was a briefcase-size rock belonging to a ridgeline that is more than half-a-mile (900 meters) long and contains rock outcrops and boulders.

The initial set of images from Mastcam-Z showed the end of a cored rock within the sample tube. After taking these images, the rover began a procedure called “percuss to ingest,” which vibrates the drill bit and tube for one second, five separate times. The movement is designed to clear the lip of the sample tube of any residual material. The action can also cause a sample to slide down farther into the tube. After the rover finished the percuss-to-ingest procedure, it took a second set of Mastcam-Z images. In these images, the lighting is poor, and internal portions of the sample tube are not visible.

Taken September 1, 2021 by Mastcam-Z after Perseverance’s sample-coring activities, this image shows the rover’s drill with no cored rock sample evident in the sample tube. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

“The project got its first cored rock under its belt, and that’s a phenomenal accomplishment,” said Jennifer Trosper, project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The team determined a location, and selected and cored a viable and scientifically valuable rock. We did what we came to do. We will work through this small hiccup with the lighting conditions in the images and remain encouraged that there is sample in this tube.”

Commands uplinked to the rover earlier today will result in images of the corer and tube to be acquired tomorrow, September 3, at times of day on Mars when the Sun is angled in a more favorable position. Photos will also be taken after sunset to diminish point-sources of light that can saturate an image. The photos will be returned to Earth early in the morning of September 4.

If the results of this additional imaging remain inconclusive, the Perseverance team still has several options to choose from going forward, including using the Sampling and Caching System’s volume probe (located inside the rover’s chassis) as a final confirmation of the sample being in the tube.

The September 1 coring is the second time that Perseverance has employed its Sampling and Caching System since landing in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.

Illustration of the Mars Perseverance rover collecting a sample. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

More About Perseverance

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

See the inside of a Martian rock, compliments of NASA's Perseverance rover

The NASA Perseverance rover's mission to look for signs of past life on Mars takes us deep inside a rock named "Rochette".

By Adam Rosenberg on September 4, 2021

A composite of two images showing the coring hole that Persverance drilled into the briefcase-sized rock, nicknamed "Rochette". Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the primary missions for NASA's Mars rover, Perseverance, is looking for evidence of past life. Some of that evidence is hidden away deep inside of Martian rocks.

That's what led Perseverance to drill into one particular briefcase-sized rock and, for the first time during its still-young mission, collect a core sample. Images and data that NASA received on Sept. 1 confirmed that the rover's first coring attempt was (probably) a success.

There's a whole process here that starts with a more superficial look at the Mars surface. Perseverance is fitted with several tools for interacting with the environment, including a Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT), which is "a high-speed grinder with brushes to remove that weathered outer layer of rock and clear away dust," and a Gaseous Dust Removal Tool (GDRT) that, as its name suggests, clears away the dust at the site of the abrasion.

This first part of the process gives the rover an opportunity to use some other built-in instruments to examine the targeted rock even more closely. The data gathered from there helps NASA engineers decide if it's worth moving on to the next step of trying to obtain a core sample.


This whole process unfolded earlier in August, which led in turn to Perseverance's first attempt to core a Martian rock. Things didn't go according to plan that time, as NASA explained in an Aug. 11 post.

While the rover's seven-foot drill successfully bored its way into the rock and seemed to come away with a sample, images beamed back to Earth showed an empty storage tube. Unfortunately, that revelation occurred only after the tube was sealed and stored for future retrieval. It turned out that the rock itself wasn't the best candidate for coring.

For the latest attempt, which appears to have been a success, the NASA team back on Earth learned from their earlier experiences. This time, they used one of the Perseverance rover's onboard cameras, Mastcam-Z, to snap an image of the sample tube — or at least, the top of it — before sealing it away for storage.

The first look is encouraging, with actual rock clearly visible in the open end of the sample tube. But that's only the first step before storage. Once a sample is collected, the rover kicks off a procedure called "percuss to ingest" which rattles the sample tube five times in brief, one-second bursts. The goal is to clear any excess residue from the lip of the tube, but that shaking can also send collected material deeper down.

That appears to be what happened here. While NASA's first shot of the tube's open end clearly shows there's something inside, a second shot, captured after the "percuss to ingest" process, shows only a dark space.

