Back to Betelgeuse, Methenium in Orion, TRAPPIST-1 Update

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Brian H. Gill

Scientists found methenium, a simple organic compound, in a protoplanetary disk. I’ll talk about that this week, and why it’s a big deal.

The planet TRAPPIST-1c is about the same size as Venus, but it’s very likely airless.

Betelgeuse may explode as a supernova much sooner than we thought. Although there’s no official “safe distance” from a supernova, I’m about as sure as I can be that we’re close enough for a good view, and outside the danger zone. Folks living on Earth are, at any rate. Folks living elsewhere is something for me to talk about another time.

It’s been a while since I’ve explained why I’m okay with living in a vast and ancient universe, so I’ll wind up by talking about God, change and, briefly, abiogenesis.

This is No Ordinary Protoplanetary Disk: d203-506

ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), and the PDRs4All ERS Team's images: 'These Webb images show a part of the Orion Nebula known as the Orion Bar. The largest image, on the left, is from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument. At upper right, the telescope is focused on a smaller area using Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). At the very center of the MIRI area is a young star system with a protoplanetary disk named d203-506. The pullout at the bottom right displays a combined NIRCam and MIRI image of this young system.' (June 26, 2023)
Webb images: the Orion Nebula’s Orion Bar and protoplanetary disk d203-506. (June 26, 2023)

“Webb Makes First Detection of Crucial Carbon Molecule“
Laura Betz, Christine Pulliam, Bethany Downer; Webb Telescope; NASA (June 26, 2023)

“A team of international scientists has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect a new carbon compound in space for the first time. Known as methyl cation (pronounced cat-eye-on) (CH3+), the molecule is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. Methyl cation was detected in a young star system, with a protoplanetary disk, known as d203-506, which is located about 1,350 light-years away in the Orion Nebula.

“Carbon compounds form the foundations of all known life, and as such are particularly interesting to scientists working to understand both how life developed on Earth, and how it could potentially develop elsewhere in our universe. The study of interstellar organic (carbon-containing) chemistry, which Webb is opening in new ways, is an area of keen fascination to many astronomers….

“… ‘This clearly shows that ultraviolet radiation can completely change the chemistry of a protoplanetary disk. It might actually play a critical role in the early chemical stages of the origins of life,’ elaborated Olivier Berné of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Toulouse, lead author of the study….”

Let’s see, where to start? I’ll pick that enigmatic moniker, “d204-506”.

I spent a fair fraction of Wednesday afternoon looking for it in studies and catalogs.

Then I learned that it’s not protoplanetary disk d-204-506. It’s (probably) dark proplyd 203-506. Or just proplyd 203-506. Then again, maybe its Orion 203-506.

I’m guessing that the “d” in the d204-506 designation is there to show it’s a dark proplyd, not a bright or glowing one.

“Proplyd” is a contraction of protoplanetary disk, or a contraction of ionized protoplanetary disk. Depends on who you ask.1

“Proplyd” and an Irrelevant Linguistic Meander

Kepler's Platonic solid model of the Solar System, from 'Mysterium Cosmographicum.' (1596) Via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.Getting “proplyd” from “protoplaneary disk” makes sense, to me at any rate.

If researchers got “proplyd” from “ionized protoplanetary disk”, then I’m not so sure.

Maybe they shuffling the words and highlighted a few letters. That’d give us PROtoPLanetarY disk ionizeD.

Which isn’t what I’d call either intuitive or obvious. Still, it could have been worse.

German is the second-most common language used in scientific papers.

I’ve run across that assertion, anyway.

So I ran “ionized protoplanetary disk” through Google Translate and got “ionisierte protoplanetare Scheibe“. Then I rendered “ionisierte protoplanetare Scheibe” as “eeonitiporototarashaiba“. That’s what it sounded like to me, using the online translator’s ‘Listen’ feature.

“Eeonitiporototarashaiba” is a mouthful. So I tried making “ionized protoplanetary disks” an acronym: IPD and IPS, in English and German, respectively.

These verbal variations on a theme reminded me of Kepler’s nested Platonic solids, Pythagorean harmonies, and orbital resonance. But I’d better stop now.

A Big Deal

NASA; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Steward Observatory, University of Arizona; a whole lot of people and Hubble's images: the Trapezium cluster in the Orion Nebula. Visible light with Hubble's WFPC2 camera (left), infrared with Hubble's NICMOS (right). (ca. 2000)
The Trapezium cluster in the Orion Nebula: visible light, left; infrared, right. Hubble images (ca. 2000)

Anyway, this data from the JWST is a big deal. So is a recent analysis of it.

That’s what I gather, at least, from discussions of it.

“Formation of the Methyl Cation by Photochemistry in a Protoplanetary Disk” apparently isn’t part of today’s open access literature.

It was published in Nature’s June issue, so it’s behind a paywall. But I did fine an abstract on the NIH PubMed site. I’ll count that as good news.

Now, back to “the methyl cation” CH3+ and why it’s a big deal.

Scientists, I gather, figured that CH3+ could exist near a big, bright hot young star. But up to now, CH3+ hadn’t been spotted outside the Solar System.

