This is not what I’m talking about for this week’s ‘Saturday’ post.
But since I’m interested in both intellectual property rights and the fiction side of writing, I’m taking a few minutes from my Wednesday afternoon to share this excerpt and a link to Blake Hester’s article:
“The recently released Spider-Man 2 is also missing the Chrysler Building. In its place is the same building that replaced it in Spider-Man Miles Morales, though this time with a new coat of paint….
“…with the building coming under new ownership in 2019, it looks like the Chrysler Building may be making fewer appearances. We talked to a copyright lawyer about the ways buildings are protected by copyright and to developer Insomniac Games about why it had to change its version of the New York City skyline.
“The Chrysler Building opened on May 27, 1930, and stood as the tallest building in the world until the Empire State Building was completed in May 1931, one mile away. … The Art Deco building, which rises to 1,046 feet with 77 floors, is particularly famous for its eight eagles, which protrude from the exterior of the 61st floor….”
Whoops. Left out an important bit:
“…As of 1990, architectural works such as the Chrysler Building can be protected under copyright, no different than other forms of art. According to the United States Copyright Office, an architectural work is defined as ‘the design of a building as embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including a building, architectural plans, or drawings. […] Examples of works that satisfy this requirement include houses, office buildings, churches, and museums. By contrast, the Office will refuse to register bridges, cloverleaves, dams, walkways, tents, recreational vehicles, or boats (although a house boat that is permanently affixed to a dock may be registerable as an architectural work).’
“While copyright owners won’t go after a picture you took of a building, they do protect themselves from more obvious infringements, such as another company copying a building’s design for its own purpose, and building owners have, on occasion, gone after companies for copyright-protected architecture on merchandising….” (“Spider-Man 2 Is Missing This Major New York City Landmark“ Blake Hester, Game Informer (October 20, 2023)) [emphasis mine]
As I see it, folks in New York City are still allowed to look at the Chrysler Building and other non-bland objects. They’re even allowed (apparently) to take snapshots. That, my opinion, is good news.
I can, with a little imagination, see the viewpoint of a corporation bigwig who wants another corporation bigwig’s minions to give the corporation of the first part a piece of the corporation of the second part’s action — whoosh. That’s a syntactic mouthful.
Anyway, I can see why SIGNA Group and RFR Holding LLC — I gather they’re the current owners of the Chrysler Building — don’t want their big shiny building associated with Spider-Man. Not until they get an offer they like, at any rate.
On the other hand, I don’t know where the dividing line is between some New York City tourist taking pictures and the likes of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Marvel Comics. Or maybe it’s a dividing zone, where one writer or artist gets sued and another doesn’t.
This doesn’t affect me, happily. At least not yet. But I like to keep mildly up to date with rules involving intellectual property rights.
Now, I’d better get back to work on that ‘Saturday’ thing.
Oort cloud, Kuiper belt, and the Solar System’s planets. NASA illustration.
Sedna and Sednoids aren’t this month’s only science news. But I saw two exciting, for me, developments; and that’s what I started talking about last week.
This week I’ll wrap up most of what I was going to say about Sednoids and “Planet X”.
Results of the James Webb Space Telescope’s observation of Sedna and two other distant dwarf planets will wait for another time: when I’m not running a fever.
Which I have been, and that’s why this was teeming with typos. I think I’ve fixed them. But if you find some, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know in a comment.
Okay. Here’s what I was going to talk about last week:
Recapping part of what I said last week, we’ve been learning a great deal about the Solar System.
Pluto has been relabeled as a dwarf planet and trans-Neptunian object.
As a term, “trans-Neptunian object” isn’t something I remember from my youth. On the other hand, I haven’t learned who coined it, or when.
My guess is that it’s a fairly recent addition to science-speak, since sometimes it’s spelled “transneptunian object”. And sometimes trans-Neptunian object and Kuiper belt object are used as synonyms.
This strongly suggests its spelling and usage hasn’t been standardized yet.
Anyway, objects like Pluto and Sedna, although they’re far from the inner planets, aren’t at the edge of the Solar System.1
Oort Cloud
The Oort cloud is the Solar System’s outermost zone.
Unlike the inner Solar System, asteroid belt, outer Solar System, and Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud is a theoretical thing.
We haven’t observed an Oort cloud object yet: not one that’s been identified as such.