Again heeding the lessons of the first coring attempt, NASA isn't quite ready to call this coring operation a total success. Before the tube gets sealed off for storage, the Mastcam-Z will go to work once again "at times of day on Mars when the Sun is angled in a more favorable position." The hope is that a new crop of images taken in different light will offer a clearer look into the sample tube.

No one's expecting failure at this point, however.

SEE ALSO: Mars rover sky watches, and spots a weird Martian moon

"The project got its first cored rock under its belt, and that’s a phenomenal accomplishment," said Jennifer Trosper, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (that's the team in charge of the Perseverance project). She added: "We did what we came to do. We will work through this small hiccup with the lighting conditions in the images and remain encouraged that there is sample in this tube."

It's going to be some time before the samples collected by Perseverance are actually safely ensconced on Earth. If all goes according to plan, the rover's bounty will arrive here sometime in 2031 at the end of a three-stage "Mars Sample Return" (MSR) mission.

The Solar System’s Oort Cloud May Harbor an Astonishing Number of Objects from Other Stars

Contrary to what we’ve long assumed, this reservoir of comets surrounding the solar system may have more visitors than permanent residents

By Amir Siraj on September 2, 2021

Artist's impression of the Oort Cloud of icy bodies that surrounds the solar system. Credit: Mark Garlick Getty Images

‘Oumuamua, the first interstellar object discovered near the Earth, left us with more questions than answers. The visitor was first observed during its exit from the solar system, and the limited data that astronomical observatories were able to collect have proved challenging to explain. What we know is that ‘Oumuamua was neither a comet nor an asteroid, and none of the exotic theories regarding its origin to date has been able to fully explain its properties.

Two years later, though, the second interstellar visitor was spotted—and it couldn’t have been further from ‘Oumuamua in nature. Borisov exhibited an uncanny resemblance to comets originating from the distant reaches of our own solar system, yet it traveled on a clearly hyperbolic orbit. As the first interstellar comet, Borisov’s similarities to known objects in the solar system allow for an exciting opportunity never afforded by ‘Oumuamua: a direct comparison between the solar system and its cosmic neighborhood.

In a recent paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, we report for the first time the unintuitive reality that the discovery of the first interstellar comet revealed: the Oort cloud, our solar system’s vast reservoir of comets, which extends halfway to the nearest star, harbors more visitors than permanent residents. Near the Earth, comets originating from within the solar system outnumber those from outside of the solar system—hence the fact that there has been only one definitive interloper since the first comet was detected with a telescope by Gottfried Kirch in 1680. But the observations that have been performed are unrepresentative of most locations in the solar system, since they are biased by our proximity to the sun.

As a result of gravitational focusing, the sun preferentially attracts comets from within the solar system, like a lamppost beckoning swarms of moths. On the other hand, interstellar objects, which whiz about the galaxy at high speeds, are nearly impervious to the sun’s gravitational pull, and so don’t cluster near the sun in the same way that Oort cloud objects do. Our new work shows that there are so many of them that, despite their speed, there are far more interstellar interlopers in the dark reaches of the solar system at any given time than there are comets of local origin.

This conclusion has profound effects for future observations and theories alike. It motivates new searches for objects in the Oort cloud, including stellar occultation surveys like TAOS II that scan the sky for blips in starlight resulting from the chance alignments of nearby objects and distant stars. At the same time, the new finding directly challenges our theoretical understanding of how planets form, since it implies that planetary systems must throw out orders of magnitude more mass than previously thought. In fact, our new paper shows that stars may have to expel at least as much mass as they keep—a striking new constraint on planetary system formation.

Future discoveries of interstellar objects will continue to inform our understanding of the solar system in its galactic context. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scheduled to begin operations in late 2023, is expected to discover at least one interstellar object per month, a rate that will help us pinpoint the origins of interstellar objects, and learn more about how stars and planetary systems form. The most exciting scientific revelations regarding interstellar objects, however, will likely come from the direct study of interstellar matter. What are these surprisingly abundant objects made of? At the cost of a few hundred million dollars, the European Space Agency’s Comet Interceptor mission might be able to sample the gaseous tail of an object like Borisov in the 2030s, if one approaches the sSun at the right time, speed and direction.

