Opik-Oort Cloud (Mostly) Not of the Sun?

Is Halley’s comet an alien interloper? – space – 10 May 2010 – New Scientist.

New simulations of the evolution of the Opik-Oort Cloud indicate it might be anomalously heavy for its cometoids to have come from our Sun’s forming Outer Planet disk. Instead the majority of OOC objects formed in the same star-forming nebula as the Sun and followed it as the nebula dispersed. Thus they’re captured. Simulations of the Scattered Disk produce only 10 times as many OOC objects as SD objects, but observations of long-period comets, like Halley’s, indicate 700 times as many OOC objects as SDOs.

Doesn’t mean there’s more out there, just that most of them aren’t from the same material as the Sun’s planets. Does mean that many, many more ended up as free-floating objects between the stars. Thus star-travellers may find way-stations strung out between here and their destinations, a common “Galactic Swarm” of comets.

Fast Ignition of Boron-Proton Fusion

Heinrich Hora is a fusion researcher at UNSW here in Oz who works with George Miley, Leif Holmlid and other alternative fusion researchers. He has several very interesting papers on using lasers to induce “fast ignition” of solid boron-hydride. Fast ignition is when a sufficiently sharp energy pulse is used to set off a self-powering fusion detonation wave in the target, and a recent advance in producing very narrow pulses of laser energy has raised the prospect of igniting p+11B fusion with an energy input just x10 that needed for D+T. That’s really good news and Hora is obviously very enthusiastic about the idea.

Here’s his web-page… Heinrich Hora
And a representative paper… Laser-optical path to nuclear energy without radioactivity: Fusion of hydrogen–boron by nonlinear force driven plasma blocks

…so fast laser ignition will be worth investigating for “Project Icarus” too.

Neanderthal Man is… Us!

NEANDERTALS LIVE! from Assoc. Prof. John Hawks’ weblog.

John Hawks discusses how Neanderthals have survived to the present day, as recently revealed by their sequenced genomes. More interestingly it means the Neanderthals were the same species as Homo sapiens – they really were Homo sapiens neanderthalis, a sub-species variant, as a lot of older paleoanthropologists insisted c.30-40 years ago. We didn’t evolve from them, but they have contributed genes to our common humanity. All us non-Africans, and probably many living Africans, owe them a debt of ancestry. Our expanding population of African-originated variant Homo swallowed up the smaller population of regional variants that was ‘Neanderthal Man’, some 50-40,000 years ago…

DAWN’s slow crawl…

Getting between the planets isn’t easy if you want to stop at multiple destinations on one tank of propellant. Currently the only probe able to do so – unless they do some orbital gymnastics with Cassini – is NASA’s DAWN. Currently DAWN is seemingly within spitting distance (~0.48 AU) of Vesta, its first port-of-call, but both are going too fast to stop. That maneuver is approximately 439 days away according to the count-down clock.

Vesta is an interesting little world – surprisingly an asteroid covered in lava/basalt. Interestingly we already have samples of it available for study, in the form of the HED meteorites, which are the many scattered remains of an immense collision that ripped off a huge chunk of Vestan crust ~1 Gya.

Question: Why did Vesta melt and spew lava, but so many of its asteroidal siblings didn’t too?

More on ARMAN

Weird, Ultra-small Microbes Turn Up in Acidic Mine Drainage …at On Orbit
…a reiteration of this Astrobiology Magazine piece …itself a re-echo of this U.Cal Berkeley News Bite. Basically the ARMAN (Archaeal Richmond Mine Acidophilic Nanoorganisms) microbes, classified with the Archaea, are very small, but still independently subsisting organisms, perhaps even predated upon by Thermoplasma archaea they share their habitat with. Their genomes are very small, a mere million base-pairs – smaller than the genome of the giant Mimivirus family of amoeba infecting viruses. More interestingly the code is stripped back, with its genes averaging a mere 774 base-pairs long – i.e. not a lot of unexpressed material. Human genes can be very large, even when the proteins coded by the gene aren’t themselves so large. The ARMAN microbes are virtually the “minimal lifeform” sought after by artificial life researchers, living in quite extreme environments – more acidic than battery acid is the description. Interestingly, for astrobiology, the clouds of Venus are similarly acidic…

Latest paper: Enigmatic, ultrasmall, uncultivated Archaea

Round-Trip Fusion Rocket to the Stars…

Back in Ye Olde Days of the Space Age, the 1960s, various NASA & Aerospace Industry researchers studied Interstellar Travel in terms of idealised rockets. Fusion rockets were studied and their maximum performance computed based on known reactions – the best single-reaction fusion energy release comes from the D+3He reaction, which can produce an ideal exhaust velocity of 0.0893c. Assuming a mass-ratio of, at most, 10,000 and a 40 year ship-board trip-time, the maximum range is 16.75 ly and the top-speed 0.3896c. Of course to achieve a mass-ratio of 10,000 the fusion rocket was assumed to be multiply staged – four stages with mass-ratios of 10, or thereabouts.