But we have seen and tracked long-period comets, which are coming from somewhere.
The Oort cloud, or something very much like it, is the least-unlikely source.
For now, I’m assuming that the Oort cloud is real; since that means I needn’t put words like “theoretical” in every other paragraph.
The Oort cloud is stuff left over from when the Solar System formed, some four and a half billion years back.
Objects in the Oort cloud are mostly small (yards to miles / meters to kilometers across) planetesimals: made mostly of materials that are gas or liquid here on Earth, like methane or water.
Some of them likely have cores that are rock or metal. That’s one reason NASA is sending a probe to Psyche. The asteroid Psyche may be the core of a planetesimal that had most of its outer ice knocked off. And that’s another topic.
Two more things about the Oort cloud.
Observations of comets and lots of math say that the outer Oort cloud should be roughly spherical, with an inner part that’s a comparatively dense disk.
Depending on context and who’s talking, the Oort cloud’s in-the-ecliptic disk is the Hills cloud, inner Oort cloud, or inner cloud.
Finally; the Oort cloud’s outer, roughly spherical, part is three light-years across.2 Give or take a bit.
Kuiper Belt and the “Inner Solar System”
The Oort cloud’s inner disk — theoretical, so far — is in the ecliptic.
The ecliptic is the plane of Earth’s orbit, which is pretty close to the Solar System’s invariable plane.
The Solar System’s invariable plane is an average of the planets’ orbital planes. Roughly. I’m leaving out a whole bunch of stuff about barycenters and angular momentum vectors.
It’s been one of those weeks.
The Kuiper belt is another disk of material, also in the ecliptic. It was theoretical, too, until we started charting Kuiper belt objects: and realized that Pluto was one of them.
Then we discovered the Kuiper cliff, 47.8 a.u. — astronomical units, the distance between Earth and our star — from the Sun. I talked about that last week.
One of the reasons, I gather, that Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet is that’s got more in common with (other) Kuiper belt objects than it does with the Solar System’s planets.
Let’s see, what else? The “inner Solar System” almost always means the inner four Solar planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. “Outer Solar System” often refers to our planetary system’s four giant outer planets.3
Unless someone’s talking about things outside Neptune’s orbit.
That brings me to Sedna and Sednoids, tidal forces and orbits, and the (theoretical) Oort cloud’s outer reaches.
Or, rather, that almost brings me to what I was going to talk about this week.
Our Star’s Sphere of Influence
SOMEof the math involved in determining a star’s sphere of influence.
Before astronomers found objects like Sedna, the most famous outer Solar System object was probably Nemesis.
Nemesis was (and is) a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun every 26,000,000 years. Each time it swooped through the right (or wrong) part of the Solar System, it sent comets and asteroids hurtling toward Earth.
There are a few problems with that idea.
First, although extinction events happen, they’re nowhere near regular enough for Nemesis to be the cause. The only cause.
Second, we’re running out of places where Nemesis could be. Recent wide-field surveys have looked for Nemesis, among other objects: and so far have come up with nothing. Nothing fitting the Nemesis profile, that is.
Third, its 26,000,000 year orbit would have taken Nemesis about 1.5 light-years out from the Sun: about where scientists figure the Oort cloud’s outer edge is.
Finally, barring wildly improbable luck, Nemesis would have long since been tugged out of the Solar System.4
That’s because something about 1.5 light-years away from the Sun is near the edge our star’s gravitational sphere of influence.
“…Nothing Stands Still”: Heraclitus and the Solar System’s Shifting Border
Distances to stars currently within 10 light-years: past, present and future. (2017) SternFuchs via Wikipedia
“τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν” “All entities move and nothing remains still.” “πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει” “Everything changes and nothing stands still.” (Heraclitus, quoted by Plato in “Cratylus”)
I think Heraclitus had a point, at least where things in this universe are concerned.
Take the exact location of the Sun’s sphere of influence, for example. I’ve seen it described as being ‘a few’, or about 1.5, light-years out.
But what I’ve learned about astrodynamic spheres of influence very strongly suggests that the Solar System’s gravitational border keeps shifting.
That’s because what ancient astronomers called the “fixed” stars — aren’t; although for practical purposes, on the scale of human lifetimes, the stars we see in Earth’s sky stay put.
But they’re all moving in their orbits around our galaxy’s center, and so is our Sun.