There’s also another way to search for interstellar objects, and even to obtain humanity’s first samples of matter originating from outside of the solar system, at relatively low cost and from the comfort of Earth’s surface. Any material coming into contact with our planet’s atmosphere burns up from friction with the air, appearing briefly as a streak of light in the sky: a meteor. As a result, it is much easier to find small objects in the atmosphere than in space, where we would have to rely on reflected sunlight. And while the atmosphere provides a much smaller search volume than the reaches of space, the abundance of smaller interstellar objects should be great enough to make searching for interstellar meteors an attractive idea.

In fact, while analyzing a publicly accessible U.S. government data set of meteors in 2019, I found one recorded impact that seemed to have approached far too quickly to have been bound to the solar system. I could hardly believe this, as astronomers have been searching for an interstellar meteor since 1950 or earlier. This discovery would later be tentatively confirmed as the first interstellar meteor larger than dust, and since then Pentagon officials have expressed interest in potentially declassifying the error bars associated with the detection, given its immense scientific value.

As director of interstellar object studies of the Galileo Project, I am leading an effort to discover gram-scale interstellar meteoroids in our atmosphere, using unclassified and transparent sensor networks. In concert with the interstellar objects that LSST will detect in Earth’s neighborhood, such discoveries would revolutionize our understanding of the solar system in the context of its peers. The holy grail of interstellar meteoroids would be a kilogram-scale or larger object that burned up above land, since such events might leave easily recoverable meteorites—rocks that could represent the first pieces of interstellar matter ever obtained by humanity. Such a goal could be accomplished in a decade for only a few tens of millions of dollars—a budget 10 times smaller than the Comet Interceptor mission—with a thousand globally distributed passive all-sky camera systems patiently waiting for the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack meteoroid to grace our planet.

One of the most beautiful aspects of the study of interstellar objects is that it connects so many disparate fields in astrophysics, spanning planetary science to high-energy phenomena and incorporating an equally diverse array of methods for detecting them. Along with other branches of “multimessenger” astronomy that seek to supplement traditional methods of astronomical inquiry, like gravitational-wave and neutrino surveys, searches for interstellar objects could help reveal unprecedented insights that challenge the way we understand our place in the universe.


This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Amir Siraj is an A.B. and A.M. candidate at Harvard and an M.M. candidate in piano performance at the New England Conservatory of Music. He is also the Director of Interstellar Object Studies with the Galileo Project.

Geologists Propose A Theory About

Asteroid Vesta

• Press Release - Source: UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
• Posted September 2, 2021 
  

©NASA

The asteroid Vesta

The asteroid Vesta is the second largest asteroid in our solar system. With a diameter of about 330 miles, it orbits the sun between the planets Mars and Jupiter.

Asteroids have long played a part in building popular fascination with space. "Marooned off Vesta" was the first story published by American writer Isaac Asimov, the third story he wrote, appearing in the March 1939 issue of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

"When we think of asteroid belts, we probably picture Han Solo maneuvering the millennium falcon through a dense set of irregularly shaped gray rocks in space," Christian Klimczak, associate professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of geology. "While most rocks are indeed irregularly shaped and gray, they are far apart and NASA's Dawn spacecraft did not have to maneuver around any other asteroids to reach and explore Vesta."

Dawn was the space probe launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres.

Vesta, like Earth, is composed of rock in its crust and mantle, and it has an iron core. Because of its large size (for an asteroid) and because Vesta has a crust, mantle and core, it is considered a planetesimal. Planetesimals are building blocks out of which planets form. Earth formed by accretion of several such planetesimals. "Vesta was on the way to becoming an Earth-like planet, too, but planet formation stopped along the way there early in the history of our solar system," Klimczak said. "Therefore, studying Vesta helps us understand the very early days of our planetary neighborhood and how our own planet formed."

Klimczak is co-author on a new study that examines the large-scale troughs and impact basins on Vesta.

What created those giant troughs on Vesta?

Vesta was hit by two other large asteroids which left large impact craters so big they cover most of the southern hemisphere of Vesta. These impacts are thought to have ejected rocky material into space. Some of these rocks reached Earth as meteorites so scientists now have actual rock samples from Vesta to study its geochemistry.

"Rock properties are influenced by environmental conditions like surrounding stresses and the presence of water," said Jupiter Cheng, doctoral candidate in the department of geography and co-author on the study. "Since Vesta is much smaller than Earth, or even the moon, it has a weaker gravity, and rock would deform differently near the surface than what we see on Earth."