Proplyd(?) d204-506’s red dwarf isn’t particularly bright and hot, as stars go. But Theta1 Orionis C is.

Theta1 Orionis C is one of four bright stars near the center of the Trapezium cluster.

The Trapezium cluster is part of the Orion Nebula that collapsed, forming stars: including Theta1 Orionis C. Both of which are near d204-506. Or, putting it another way, d204-506 is near the Trapezium cluster.

We figure our Solar System started in an environment like that. And that most protoplanetary nebulae get a cosmic sunburn from the ultraviolet radiation of nearby massive stars.

One more thing before I move on.

CH3+ has several names: methyl cation, methylium, carbenium and protonated methylene.

It’s a cation, which means it’s an ion with a positive electrical charge. And it’s an organic compound: which doesn’t mean it’s alive, just that it’s got carbon in it.2

Aristotle, Astronomy and Abiogenesis: Briefly

NASA, ESA, CSA, and J. Olmsted (STScI)'s illustration: absorption lines from dark cloud Chamaeleon I, showing which substances are present within the molecular cloud. Spectral data from three of the James Webb Space Telescope's instruments. (2023)I’m going to cover about two and a half millennia of philosophy, cosmology and related ideas in a few paragraphs, so remember: this is not an in-depth look.

Anaximander, Aristarchus and Aristotle figured that the element earth, the stuff we stand on, is basically different from what’s in the sky.

Aristarchus said our earth goes around the cosmic fire we call the sun. Aristotle sorted the elements by weight, more or less. His ideas got serious traction in Europe, about a thousand years back.

Then, about half a millennium back, some natural philosophers realized that how the sun, moon and stars move in our sky made more sense if they assumed that Earth went around the sun.

Natural philosophers who focused more on physical phenomena and less on metaphysics started being called “scientists” just shy of two centuries back. Some don’t seem to have gotten the memo, and that’s another topic.

Over the last century, we’ve learned that stuff on Earth and stuff in the sky is basically the same stuff. Which is why finding CH3+ in the Orion Nebula area is such a big deal.

See? I haven’t forgotten about CH3+ and d204-506!

Again, CH3+ is organic, but it’s not alive. On the other hand, it can and does combine with other stuff in ways that some scientists say will eventually produce living critters.

The idea that living critters can get started from stuff that’s not living is “abiogenesis”.3

That’s something I’ll get back to.

Trappist-1c: Not Venus 2.0, After All

NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)'s' graph: 'This graph compares the measured brightness of TRAPPIST-1 c to simulated brightness data for three different scenarios. The measurement (red diamond) is consistent with a bare rocky surface with no atmosphere (green line) or a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere with no clouds (blue line).' (June 19, 2023) via Sky and Telescope
Comparing light from TRAPPIST-1 c (red dot with white error bar) to three simulated spectra:
Green line: rocky surface with no atmosphere.
Blue line: very thin cloudless carbon dioxide atmosphere.
Yellow line: thick carbon dioxide atmosphere with sulfuric acid clouds. (June 19, 2023)

“Another Blow for Atmospheres in the TRAPPIST-1 System“
60-Second Astro News — No Air on Venus Twin, Young Jupiter Discovery; Sky & Telescope (June 26, 2023)

“Astronomers are using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to take on the seven planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, one by one. Observations have already showed the innermost world, TRAPPIST-1b, is airless. Now, new data suggest TRAPPIST-1c could at best host a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, and it’s still possible that c is just as bare as b.

“The team, led by Sebastian Zieba (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany), watched TRAPPIST-1c pass behind its star using JWST’s mid-infrared camera, capturing its dayside brightness at 15 microns — a wavelength that carbon dioxide molecules absorb.

“‘TRAPPIST-1 c is interesting because it’s basically a Venus twin: It’s about the same size as Venus and receives a similar amount of radiation from its host star as Venus gets from the Sun,’ explains team member Kreidberg (also at Max Planck). ‘We thought it could have a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere like Venus.’…”

NASA/ESA/CSA/Joseph Olmsted (STScI)'s illustration (Science by Thomas P. Greene (NASA Ames), Taylor Bell (BAERI), Elsa Ducrot (CEA), Pierre-Olivier Lagage (CEA)): comparing TRAPPIST-1b's dayside temperature (measured using JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)) to computer models. This illustration shows what the temperature would be under various conditions. The temperature of the dayside of Mercury is also shown for reference. (March 27, 2023) see https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/110/01GW5FWF39VDAZH7MNDEZM1EQVAlthough it’d have been cool if scientists had detected a Venus-like atmosphere around the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system’s Venus-size world, these results don’t disappoint me.

That’s because now we know a little more about the worlds around TRAPPIST-1. And that should help us figure how worlds like our Earth take shape.

TRAPPIST-1c, this month’s TRAPPIST-1 system headliner, might have a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, based on the recent observations and analysis. But if so, its air would have to be much less dense than the Martian atmosphere.

I talked about looking for atmospheres in the TRAPPIST-1 system back in April, so I won’t geek out about that now. Except for one thing we’ve learned about TRAPPIST-1b, that system’s innermost world.