Right now, Alpha and Proxima Centauri are the closest stars. Some 28,000 years from now, they’ll be about three light-years away: their closest approach.
About 10,000 years after that, Ross 248 will be at roughly the same distance.
There’s nothing magic about “three light-years”. Some stars come much closer.
Take Gliese 710, for example. The star will, astronomers figure, be just over an eighth of a light-year away in 1,290,000 years. That’s 10,520 astronomical units: close, very roughly as far away as the currently-theoretical Hills cloud.
So I figure the Sun’s sphere of influence, the Oort cloud’s outer edge, is a shifting surface; where our star’s gravity and that of neighboring stars cancel each other out.
And that, on average, it’s about 1.5 light-years out: the top of the blue zone in the “Stars Near to the Sun” chart.
I was going to talk about this sort of thing more, but it involves a lot of math that’s beyond what I’ve learned.5 And, like I said before, it’s been one of those weeks.
Sedna and Sednoids —
Orbits of Sedna (white), Pluto (purple, Neptune (blue), Uranus (green)….
Backing up a bit, the Kuiper belt starts around Neptune’s orbit.
Based on mathematical models, scientists expected the Kuiper belt to extend well beyond the Solar System’s planets.
Instead, they found the Kuiper cliff, 47.8 a.u. from the Sun.
Maybe it’s just a broad gap in the Kuiper belt. If so, we haven’t found that gap’s outer edge.
Now, finally, Sedna and the Sednoids.
Sedna’s current classification is dwarf planet, it’s diameter is very roughly half Pluto’s, and it’s about as close to the Sun now as it ever gets. Its perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, will be in July, 2076.
Sedna’s orbit keeps it well beyond the Kuiper cliff, but it’s not alone. We’ve found three other Sednoids: objects with similar orbits.
Sednoid name
Semimajor axis
Perihelion
Inclination
90377 Sedna
506 a.u.
76 a.u.
12∘
2012 VP113
262 a.u.
81 a.u.
24.1∘
2015 TG387 Leleakuhonua
1090 a.u.
65 a.u.
11.7∘
2021 RR205
990.9 a.u.
55 a.u.
7.6∘
Sednoid orbits, expanded from table in Sky and Telescope. (October 4, 2023)
The Sky & Telescope article I started talking about last week only mentions Sedna and three other Sednoids. I’m pretty sure 2021 RR205 got left out because its perihelion is less than 60 a.u., and maybe because it’s got the smallest inclination.
Inclination: in this context, that’s how much an orbit is tilted out of the ecliptic.6
— Galactic Tides, Time, and Rewinding the Solar System
I’ve been looking for a diagram of all three Sednoids that were mentioned in that Sky & Telescope article. But so far, I’ve only found two: one for Sedna, that’s the one heading this section; and another for VP113, above.
It’s now Friday afternoon. So I’ll put that graphic quest on a back burner, and share another excerpt:
“…Huang asked: What if there is no undiscovered planet in the Kuiper belt? In that case, the orbits of the three Sednoids should have been stable over billions of years. “‘Planet X’ May Have Left Our Solar System Billions of Years Ago“ Emily Lakdawalla, Sky and Telescope (October 4, 2023)
This is where I was going to talk about the Solar System’s orbit around our galaxy’s center, the search for solar siblings — stars which formed with ours — and, more to the point, how stars passing by ours in the course of the Sun’s 20.4 laps around the Milky Way.
That’s not going to happen. Not this week. Which may be just as well. I tend to ramble, and that’s yet another topic.
At any rate, objects in the Oort cloud’s outer reaches feel the gravitational tug of passing stars; an anthropomorphism that I’ll let slide.
Sometimes the objects get pulled into orbits that take them to the inner Solar System. Sometimes they’re pulled out into the void between stars.
The Sednoids, far away from the planets as they are, are far enough inside the Solar System to be safe from the ebb and flow of gravitational tides.
But they’re also too far from the Solar System’s giant worlds to have the shape of their orbits bent by close encounters. Gravitational effects of the Solar System’s giant planets would rotate the Sendoids’ orbits, and that’s about it.
Science-speak for ‘rotate their orbits’ is precession.7
One more excerpt:
“…Using a computer simulation, Huang ran the solar system backward in time for billions of years. He found that the orbits of the three known Sednoids shared some remarkably similar properties just once, in the distant past: Not long after the birth of the solar system, their perihelia clustered at the same solar longitude, and their apsidal lines (the line passing through perihelion, the Sun, and aphelion) were also nearly coincident.