That’s one-way performance. Returning to Earth would result in a halved top-speed and an 80 year trip-time, one-way. What if that can be improved?

In “Avatar” the ISV “Venturestar” uses “Polypropulsion” to do a round-trip to Alpha Centauri in a reasonable trip-time and reasonable total propellant requirement. First, a laser fired from a generator in the Solar System propels the ISV to 0.7c. Then, approaching Alpha Centauri, the ship fires up its antimatter/matter annihilation drive and brakes. To return to Earth the procedure reverses. The advantage is that the Rocket Equation’s limitations – the multiplication of mass-ratios to increase velocities linearly – is bypassed for half the overall mission. This results in a square-root reduction of the total propellant needed e.g. if the one-velocity change mass-ratio was 10, then the total mass-ratio would be 10,000 (104) for four engine firings. With polypropulsion that’s reduced to just 100 (102), and just 20 if the ISV can refuel at destination.

Let’s look at a pure-deuterium fusion rocket, since we don’t presently have matter/antimatter producing generators. According to (controversial) work with “Cold Fusion” or ‘pycnonuclear reactions’, in which deuterium forms super-dense clusters inside a metal matrix and fusion occurs due to an energy injection, typically electrical, there seems to be a process which allows deuterium to fuse totally into helium-4. Normal thermonuclear reactions with deuterium require multiple steps to get helium-4 – D+D —> 3He (50%) and 3T (50%), then protons and deuterons (2D) fuse with those fusion products to eventually produce 4He. If, a big if, there’s some way of bypassing the intermediate, then theoretically D+D —> 4He should liberate 0.64% of its mass-energy. That’s a 4He nucleus shooting off at 0.112955c and so would allow higher performance from a fusion rocket.

How high? If we assume that 100 mass-ratio from the old fusion-studies, then that’s a top speed of tanh(ln(100)*0.112955)c = 0.47784c. Because of time-dilation the trip appears to happen at 0.544c, thus if we factor in the acceleration time, assumed a constant 1 gee, then a one-way trip-time (ship-board) of 40 years gets us 21.478 ly. Accelerating a bit harder at 1.5 gee gets 21.57 ly, while accelerating at a low 0.1 gee means a range of just 18.957 ly.

With Polypropulsion we can use our 10,000 mass-ratio to do all the hard work of deccelerating and accelerating at the destination since we have no facilities there. Thus we can do a round-trip in half the time of the scenario in which we carry gas for all stages of the journey. If magnetic or plasma sails prove effective, then we could reduce the propellant required to just what’s needed to brake at low-speeds (when sails peter out) and accelerating back up to speed. That might reduce the mass-ratio to just ~200 for the extreme case considered here.

Of course if the 40 year trip-time is for the round-trip, then the maximum distance is half the above, ~10.8 ly in the 1.5 gee case, roughly here to Epsilon Eridani.

Neuro-Theology Part 1

Dr. Michael Persinger is a researcher in neuroscience at the Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada. He has made a wide-range of often controversial claims for the origins of “spiritual” experiences – for example, that magnetic stimulation of the brain can cause out-of-body and “Sensed Presence” experiences, or that natural geomagnetic disturbances, from “earth-lights” and similar geo-plasma, can cause people to see UFOs and the like. Here are some recent papers of particular interest, an annotated bibliography of neuro-theology.

On the Possible Representation of the Electromagnetic Equivalents of All Human Memory within the Earth’s Magnetic Field: Implications for Theoretical Biology …in this 2008 paper he discusses the possibility of “all human memory” being represented/stored in the Earth’s EM field. All animals with similar neurology, and maybe plants with electrically active biology, could also being stored there, I’m extrapolating. Does provide a possible explanation for ‘telepathy’, ‘race memory’, ‘past-life memories, and similar esoteric tropes.