TRAPPIST-1b has an albedo of 0.02: with a very considerable margin of error.

If that number’s spot-on, TRAPPIST-1b reflects about as much light as asphalt. That’s one dark planet.4

Betelgeuse: It’s Gonna Blow!! Eventually

ESA/Herschel/PACS/L. Decin et al.'s Photodetecting Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) image: '...The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is seen here in a new view from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation. Betelgeuse (center) is surrounded by a clumpy envelope of material in its immediate vicinity. The arcs to the left are material ejected from the star as it evolved into a red supergiant, and were shaped by its bow shock interaction with the interstellar medium. A faint linear bar of dust is illuminated at left, and may represent a dusty filament connected to the local galactic magnetic field, or the edge of an interstellar cloud. If so, then Betelgeuse's motion across the sky implies that the arcs will hit the wall in 5,000 years time, with the star itself colliding with the wall 12,500 years later. (January 2013)
Betelgeuse, Herschel’s PACS infrared image, with bow shocks and “straight wall”. (January 2013)

Betelgeuse is practically a next-door neighbor to the Solar System. It’s a red supergiant star that will explode as a supernova any time now. On a cosmic scale.

That was true when I wrote about it back in March, and it still is.

H. Raab's photos: the constellation Orion, showing changing brightness of Betelgeuse (Orion's right shoulder), (February 22, 2012 (left); February 21, 2020 (right). via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.I’ve got two reasons for coming back to Betelgeuse so soon.

① I found an infrared image of Betelgeuse and its bow shocks.

② The star was news again this month.

I suspect it was news mainly because scientists came up with a new estimate for when it’ll explode. As usual in situations like this, the new study is debatable and debated.

“How Soon Will Betelgeuse Blow?“
Monica Young, Sky & Telescope (June 9, 2023)

“…Typically, astronomers suggest it might explode within the next 100,000 years — that is, ‘soon’ on a cosmic timeframe, not a human one. But a new study posted June 1st on the arXiv has been making the rounds, in which Hideyuki Saio (Tohoku University, Japan) and colleagues claim that the star might be further along in its evolution, and that much closer to exploding, than we thought. However, others are taking issue with that result….

“…The claim comes down to the star’s pulsations. Betelgeuse is unstable, ‘breathing’ in and out regularly, with overlapping overtones. Following its brightness over the past century (thanks in part to data from the American Association for Variable Star Observers), astronomers have noted changes over periods of 2,200 days, 420 days, 230 days, and 185 days.

“Usually, astronomers treat the 420-day up-and-down as the primary in-and-out pulsation, with the shorter cycles as overtones. The 2,200-day (or 6-year) period isn’t generally considered part of these ins and outs, and is instead dubbed a long secondary period, a feature of unknown origin common to one-third of supergiant stars….”
[emphasis mine]

I suspect one reason for debate over what’s happening inside Betelgeuse has to do with it being a semiregular variable star. With emphasis on “semi-“.

This month’s study talks about cycles of 185, 230, 417 and 2190 days for Betelgeuse.

A paper published in 1984 discussed a 416 day and 2010 day cycle.

And sometimes the star’s changes in brightness are irregular or simply don’t happen.

This means, unless there’s something seriously wrong with our understanding of stars and physics, that Betelgeuse will explode at any moment. Again, on a cosmic scale.

Right now, most scientists see “at any moment” as being on the order of 100,000 years. Maybe a million.

On a cosmic scale, that’s not much:

  • Human events, in years
    • 1 — Next U.S. presidential election
    • 75 — Since The Ed Sullivan Show premiered
  • Cosmic events, in years
    • 100,000 — Consensus time before Betelgeuse supernova
    • 13,780,000,000 — Age of this universe

If Hideyuki Saio and the other authors are right, Betelgeuse is much closer to becoming a supernova then we figured. They say we’ve got on the order of decades to wait.5

“…We conclude that Betelgeuse should currently be in a late phase (or near the end) of the core carbon burning. After carbon is exhausted in the core, a core-collapse leading to a supernova explosion is expected in a few tens years….”
“The evolutionary stage of Betelgeuse inferred from its pulsation periods“
Hideyuki Saio et al., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (submitted June 1, 2023) via arXiv, Cornell University

Safety and Bow Shocks

ESA/Herschel/PACS/L. Decin et al.'s PACS image, annotated: Betelgeuse, the star's direction of motion, envelope and bow shock; and a 'straight wall'. (January 2013)Recapping what I said back in March, the sort of supernova we’re expecting from Betelgeuse is what happens when a massive star runs out of fuel.

After running through its hydrogen, helium and carbon — I think I’ve got that right — Betelgeuse will start collapsing. That’ll heat its core to the point where neon and other elements can fuse. And that will produce enough energy to blow Betelgeuse apart.

Which would be bad news for us, if we were living within a certain distance of the star.

Which we’re not.

The exact safe distance from a supernova depends on who’s talking and how “safe” gets defined. Samples I found range from 50 to 150 light years. Maybe 30. One article said, quite accurately, ‘we don’t know’.