“This orbital clustering is a telltale sign that a single event put the Sednoids onto their present paths, an event that happened during the solar system’s youth more than 4 billion years ago. It’s also a sign that nothing has disturbed the slow evolution of those orbits for 4 billion years. In other words, there is no undiscovered planet to be found today….” “‘Planet X’ May Have Left Our Solar System Billions of Years Ago“ Emily Lakdawalla, Sky and Telescope (October 4, 2023)
I do not think this ends the search for planet-size objects in the Solar System’s borderland. But I do think it may add a page or two, at least, to the early chapters of our home’s continuing story.
That’s it for this week, apart from — you guessed it — links:
Invariable plane (AKA the Laplacian, Laplace plane, invariable plane of Laplace; which isn’t the Laplace plane, so let’s just call it the invariable plane)
“‘It felt brilliant. One thing is to work on a design, another thing is to operate it.’
“Barry Green recounts the moment in June 1983 when the JET fusion laboratory in Oxford undertook its first experiment.
“For the next four decades, the European project pursued nuclear fusion and the promise of near-limitless clean energy.
“But on Saturday the world’s most successful fusion experiment will wind down….
“…In 1958, when the United States’ war research on fusion was declassified, it sent Russia, UK, Europe, Japan and the US on a race to develop fusion reactions for energy provision….”
I gather that ITER started out as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, and has had a name change or two since then.
England’s fusion research isn’t over, although the tokamak torus at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK, is being decommissioned.
The BBC News piece says they’ll be studying the reactor’s materials. That should show them how they’ve changed in the four decades since it was built. And that will help develop construction and maintenance procedures for future reactors.
I’m keeping this short, since there’s more to say about Sedna, the Oort cloud, and all that, than I expected.
I’ve talked about fusion power and more-or-less-related topics before:
Remembering yesteryear: a Solar System poster, the Flammarion picture, movies, and atomic angst.
As I’ve said before, this isn’t the world I grew up in.
Back then, the Solar System had nine planets, assorted moons, and asteroids. Plus, of course, the sun.
Now we’ve got planets, dwarf planets, minor planets, natural satellites, trans-Neptunian objects, plutoids, comets, centaurs, and small Solar System bodies.
Just to keep things interesting, definitions for the new labels overlap. Some labels, like plutoids, didn’t catch on; and it all keeps changing as we collect more data.
This week I’ll be talking about Sednoids, another subset of trans-Neptunian object;1 along with whatever else comes to mind.
About that “Scientist admits” one: the Daily Express piece starts with “Known as the Nibiru cataclysm…” and ends with a link to an article in BBC Science Focus:
Robert Matthews said the odds of something big from the outer Solar System hitting Earth were “mercifully small”: with no numbers given.
My guess is that I’ve got a better chance of winning Minnesota’s Powerball® and the Irish Sweepstake on the same day. Without entering either. Speaking of which, flipping a coin apparently doesn’t yield 50-50 odds. A recent study says it’s more like 51-49.2
A few scientists say “Planet X” left the Solar System long ago. I think they’ve got a point, and that’s part of what I’m talking about this week.
But I also suspect that Planets Y and Z may be lurking in the Solar System’s borderland.
‘COMET PILLS! GAS MASKS!! GET ‘EM WHILE YOU CAN!!!’
Possible planets Y, Z, and whatever would come after Planet Z, don’t fill me with existential dread.
That may take a little explaining.
Or maybe not.
Either way, let’s (briefly) recall a still-famous apocalyptic prognostication.
The year was 1910. Scientists, using recently-upgraded spectroscopy tech, detected cyanogen in the tail of Halley’s Comet.
So far, so dull.
But wait! There’s more! A famous newspaper quoted a famous scientist, and cyanogen metaphorically hit the fan.
“…The New York Times reported that the noted French astronomer, Camille Flammarion believed the gas ‘would impregnate that atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet.’
“Most scientists sought to reassure the public. The famed astronomer Percival Lowell explained that the gases making up Halley’s tail were ‘so rarefied as to be thinner than any vacuum.’