ON THE POSSIBILITY OF DIRECTLY ACCESSING EVERY
HUMAN BRAIN BY ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION OF
FUNDAMENTAL ALGORITHMS …a 1995 paper in which he describes a possible mechanism for ‘telepathy’ and mass influence, an often remarked feature of cultural groups. He mention briefly a lot of ideas for the way consciousness and the body’s neurology interact, some of which feature in recent neuro-imaging studies that try to identify the neural correlate of consciousness.

Johnjoe MacFadden is another bioscientist with a theory of consciousness, the Conscious Electro-Magnetic Information field theory, which he discusses most recently in this paper… Conscious Electromagnetic Field Theory …from 2007. He also has an interesting theory of Quantum Evolution that’s well worth exploring. Basically, due to the quantum nature of DNA’s atomic components a sequence of DNA can exist in a superposition of all possible mutational states and, somehow, this can steer mutation towards a selectively advantageous direction. Read Johnjoe’s discussion to understand it further. Interestingly Greg Egan, a Western Australian SF writer I heartily recommend, uses a quantum-trick about a fictional “super-mutational” enzyme in his novel Teranesia, an apparently independently developed idea.

Evidence of Macroscopic Quantum Entanglement During Double Quantitative Electroencephalographic Measurements of Friends vs Strangers …in this December 2009 paper Persinger et.al. discuss apparent evidence of macroscopic quantum entanglement between the brains of different people. Apparently “telepathy” though just what information exchange in this fashion means is difficult to discern. One doesn’t know that “telepathically” received information is correct or otherwise without a regular communication to verify the content. Prior to the conventional signal arriving one has to take one’s “impressions” entirely on ‘faith’. Makes for an interesting SF scenario, perhaps.

The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences …a 2001 paper, quite lengthy, discussing exactly what it says. I’m currently reading this one, so I’ll elaborate more in part 2 of this post. Persinger’s philosophical stance is made clear within its conclusion…

To date there has not been a single type of paranormal experience that is not understandable in terms of known brain functions. The consideration of these experiences as predictable components of brain activity will allow the differentiation between the illusions of intrinsic stimulation and the validity of information obtained through mechanisms yet to be explained.

As his other papers indicate, there’s something collective about human consciousness too. We’re not just a blob of neurones locked away in our skulls. A “geopsyche”, as he dubs it, can be produced like the sub-domains of a magnetic field can merge together to form one field. In the case of humans, for good or ill. In esotericism such a concept, without a physical cause, is known as an ‘egregore’.

The Gospel of Peter, translated by Raymond Brown

The Gospel of Peter, translated by Raymond Brown.

As provided by Peter Kirby’s indispensable “Early Christian Writings”. The key verses are…

[55] And having gone off, they found the sepulcher opened. And having come forward, they bent down there and saw there a certain young man seated in the middle of the sepulcher, comely and clothed with a splendid robe, who said to them: [56] ‘Why have you come? Whom do you seek? Not that one who was crucified? He is risen and gone away. But if you do not believe, bend down and see the place where he lay, because he is not here. For he is risen and gone away to there whence he was sent.’ [57] Then the women fled frightened.

[58] Now it was the final day of the Unleavened Bread; and many went out returning to their home since the feast was over. [59] But we twelve disciples of the Lord were weeping and sorrowful; and each one, sorrowful because of what had come to pass, departed to his home. [60] But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew, having taken our nets, went off to the sea. And there was with us Levi of Alphaeus whom the Lord …

…a persistent problem of New Testament scholarship is just how “The Gospel of Mark” finished, as the present ending – at verse 16:8 – is abrupt and inconclusive. Prof. James McGrath discusses this question in a series of blog-posts…

November 2, 2007: How Mark’s Gospel Originally Ended

July 23, 2007: More on Mark’s Missing Ending

July 18, 2007: How did Mark’s Gospel originally end?

…the conclusion being that the missing ending of “Peter” and the existing final appearance of Jesus in “John” 21 seem more likely than the rather jarringly different endings of “Matthew” and “Luke”. An older idea, which might precede that ending, is that Jesus appeared to the disciples on a hilltop in Galilee, as per the cryptic verses in “Matthew” 28…

16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

…though nowhere prior does Jesus tell them to go to a mountain. However there is a rather amazing mountain encounter with the Glorified Christ in what’s called “The Transfiguration” – depicted in all three Synoptic Gospels and mentioned in “2 Peter” 1:16-18…

16We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”[a] 18We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

…but there’s no evidence that the writer of “2 Peter” is referring to the Synoptic Transfiguration. Notice the linking of the mountain encounter with Peter’s message about Jesus’s Coming in Glory as Apocalyptic Lord. In the Synoptic version Jesus predicts (Mark 9) 1And he said to them, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.” …which is followed by the Transfiguration. A seemingly deliberate muting of the implied imminence of Jesus’ Parousia is the effect, but what really happened on that mountain?