But since Betelgeuse is around 500 or 600 light-years away, fretting about being too close strikes me as pointless.

Partly because it’s several times as far away as high-end ‘safe distance’ estimates. And partly because supernovae have gone off (fairly) near Earth before.

As I see it, that puts ‘how to deal with a nearby supernova’ into the ‘make it a priority when it becomes an immediate problem’ category. “Immediate” in this case being — I’m guessing — on the order of generations or centuries.

Now, about Betelgeuse and bow shocks. The star has puffed out material several times in the cosmically-recent past. Betelgeuse is moving, relative to the dust and gas between stars, so the Betelgeuse-stuff has been piling up ahead of it.

That’s what’s labeled as “bow shocks” in that ESA/Herschel illustration.

The straight line Betelgeuse is heading for is probably the edge of an interstellar cloud, a dust filament connected with our galaxy’s magnetic field: or something else.

Either way, if the line feature is around the same distance from us as Betelgeuse, the bow shocks will run into it in about 5,000 years. Then, some 12,500 years later, so will Betelgeuse.6

If the line feature is closer to us than Betelgeuse, and the edge of an opaque cloud, we may not see the supernova. Unless it happens decades or centuries from now.

In which case, I gather that we’re at a nearly-ideal distance for watching the show.

Seeing Truth and Beauty in a Vast and Ancient Universe

NASA/ESA's image, detail: LH 95 stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud. (December 2006)I said I was going to talk about abiogenesis, and it’s late Friday afternoon now, so I’d better be quick about it.

Some of what I was going to say had to do with the science aspects of starting with a molecular cloud and ending with a place like Earth. In one case, at any rate: ours.

That’d take more time than I’ve got, so I’ll summarize the ‘faith and religion’ angle.

Basically, I think God is large and in charge. And so, although my opinion about how reality should work might matter to me and those around me: against the awesome spatial and temporal scale of the universe, my preferences don’t count.

“Our God is in heaven and does whatever he wills.”
(Psalms 115:3)

As it is, I enjoy living in a vast and ancient world. And I really like living in an era when we’re learning so much, so fast.

I also enjoy beauty and think truth matters. Happily, that’s part of being a Catholic.

And that’s a reason I have no trouble with science.

No matter where we look in this universe, we’ll find truth and beauty. They’re expressed in words and in the visible world: “the rational expression of the knowledge”, “the order and harmony of the cosmos” and “the greatness and beauty of created things.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 32, 41, 74, 2500)

Seeking truth and beauty will lead us to God. If we’re doing it right. (Catechism, 27, 31-35, 74)

I don’t know why the idea that God creates a universe that’s so much bigger and older than some folks thought, a few centuries back, upsets so many loudly-religious folks. I suspect it has something to do with Victorian-era politics. And that’s yet again another topic.

By now, I’m racing against the clock. So here are the highlights.

God is — well, God is God. Infinite. Eternal. All-powerful. Incomprehensible. (Catechism, 1, 202, 268-269)

God creates and sustains a (basically) good an ordered world. And is present to all creation. (Catechism, 299-300, 385-412)

Although God is here and now in every here and now, God is not ‘inside’ space and time. (Catechism, 205, 600, 645)

“In a State of Journeying”

USGS/Graham and Newman's geological time spiral: 'A path to the past.' (2008)I think God could have made a universe which was perfect in every detail from the get-go. Maybe God did, or has, or whatever tense describes the existence of a continuum other than our own.

But that’s not what this universe is like. We live in a creation that’s “in a state of journeying”, “in statu viae”, toward an ultimate perfection that’s not here yet. (Catechism, 302, 310)

Folks in all times have wondered where we, and the world, come from and where we’re going. That’s okay. When we learn something new, it’s an opportunity for “greater admiration” of God. (Catechism, 282-283)

That gets me into secondary causes. (Catechism, 304, 306-308)

And that’s still another topic. Topics.

Finally, about the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, extraterrestrial life and abiogenesis: finding evidence that life began elsewhere wouldn’t threaten my faith.

As I see it, studying how life gets started involves what we’re made of. Who we are is — you guessed it — another topic.

I’ve talked about life, the universe and everything before:

1 Gas, dust and words, mostly:

2 Stars! Nebulae! Science!

3 Physics and philosophy:

4 The TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, mostly:

5 Betelgeuse, the universe and The Ed Sullivan Show:

6 Supernovae and safety:

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Central Minnesota “Unhealthy” Air Quality and My Plans For Today

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Brian H. Gill
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's air quality map, about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Minnesota’s air quality around noon today. (June 28, 2023)

I had running an errand penciled in for this afternoon. Happily, it’s not urgent.

That’s good news, since air quality in my part of Minnesota is what the MPCA calls “unhealthy”: where folks who have a choice should stay inside if possible, and avoid working hard outside. (Current air quality conditions)

The bad news is that some folks don’t have much of a choice, generally because of their job, about when they’re outside and what they do when they’re there. And that’s another topic.

I’m the one person in this household who doesn’t have chronic breathing/respiratory issues, so that’d be good news for me. If I wasn’t concerned about how they’re feeling, and that’s yet another topic.