“But the damage had already been done. People rushed to purchase gas masks and ‘comet pills.’ The New York Times reported that ‘terror occasioned by the near approach of Halley’s comet has seized hold of a large part of the population of Chicago.’…” (“Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn’t Happen“, Mark Strauss, Smithsonian Magazine (November 12, 2009))
Time passed. But not the enduring appeal of scientific-sounding looming dooms and the more traditional End Times Bible Prophecies.3
Both of which I find tiresome, and that’s another topic for a week when there’s either nothing else going on: or an outstandingly silly example has been getting attention.
Sedna, Sednoids, and Orbits: Traces of a Missing World?
“When Sedna was discovered more than a decade ago, its orbit — far beyond that of Neptune — baffled astronomers. Unlike most such far-out objects, Sedna never comes anywhere near Neptune. Its closest approach to the Sun is 76 a.u., more than twice Neptune’s average distance….”
“…Now, new work presented by Yukun Huang (University of British Columbia, Canada) at the 55th meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society suggests that there is no such planet — at least, not anymore. While encounters with an outer-outer planet could have established the orbits of Sedna and two other, more recently discovered ‘Sednoids,’ that larger world must have been ejected from the solar system during its chaotic childhood 4.5 billion years ago….”
So far, we know of four Sednoids. I’m pretty sure 2021 RR205 got left out of this article because its perihelion is less than 60 a.u. — astronomical units, the distance between Earth and our star.
Sednoid name
Semimajor axis
Perihelion
Inclination
90377 Sedna
506 a.u.
76 a.u.
12∘
2012 VP113
262 a.u.
81 a.u.
24.1∘
2015 TG387 Leleakuhonua
1090 a.u.
65 a.u.
11.7∘
2021 RR205
990.9 a.u.
55 a.u.
7.6∘
Sednoid orbits, expanded from table in Sky and Telescope. (October 4, 2023)
Beyond the Kuiper Cliff: An Unexpected Void and Wandering Worlds
One thing that’s distinctive about the Sednoids is that they’re well outside the Kuiper cliff.
The Kuiper cliff is 47.8 a.u. from the Sun. That’s where objects have a 1:2 resonance with Neptune.
Orbital resonance. Yeah. That’s almost technobabble, so here’s a quick definition. If something goes around the Sun once while Neptune goes around twice, it has a 1:2 resonance with Neptune.
Orbital resonances matter, since they affect the orbits of planets — and everything else on the roster of Solar System objects.
The Kuiper cliff was unexpected, since mathematical models said there should be a mess more objects beyond that 1:2 resonance. Maybe there are; but if so, they’re well beyond the ‘cliff’.
The Kuiper belt, on the other hand, wasn’t unexpected.
After Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, that was in 1930, Frederick Leonard and Armin Otto Leuschner said there were probably many more objects beyond Neptune’s orbit.
And, perhaps more to the point, in 1951 Gerard P. Kuiper published “On the Origin of the Solar System”.
He described an area where we’d expect to find comet-like objects.
“…The outermost region of the solar nebula, from 38 to 50 astr. units (i.e., just outside proto-Neptune), must have had a surface density below the limit set by equation (7). The temperature must have been about 5-10’K. when the solar nebula was still in existence (before the proto-planets were full grown), and about 40°K. thereafter. Condensation products (ices of H20, NH3, CH4, etc.) must have formed, and the flakes must have slowly collected and formed larger aggregates, estimated to range up to 1 km. or more in size. The total condensable mass is about 1029 g., but not all of this could be collected. These condensations appear to account for the comets, in size, number and composition.
“The planet Pluto, which sweeps through the whole zone from 30 to 50 astr. units, is held responsible for having started the scattering of the comets throughout the solar system. Pluto’s perturbations will have caused initial, near-circular, cometary orbits to become moderately elliptical; thereupon stronger perturbations by Neptune and the other major planets will have scattered them even more broadly….” (“On the Origin of the Solar System“, Gerard P. Kuiper, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (January 15, 1951))
Julio Ángel Fernández published a paper in 1980, saying there should be a belt of comets just outside Neptune’s orbit.
And that since for every comet falling in from the Oort cloud, 600 (probably, based on simulations) headed out into interstellar space, the just-outside-Neptune’s-orbit belt was where most observed comets came from.
A sizable roster of other scientists published other research before and after. Then, in 1992, still another researcher spotted 1992 QB1 — renamed 15760 Albion in 2018 — and so far we’ve charted upward of a thousand other objects in and beyond the Kuiper belt.4
Next: the Oort cloud, then back to Sednoids.