Curiously part of the “Gospel of Peter” was found with another fragment from the “Apocalypse of Peter”, in which there’s this curious encounter…

1 Many of them shall be false prophets, and shall teach ways and diverse doctrines of perdition. 2 And they shall become sons of perdition. 3 And then shall God come unto my faithful ones that hunger and thirst and are afflicted and prove their souls in this life, and shall judge the sons of iniquity.

4 And the Lord added and said: Let us go unto the mountain (and) pray. 5 And going with him, we the twelve disciples besought him that he would show us one of our righteous brethren that had departed out of the world, that we might see what manner of men they are in their form, and take courage, and encourage also the men that should hear us.

6 And as we prayed, suddenly there appeared two men standing before the Lord (perhaps add, to the east) upon whom we were not able to look. 7 For there issued from their countenance a ray as of the sun, and their raiment was shining so as the eye of man never saw the like: for no mouth is able to declare nor heart to conceive the glory wherewith they were clad and the beauty of their countenance. 8 Whom when we saw we were astonied, for their bodies were whiter than any snow and redder than any rose. 9 And the redness of them was mingled with the whiteness, and, in a word, I am not able to declare their beauty. 10 For their hair was curling and flourishing (flowery), and fell comely about their countenance and their shoulders like a garland woven of nard and various flowers, or like a rainbow in the air: such was their comeliness.

11 We, then, seeing the beauty of them were astonied at them, for they appeared suddenly. 12 And I drew near to the Lord and said: Who are these? 13 He saith to me: These are your (our) righteous brethren whose appearance ye did desire to see. 14 And I said unto him: And where are all the righteous? or of what sort is the world wherein they are, and possess this glory? 15 And the Lord showed me a very great region outside this world exceeding bright with light, and the air of that place illuminated with the beams of the sun, and the earth of itself flowering with blossoms that fade not, and full of spices and plants, fair-flowering and incorruptible, and bearing blessed fruit. 16 And so great was the blossom that the odour thereof was borne thence even unto us.

17 And the dwellers in that place were clad with the raiment of shining angels, and their raiment was like unto their land. 18 And angels ran round about them there. 19 And the glory of them that dwelt there was all equal, and with one voice they praised the Lord God, rejoicing in that place.
20 The Lord saith unto us: This is the place of your leaders (or, high priests), the righteous men.

…then followed by a segment straight out of the regular “Apocalypse of Peter”, known from elsewhere.

Makes one wonder what originally happened in the narrative before the early Church politics, as seen in the Jerusalem focus of “Luke/Acts”, dominated the Resurrection account. All the Synoptics seem to be written in the light of the Destruction of Jerusalem c.70 AD, though they also seem to retain much older material. Were the Christians preaching to their fellow Jewish survivors a new message about the successful prophecy by JC of Jerusalem’s demise? And de-emphasising the “imminent End-of-the-World” apocalyptic message that originally went with it, since JC hadn’t come back to Judge the Living and the Dead?

[1004.4584] Persistent Evidence of a Jovian Mass Solar Companion in the Oort Cloud

[1004.4584] Persistent Evidence of a Jovian Mass Solar Companion in the Oort Cloud.

John Matese & Daniel Whitmire discuss more evidence for a possible supra-Jovian somewhere in the Oort Cloud – they pin down a possible region to search, which WISE should be able to do as part of its all-sky IR imaging mission. We might know more in a few years time once the data is all in and confirmed by other scopes.

Of course the evidence for ‘Tartarus’, my hypothetical mini-Jovian/Ice Giant/Hydrogenated Supra-Ganymede, is independent of the Oort Cloud. But the migration events of the later stages of planet formation tossed both worlds into their present icy exile.

An alternative cosmogony is Edward Drobyshevski’s “Failed Binary” model, in which thousands of Moon-sized “Ganymedians” formed around Proto-Jupiter, helping disperse its mass, form the other planets, and populate the Oort with thousands of potentially terraformable worlds. The trick, as always, is finding the damned things in the Deep Dark.