Still, it could be worse for me and the rest of the family here in Sauk Centre. We’re not in southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois or eastern Iowa. Folks there have really bad air to deal with today.

Sauk Centre, by the way, is just under the “A” in “Alexandria” on that map. Looks like were on the edge of the “Unhealthy” zone at the moment. So that’s sort-of-good news.

I checked: the air quality alert runs until midnight tonight. And the current situation is a result of Canadian wildfires. Folks up there are not having a good summer. And — yep — that’s yet again another topic.

I’d better get back to work on this week’s post.

Hope the air’s better in your part of the world.

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Good Nutrition, Radioactive Breakfast Cereal

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Brian H. Gill
Breakfast cereal advertisements: left, Quaker Oats (1906); right; Kellogg's Toasted Corn Flakes (1910s). via Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
Breakfast cereal: wholesome, nutritious, and normally not radioactive. Ads from ca. 1900, left; 1906, right.

I’d prefer living in an America where doctors never used kids as lab animals, and “feeble-minded” folks who were already locked up were not feared by the powers that be.

Charles Dudley Arnold's photo of Chicago Expo 1893; Court of Honor, Columbia fountain.But I live in a very real America.

We had problems in my youth. We still do.

This is not a perfect country, but on the whole I like being an American: and appreciate living in a country where we are allowed to learn about — and from — our past mistakes.

This week I’m talking about the time a giant of the food industry and a prestigious university dosed kids with radioactive breakfast cereal. I am not making that up.

Looking Back at Fernald State School and a “Science Club”

Daderot's photo: Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA; formerly Walter E. Fernald State School; founded as the Massachusetts School for Idiot and Feeble-Minded Youth. The site is near Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. (August 29, 2010)
Fernald State School: known for radioactive oatmeal and once a leader in America’s eugenics movement.

Back in high school, I was in a science club of sorts. A friend of mine and I had organized the Moorhead Model Rocket Association (MMRA), which lasted until we graduated. And that’s another topic.

Since the MMRA was a science club, lowercase, not part of a school’s activities, we didn’t get the perks bestowed on members of the Fernald State School’s Science Club.

Which was arguably just as well, since those perks included parties, tickets to Red Sox games — FSS was near Boston — and radioactive breakfast cereal.

Special treatment for some boys at Fernald State School started in 1949. By 1953, maybe earlier, their group was called the Science Club.

To their credit, folks running the Fernald State School Science Club asked parents and guardians of the kids for their permission. At the time, that was an outstanding example of obtaining informed consent.

Take this form, sent in 1949, for example:

To the Superintendent of the Walter E. Fernald State School:

This is to state that I give my permission for the participation of in the project mentioned in your letter of______

Witnessed by:

______ [signature]______

Date:______ Relationship ______
(Permission form from Parent to the Superintendent of the Walter E. Fernald State School, 2 November 1949 (“This is to state that I give my permission . . .”), as cited by the Task Force on Human Subject Research, in “A Report on the Use of Radioactive Materials,” appendix B, document 19.)

Just one problem. The letter referenced in the form didn’t mention that the “project” involved radioactive breakfast cereal.

Neither did this one, sent in 1953, giving responsible adults an opportunity to deprive their kids of “a special breakfast” and other perks:

“Dear Parent:

“In previous years we have done some examinations in connection with the nutritional department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the purposes of helping to improve the nutrition of our children and to help them in general more efficiently than before.

“For the checking up of the children, we occasionally need to take some blood samples, which are then analyzed. The blood samples are taken after one test meal which consists of a special breakfast meal containing a certain amount of calcium. We have asked for volunteers to give a sample of blood once a month for three months, and your son has agreed to volunteer because the boys who belong to the Science Club have many additional privileges. They get a quart of milk daily during that time, and are taken to a baseball game, to the beach and to some outside dinners and they enjoy it greatly.

“I hope that you have no objection that your son is voluntarily participating in this study. The first study will start on Monday, June 8th, and if you have not expressed any objections we will assume that your son may participate.

“Sincerely yours,

“Clemens E. Benda, M.D.

“[Fernald] Clinical Director

“Approved:______

“Malcom J. Farrell, M.D.

“[Fernald] Superintendent
(Second letter from Fernald State School to parents/guardians. Dated May 1953. via “ACHRE Report”, Chapter 7: The Studies at the Fernald School (1995))

The “special breakfasts” were Quaker Oatmeal, laced with radioactive tracers.1 There was a good reason for that, which will take a little explaining.

Science and Cereal

Kellogg's cereal advertisement: Gary Moore and Tony the Tiger (Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes), in Life Magazine, page 133 (October 3, 1955) via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permissionQuaker Oatmeal was made from oats. Quaker’s competitor, Cream of Wheat, was farina-based.

By 1949, both companies were dealing both with competition from sugary breakfast cereals and nutrition-conscious customers.

Back in the 1940s, some research had apparently showed that phytic acid inhibits absorption of iron.

I tried tracking that down, but the closest I found was a 1948 study of phytic acid and calcium; and that’s yet another topic.