Charting the Borderlands of Sol
Solar System orbits, size comparison from NASA/Caltech.
The Oort cloud — when I started writing this bit, I remembered one of my favorite quotes:
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe” (John Muir, quoted in a book, article, essay, letter, or something Terry Gifford (wrote?). Possibly associated with Muir’s “My First Summer in the Sierra” (1911).)
I also remembered that I have to wrap up “Sednoids and the Mysterious Missing Planet X” on Thursday. So I’ll make this brief. Brief or me, that is.
Anyway, we’ve been seeing comets — very likely since the first of us looked up as one was passing by. With no street lights dimming our night vision, comets can be spectacular.
Someone left us the first written record of a comet, but I haven’t learned who or when.
My guess is that it’s someone who worked in Sumeria, about five and a half millennia back. That’s when cuneiform was the latest thing in informational storage and retrieval tech, and when folks started systematically tracking lights in Earth’s sky and recording their data.
Sumerians were the first astronomers (and astrologers). The first we know of, at any rate.
About two centuries back, we developed new statistical analysis tools — realized that positions of the stars and planets lack the significance astrologists had assumed, and that’s yet again another topic.
Where was I?
The Oort cloud.
Anything, everything, and the universe.
Comets.
Right.
Somewhere along the line, we accumulated a mildly-complete record of showy comets. We also learned that whatever the things were, they were well outside Earth’s atmosphere.
Edmond Halley dug through available records and said that that the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 were the same comet. He also said that the thing would show up again in 1759, which it did.
Halley’s Comet appears in Earth’s sky every 75 to 79 years.
We’ve since learned that it’s a short-period comet. Today’s “short-period comet” label covers comets which take less than two centuries to go around the sun.
Some, like X/1991 G1, go around once every four or five years; but those tend to be so faint, it takes a decent telescope to spot them.
The bright ones tend to come through at intervals on the scale of a human lifetime, so it’s no wonder it took folks a while to realize the things were predictable.
Oddly enough, a list of numbered comets has orbital periods running from a little over three to over 365 years, and includes comet 1P/Halley. But a list of Halley-type comets doesn’t include Halley’s Comet.5
There may be an interesting story behind that. But if there is, I don’t know it: and don’t have time to dig through humanity’s archives to find it. Not this week.
Out of the Ecliptic, Beyond the Kuiper Belt
Fast-forward from 1759 to now.
Scientists have learned that short-period comets like Halley’s generally orbit in or near the ecliptic.
That’s the plane of Earth’s orbit. It’s also pretty close to the average orbital plane of the Solar System’s planets and asteroids.
That gets us back to the Kuiper belt, which is also more-or-less in the ecliptic.
Tracking short-period comets back to their origin, we’ve learned that they come from the Kuiper belt. For the most part.
But not all comets are short-period comets. Some come in on orbits that make sense only if their origin is well beyond the Kuiper cliff. And their orbits aren’t necessarily lined up with the ecliptic.
Then there are things from the depths of interstellar space, but that’s for another time.
Many or most scientists figure there’s something they’ve been calling the Oort cloud: out beyond the Kuiper cliff, and the orbits of known trans-Neptunian objects, including Sedna.
I think the odds are good that we’ll find “Oort objects”, or whatever the label will be: but until we do, the Oort cloud is a theoretical object.
One of the reasons I strongly suspect the theoretical Oort cloud model describes something that’s real is that very-long-period comets, those with orbital periods on the order of a millennium, exist.
They come from somewhere: and a roughly-spherical cloud of leftover material from the Solar System’s formation seems like a least-unlikely explanation.6
To be Continued
There’s more I was going to talk about this week: including what Yukun Huang and other scientists had to say about Sednoids, and why Planet X may be long gone.
But this is all I have time for. So this story is “to be continued” until next Saturday.