According to Cheng, one big question is what triggered the formation of these large troughs. The two troughs are concentric around the two massive impact basins, Rheasilvia and Veneneia, respectively, and widely considered to be simultaneously formed by the impact events, though this assumed age relationship has never been tested before.

"Our work used crater counting methods to explore the relative age of the basins and troughs," Cheng said. Crater counting is a common method for estimating the age of a planet's surface, a method based upon the assumptions that when a piece of planetary surface is new, then it has no impact craters; impact craters accumulate after that at a rate that is assumed known.

"Consequently, counting the number of craters of various sizes in a given area allows us to determine how long they have accumulated and, consequently, how long ago the surface formed," she said. "Our result shows that the troughs and basins have a similar number of the crater of various sizes, indicating they share a similar age. However, the uncertainties associated with the crater counts allow for the troughs to have formed well after the impacts.

The origin of the troughs has long been a point of conjecture within the scientific community. Klimczak hopes their new geologic evidence can promote a more-durable theory about the troughs on Vesta.

The study is published in the September issue of the journal Icarus.

A new theory is proposed in an upcoming paper

"The leading hypothesis suggests that these troughs are fault-bounded valleys with a distinct scarp on each side that together mark the down-drop (sliding) of a block of rock. However, rock can also crack apart and form such troughs, an origin that has not been considered before," said Cheng, who is investigating the origin of the troughs as part of her dissertation at UGA.

"Our calculations also show that Vesta's gravity is not enough to induce surrounding stresses favorable for sliding to occur at shallow depths, instead, the physics shows that rocks there are favored to crack apart," she said. "Therefore, the formation of these troughs must involve the opening of cracks, which is inconsistent with the leading hypothesis in the scientific community. Taken all together, the overall project provides alternatives to the previously proposed trough origin and geological history of Vesta, results that are also important for understanding similar landforms on other small planetary bodies elsewhere in the solar system."

The new study was presented at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2021.

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.

AUSSIE MINERS ARE IN ALBERTA DIGGING OUR COAL

Coal’s future is ‘assured’ says Australia in response to UN

UN climate envoy urged Australia to phase out coal saying climate change will dramatically damage its economy, .

6 Sep 2021

Coal will be a big contributor to Australia’s economy well beyond 2030 given growth in global demand, the country’s resources minister has said, a day after a United Nations envoy called on the country to phase out the fossil fuel.

Without greater efforts to cut coal, climate change will dramatically damage Australia’s economy, Selwin Hart, the United Nations special adviser on climate change, said in a speech in the capital Canberra on Sunday. Australia made the announcement on Monday.

KEEP READING

Dirty coal to hydrogen: Trial aims for clean-energy solution

New Indian coal power plants planned despite climate risk: Report

Clean air group calls out China-backed coal plant in Bangladesh

Parched villages in India coal-mining hubs hunt for scarce water

Australia is the world’s third-biggest emitter on a per capita basis, with coal still accounting for about 60 percent of its power generation. Its conservative government has steadfastly backed fossil fuel industries, saying tougher action on emissions would cost jobs.

Australia’s latest export figures show “the reports of coal’s impending death are greatly exaggerated and its future is assured well beyond 2030,” Resources Minister Keith Pitt said in a statement.

In the three months to July, Australian coal exports grew 26 percent in value to 12.5 billion Australian dollars ($9.3bn), he noted. Coal prices have climbed as global economies recover from COVID-19 restrictions.

“The future of this crucial industry will be decided by the Australian government, not a foreign body that wants to shut it down costing thousands of jobs and billions of export dollars for our economy,” Pitt added.

The UN has called for phasing out coal by 2030 in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, which include Australia.

In July, energy and environment ministers from the Group of 20 big economies failed to deliver a deal to phase out coal by 2025. But some experts said there were chances of progress at UN climate talks in Glasgow in November.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said Australia is on a path to net-zero carbon emissions but has stopped short of committing to a timeline. He has said that Australia would update its 2030 emissions projections before the Glasgow talks.

Australia stands by coal 'beyond 2030' after UN warns of economic havoc

By Helen Regan and Angela Dewan, 

CNN Business
Mon September 6, 2021

A bucket-wheel reclaimer by a pile of coal at the Port of Newcastle in Australia on October 12, 2020.

London (CNN Business)The Australian government said Monday that the country would keep producing and exporting coal "well beyond 2030," despite a stark warning from a top UN climate official that failing to scrap the fossil fuel will "wreak havoc" on the economy.