Anyway, oats has phytic acid, farina doesn’t, so Quaker’s funded their own research.

And that’s why Quaker Oats, MIT and the Fernald State School fed special kids radioactive breakfast cereal.

More precisely, they ate oatmeal made from oats coated with radioactive iron tracers;2 which isn’t quite as dreadful as it sounds.

Zombies and Mutants, Radon and the Minnesota Department of Health

Lobby card for Cahn and Siodmak's 'Creature with the Atom Brain.' (1955)Films like “Creature with the Atom Brain” and “The Damned” show that radioactivity leads to zombies and spooky mutants.

That’s cinema. This week I’m talking about real life, where ambient or background radiation is — well, it’s in the background, pretty much everywhere.

Natural background radiation varies, depending on place: and in some cases, time. Minnesota homes, for example, have about three times as much radon in our air as the American average.

That, along with ‘you should get tested’ advice from the Minnesota Department of Health, has produced a market for radon testing gadgets and services.

Right now, there’s evidence that overly-high radon levels and lung cancer coincide. But I don’t let that bother me. We live in an old farmhouse that’s now in Sauk Centre. Our main concern is keeping heating bills down by plugging leaks.

Some background radiation comes from stuff that we do. Oddly enough, coal-burning power plants give off more radionuclides than nuclear plants.

Getting back to radioactive tracers, the idea of tracking radioactive substances in living plants and animals goes back at least to George de Hevesy’s 1913 experiments.

Joseph Hamilton tracked human digestion with radioactive sodium in 1937.3

In 1949, when the Quaker-Fernald-MIT experiments started, radioactive tracers were still part of a new and exciting field.

We’ve learned quite a bit since then. Including how little we know (for sure) about exactly where radioactivity’s safe limits are.

Good News, Bad News and Flexible Ethics

Daderot's photo: Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA; formerly Walter E. Fernald State School; founded as the Massachusetts School for Idiot and Feeble-Minded Youth; near Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. (August 29, 2010)
Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center, Walter E. Fernald State School, founded as the Massachusetts School for Idiot and Feeble-Minded Youth.

Results of the Fernald State School, Massachusetts, radioactive breakfast experiments could have been much worse.

For one thing, the subjects survived.

For another, decades later, a Massachusetts state panel said that the Massachusetts state institution hadn’t saddled any of them with long-term health problems.

That’s plausible, since the boys absorbed 170 to 330 millirems of radiation. That’s roughly the equivalent of receiving 30 consecutive chest x-rays. (A millirem is a thousandth of a rem. Rem, roentgen equivalent man, is a unit used for measuring low radiation doses.)

And, as an added bonus, one of the experiments involving radioactive calcium tracers provided data for later osteoporosis research.4

That’s the good news.

“A Disappointing Type of Feeling”, “‘This is Their Debt to Society'”

Screenshot: part of 'ACHRE Report', Chapter 7: The Studies at the Fernald School (ca. 1995)The bad news is that Fernald State School was not a nice place to live. Not for the boys.

Some of them (allegedly) lived with cognitive impairments.

Others were boys who had been discarded for one reason or another.

That bad news was also good news for researchers with flexible ethics.

One of the problems faced by enthusiastic researchers was that the American public was generally squeamish about using no-account boys as lab animals,

But, by following the ‘what they don’t know won’t hurt me’ principle, important people could publish in professional journals and stay safely under the radar.

Usually. I’ll get back to that.

Returning to good news, Fred Boyce — one of the Fernald test subjects — had a pretty good memory:

“…Conditions at the school were often brutal; staff deprived boys of meals, forced them to do manual labor and abused them. Boyce, who lived there after being abandoned by his family, was eager to join the Science Club. He hoped the scientists, in their positions of authority, might see the mistreatment and put an end to it.

“‘We didn’t know anything at the time,’ Boyce said of the experiments. ‘We just thought we were special.’ Learning the truth about the club felt like a deep betrayal….

“…But for Boyce, the pain of abuse lingers. ‘It’s a funny type of animosity. It’s a disappointing type of feeling,’ he said of the researchers who had the opportunity to help, but instead took advantage of students in need.”
(“A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down“, Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine (March 8, 2017) [emphasis mine])

“I won’t tell you now about the severe physical and mental abuse, but I can assure you, it was no Boys’ Town. The idea of getting consent for experiments under these conditions was not only cruel but hypocritical. They bribed us by offering us special privileges, knowing that we had so little that we would do practically anything for attention; and to say, I quote, ‘This is their debt to society,’ end quote, as if we were worth no more than laboratory mice, is unforgivable.”
(ACHRE Report, Chapter 7: The Studies at the Fernald School. footnote 92 (1995))

“Unforgivable” is a rather strong term, but I sympathize with Mr. Boyce.

Folks running the Fernand State School had one sort of authority. The scientists who made use of the institution’s experimental subjects had another. Both decided that using the subjects as if they were “no more than laboratory mice”.

That was a very bad idea. The problem, by the way, wasn’t that someone had authority.