Meanwhile, the usual links; slightly focused on the Solar System’s smaller objects:
“Fair coins tend to land on the same side they started: Evidence from 350,757 flips“ František Bartoš, Alexandra Sarafoglou, Henrik R. Godmann, Amir Sahrani, David Klein Leunk, Pierre Y. Gui, David Voss, Kaleem Ullah, Malte J. Zoubek, Franziska Nippold, Frederik Aust, Felipe F. Vieira, Chris-Gabriel Islam, Anton J. Zoubek, Sara Shabani, Jonas Petter, Ingeborg B. Roos, Adam Finnemann, Aaron B. Lob, Madlen F. Hoffstadt, Jason Nak, Jill de Ron, Koen Derks, Karoline Huth, Sjoerd Terpstra, Thomas Bastelica, Magda Matetovici, Vincent L. Ott, Andreea S. Zetea, Katharina Karnbach, Michelle C. Donzallaz, Arne John, Roy M. Moore, Franziska Assion, Riet van Bork, Theresa E. Leidinger, Xiaochang Zhao, Adrian Karami Motaghi, Ting Pan, Hannah Armstrong, Tianqi Peng, Mara Bialas, Joyce Y.-C. Pang, Bohan Fu, Shujun Yang, Xiaoyi Lin, Dana Sleiffer, Miklos Bognar, Balazs Aczel, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers (submitted October 6, 2023; (v1), revised 10 October 10, 2023 [version cited is v2]) via arXiv
“On the Origin of the Solar System“ Gerard P. Kuiper, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (January 15, 1951) via US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
October 10, 2023: death at a music festival, surprise at the United Nations.
Yesterday’s news from the United Nations was a surprise to me. But not as nearly-shocking as what happened back in April, 2022. I’ll get back to that.
Even so, I’m impressed that Russia’s continued ‘Nazi hunt’ in Ukraine has failed to win the approval of ‘right-minded’ people: particularly those running developing territories.
“Russia has failed to get re-elected as a member of the UN’s human rights council.
“The state was expelled from the top human rights body last April after its forces invaded Ukraine.
“It had hoped getting a fresh three-year term would highlight divisions between UN member states over whether or not to keep supporting Ukraine.
“But Bulgaria and Albania won the two seats allocated for Eastern European countries instead.
“The vote came days after a Russian missile attack that killed 52 people in the north-eastern Ukrainian village of Hroza.
“Russia received 83 votes in favour from the UN’s 193 general assembly members, while Bulgaria got 160 and Albania got 123….”
Yesterday’s remarkable Human Rights Council vote wasn’t as surprising — almost shocking — as last year’s UN General Assembly Resolutions ES-11-1, ES-11-2, ES-11-3, (March 2, April 6-7, 2022).
Those resolutions criticized Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, and demonstrated to me that this is not the world I grew up in.
Back in the day, I’d have expected at least token support for the Worker’s Paradise: along with condemnation of Yankee Imperialism with a side order of ‘it is the fault of the Jews’.
Speaking of which, killing folks at a music festival and other discontinuations of life has led to unpleasant consequences.
Which inspired something that did remind me of my ‘good old days’. Student protest.
“A letter from Harvard University student groups blaming Israel for violence in the region has drawn a backlash from prominent alumni and US lawmakers.
“The letter, authored by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, stated that students ‘hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence’.
“It was co-signed by 33 student groups….”
I still haven’t heard what Hamas had in mind when they killed folks at the Supernova festival, nearby communities, and “military installations”. Maybe they were innocently collecting hostages, and got sloppy. I don’t know.
That sort of ‘Satanic’ merriment has been a burr under the saddle for Americans who seem to believe that ‘blessed are the miserable, for they shall spread misery’ is a beatitude. And that’s another topic.
The Israeli government’s failure to apologize for the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack does seem to be getting attention.
Preference and Prayer
I’d vastly prefer living in a world where sitting down over a nice cup of tea and calmly discussing why killing around 1,200 Jews and taking others hostage was okay, and why it’s the fault of the victims.
The sitting down and calmly discussing part, at least. I don’t see executing folks at a music festival as proper behavior. Even if they were enjoying the music. And kidnapping, even for some ‘noble cause’: I don’t think that’s nice, either.
There’s nothing that I can do, in what my culture calls “practical terms”, about what’s happening in the Middle East and Ukraine. And elsewhere, for that matter.
But I can pray that somehow — by what would seem like a miracle — self-righteous thugs and their minions would change their minds about killing folks they don’t approve of.
Or at least be prevented from causing more death and suffering than they already have imposed on music-lovers, kids, and others who committed the offense of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Uff da.
Seriously, though. Prayer couldn’t hurt. Might even help.
More of my take on living in a non-ideal world, but thinking we can do better:
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