The comments, made in a rebuke by the minister for resources and water, Keith Pitt, puts Australia at odds with several other developed nations, which are working towards phasing out coal by the end of the decade.

"The future of this crucial industry will be decided by the Australian Government, not a foreign body that wants to shut it down costing thousands of jobs and billions of export dollars for our economy," Pitt said in a statement Monday.

John Kerry is pushing China drop coal. Beijing is pushing back
In his 360-word statement, the minister listed a number of economic benefits coal has brought the Australian economy but made no mention of the climate crisis.

Pitt's statement added that figures showing coal's "impending death are greatly exaggerated and its future is assured well beyond 2030."

"Coal consumption throughout Asia is forecast by the International Energy Agency to grow over the next decade to meet the energy demands of countries like China, India and South Korea," Pitt said.

"Australia has an important role to play in meeting that demand. Coal will continue to generate billions of dollars in royalties and taxes for state and federal governments, and directly employ over 50,000 Australians."

Australia is the second-largest exporter of coal in the world and the country has a high per capita carbon footprint, largely because of its coal industry. An Australian emits an average of 17 metric tons of carbon dioxide, while the global average is less than 5 tons per person, European Commission data shows.

Of the world's 176 new coal projects, 79 of them are in Australia, according to Fitch Solutions' Global Mines Database.

Protesters against the Adani coal mine, now named Bravus, march through the streets of Brisbane on July 5, 2019.

Pitt made his comments as the UN's top climate envoy, Selwin Hart, said the global phase-out of coal was not happening fast enough "to avert a global climate catastrophe."

"We fully understand the role that coal and other fossil fuels have played in Australia's economy, even if mining accounts for a small fraction — around 2% — of overall jobs," Hart said during a video address to the Crawford Leadership Forum at the Australian National University on Monday.

"But it's essential to have a broader, more honest and rational conversation about what is in Australia's interests, because the bottom line is clear: If the world does not rapidly phase out coal, climate change will wreak havoc right across the Australian economy, from agriculture to tourism, and right across the services sector. Similarly, construction, housing and the property sector, in a country where the vast majority live on or near a coastline. It will be even more catastrophic in your neighborhood."

Hart added that business and investors were increasingly abandoning coal in favor of renewable energy that is now cheaper in most places.

By not cutting coal, Australia is setting itself up for a future of climate disasters such as droughts, heatwaves, fires and floods, which will become more frequent and severe as the planet warms.

"It is increasingly clear that decarbonization is inevitable, and it is the greatest commercial opportunity of our age," Hart said, adding that the world is "at a critical juncture in the climate crisis."

Australia's climate record
Coal is the biggest single source of carbon emissions in the world, and the UN has called on OECD countries, including Australia, to phase out the fossil fuel by 2030.
China is the world's biggest consumer and producer of coal, accounting for around 50% of the world's production, and pressure is growing on the country to phase out the fossil fuel quicker than planned.

Air pollution is cutting more years from people's lives than smoking, war or HIV/AIDS
Scientists say key economies must cut carbon pollution by 45% this decade if the world is to contain average global temperature rises to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels. Going beyond that, scientists say, will mean more frequent and intense climate impacts, including droughts, heatwaves and wildfires, as well as heavy rainfall and floods.
Australia has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2030, from 2005 levels, a pledge that sits well below renewed commitments by the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, among other developed nations.

US President Joe Biden increased his country's pledge in April to reduce emissions by 50-52% in the same timeframe.

Australia, like dozens of other countries, missed a July 31 deadline, laid out in the 2015 Paris Agreement, to increase its pledge, though the government says it will do so ahead of the COP26 international climate talks to be held in Glasgow in November.

Australia has also not committed to net zero emissions by mid-century, a goal that the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, among other countries, have done. Net zero is where the amount of greenhouse gas emitted is no greater than the amount removed from the atmosphere.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said Australia is aiming to reach zero "as soon as possible," and preferably by 2050, but has stopped shot of anything more concrete. Many Australian states have, however, committed to net zero independently of the central government.

Much of the developed world is switching to renewable sources to generate electricity, while Australia's power grid remains heavily coal-reliant.

Coal is, however, still used extensively around the world for heavy industry, such as steel making, where energy from sources like wind and solar are not able to meet power requirements. Alternatives, like green hydrogen, are in development and are slowly coming into wider use.