We need folks with authority — legitimate authority — if we want an approximation of a well-ordered and prosperous society. Legitimate authority works for the common good of the group it runs. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897-1898, 1903)

Wrapping up the Fernand thing, a quick recap of its aliases:5

  • 1848 — Operated as the Experimental School for Teaching and Training Idiotic Children at the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind
  • 1850 — Incorporated as the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth by the state of Massachusetts
  • 1883 — Renamed Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded
  • 1925 — Renamed Walter E. Fernald State School
  • 1993 — Renamed Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center

Change and Constants

Photo from 'Souvenir Album of American cities: Catholic Churches of Cincinnati and Hamilton County' (1896): Good Samaritan Hospital, operated by Sisters of Charity.
Good Samaritan Hospital, Cincinnati, late 1800s.

Change happens. A “School for Teaching and Training Idiotic Children” became a “State School” and a “Developmental Center” before releasing its final resident in 2014.

I thought I was done with Fernald for this week, but this ties in with the “change” thing:

“…On a Saturday in early January 1942, the Fernald received a communiqué from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health titled ‘DIRECTIONS FROM DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH REGARDING ENEMY ALIENS.’

“The document cited the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s guidelines for carrying out orders from President Roosevelt to identify and detain German, Italian, and Japanese-born Americans as enemy aliens. It then instructed the school’s staff to restrict the movement of eight Italian-born patients and one Italian American staff person mistakenly believed to be a resident. All of them were now considered enemy aliens of the U.S. government.

“The letter is the first ever uncovered that proves people with disabilities who were in the permanent care of the state were specifically targeted as enemy aliens during World War II. It is a perplexing document, demanding the confinement of people whose movements were already restricted.…”
(“‘Enemies’ with Disabilities“, “Eight Italian Americans, the Fernald School, and the government’s watchful eye during World War II.” Alex Green, Roundtable, Lapham’s Quarterly (June 4, 2018)) [emphasis mine]

I don’t see that document as particularly “perplexing”, partly because I’m not exactly “American” — by some standards.

Irish Attitudes

Detail, Joseph F. Keppler's 'Uncle Sam's lodging-house:' an anti-Irish cartoon. Puck centerfold. (June 7, 1882)My ancestors spent a long time in northwestern Europe, but I’m not “Anglo”.

There’s a lot of Irish in me, due to a young Irishman who came sniffing around the daughter of a decent American family.

As another of my ancestors said “he doesn’t have family, he’s Irish”.

But the kids got married anyway, and that eventually led to me.

My mother was Norwegian, by the way: five-foot-nothing with curly black hair. Not one of those blonde giants.

Small wonder I’m not overly concerned with “racial purity”. Or eugenics, and that’s almost another topic.

One point I’m trying to make is that different eras have different quirks.

Some of those quirks are just quirky: nothing basically wrong with them, like bell bottom pants or cat videos. Others aren’t quite so harmless. like assuming that someone with the wrong sort of parents is an enemy of the state.

Individuals have quirks, too. And, again, some are harmless.

Others: well, there’s Dr. Roberts Bartholow, a doctor with Cincinnati’s Good Samaritan Hospital. Mary Rafferty, Irish and a servant, came to the hospital in 1874.

Someone diagnosed a lesion on her head as cancer, Dr. Bartholow figured she’d die of cancer, so he stuck wires in her brain, recorded what happened when he zapped her, and published results of his research.

Even though this was 1874 and Ms. Rafferty wasn’t of English ancestry, some doctors said Dr. Bartholow hadn’t acted properly. Even the American Medical Association said so.6

Eugenics and Me

Eugenics law historical marker, Indiana.Eugenics sounded like a good idea: improving the race, making humanity just ever so much brighter and better.

Basically and briefly, America’s self-described best and brightest thought that eugenics was the best thing since sliced bread: which wasn’t invented until 1912, so you know how progressive the idea was.

Cleansing humanity’s gene pool hit a serious public relations snag after WWII. That’s yet again another topic, for another time.

As eugenics relates to the Fernand State School, folks with “cognitive impairments” were high on the list of folks who needed to be weeded out.

I’m not overly keen on the idea. Partly because I think eugenics is a bad idea. (Catechism, 2268)

And partly because I can’t reasonably support efforts to prevent people like me.

I was born with defective hips, and might have been labeled as cognitively impaired.

I’m not, but I do have a number of neurological glitches. Including but not limited to ADHD and ASD.7

I’m not particularly stupid, but odd things can happen when I don’t pay attention.

A case in point: during a recent (by my standards) hospital visit, I was given a brief and routine cognitive test. I’d let my attention wander for at least one question, and as a result the test showed that I’m borderline retarded. Or whatever the current euphemism is.

Happily, this is Sauk Center, I’ve lived here for decades and talk like a professor.

But that experience encourages a certain caution with regards to assertions that some kid who isn’t from a ‘nice family’ is a few bricks short of a full hod.

‘What They Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Me’?

Willowbrook State School.I talked about my defective hips back in March, but they’re involved with a case of the ‘what they don’t know won’t hurt me’ principle and staying under the radar .

Besides, Mr. Boyce’s “…as if we were worth no more than laboratory mice…” remark reminded me of my parents’ experience with an alternatively-ethical doctor.

I was born in 1951. A doctor correctly diagnosed my congenital hip dysplasia. Maybe he figured I was a hopeless case, doomed to a defective life. Or maybe he saw me as a dandy test subject. Either way, he didn’t tell my parents.

USAF Staff Sgt Eric T. Sheler's photo: A two week-old's Phenylketonuria, or PKU, screening. (2007) via Wikipedia, use w/o permission.“…Instead, he had them bring me in at intervals to see what my hips were doing.

“He made notes about what happens when hip dysplasia isn’t treated. Then he wrote a learned paper on the subject. His paper was published in a medical journal. A copy of the journal wound up in a college library’s collection.

“That’s where my father read the doctor’s learned paper.

“My mother intercepted him before he reached the doctor. She said, ‘no, I will speak with him.’ Which she did. And never shared what they discussed.

“The doctor disappeared a few days later. Maybe it would have been more humane to have let an enraged Irishman conduct the interview….”
(“COVID-19, Cells, Viruses and mRNA Vaccines”, Trust and Prudence, (December 5, 2020))

Again, I don’t know what that doctor was thinking. I can guess, though, at why he apparently didn’t see a problem with (1) letting a crippled baby go untreated and (2) writing about his actions for a medical journal.

This was the early 1950s.

Doctors were among the “elite” — the ‘better sort’ — who might have little contact with the masses, other than that which their profession demanded. He may not have realized that a non-doctor might read one of “his” professional publications.

Mindsets

Walt Kelly's Deacon Mushrat and Simple J. Malarkey. (1953)Today’s America is not an ideal society.

Neither was the America I grew up in.

“…John Lantos, a pediatrician at University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and expert in medical ethics, says the experiments were indicative of America’s post-war mindset. ‘Technology was good, we were the leaders, we were the good guys, so anything we did could not be bad,’ he says. It wasn’t until the ’70s, after the Tuskegee study, that Congress passed federal regulation requiring a specific kind of oversight.’…”
(“A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down“, Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine (March 8, 2017))

I remember when an increasing number of folks were realizing that the Hollywood blacklist was a bad idea.

I think today’s “cancel culture” is a problem, too. But I also figure we’ll eventually remember that “free to agree with me” isn’t “free”.8

Eugenics was and is a bad idea. Even if ‘improving the race’ has given way to slogans like ‘quality lifestyle’ and ‘every child a wanted child’.

It doesn’t feel like good news, but I see reason for hope in today’s frantic headlines.

I remember seeing the same sort of thing back in my youth.

Supporters of The Establishment were watching their world crumble around them, and not taking it at all well.

I think America is going through a similar spasm of clarity. Today’s Establishment has different slogans and somewhat different preferences. But I see the same old unwillingness to let ‘not one of us’ folks speak their minds.

I emphatically am not looking forward to the impending presidential election’s pandemonium, and that’s still another topic.

More, including why I think “medical ethics” isn’t necessarily an oxymoron:

1 Baseball and a ‘Bedlam’ near Boston:

2 “Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs”, which I didn’t discuss this week:

3 Sience, sense and nonsense:

4 Science and consequences:

5 Details:

6 It can (and occasionally does) happen here:

7 Taking eugenics personally:

8 Living in an imperfect world:

Posted in Discursive Detours, Journal, Science News | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NASA, UAPs, UFOs and a Bart Simpson Balloon

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Brian H. Gill
NRAO (National Radio Astronomy Observatory)'s photo: the Very Large Array, a radio observatory with 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin, 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. (ca. 2008)
NRAO’s Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico.

It’s been two and a half weeks since NASA’s “Public Meeting on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” aired on YouTube. Or is that streamed on YouTube? Never mind.

The NASA panelists did not announce contact with an extraterrestrial diplomat, or admit that they’ve been holding space aliens captive. So some of the folks who were contributing to the video’s live chat were profoundly disappointed.

The panelists did, however, discuss what Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) means, how they’ll be collecting and analyzing data, and answered some questions.

Ideally, I’d have listened to all four hours of the meeting, pondered its content, and would now be sharing the highlights. That didn’t happen.

But I did catch bits and pieces of the video: mostly during the last hour.

So I’ll be talking about that today, focusing on a former pilot and astronaut’s experience: along with flying saucers, ball lightning and (very briefly) space aliens.

Maybe I’ll listen to the whole video later this month. Or, more likely, next month.

Either way, I’ll almost certainly have more to say about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena studies and the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

A UFO that Wasn’t — or — Flying Saucer Down

USAF 388th Range Sqd., Genesis Mission, NASA's photo: Genesis sample return capsule, after crash landing in Utah. (2004)
Somewhere in the Utah desert, a crashed spacecraft: one of ours. (2004)

September 8, 2004, 16:55 UTC.: A saucer-shaped spacecraft entered Earth’s atmosphere over northern Oregon and streaked across the sky toward Utah. Chased by helicopters, it crashed in the Dugway Proving Ground.

One team of specialists rushed the wreckage to a government laboratory, while others removed evidence from the crash site.

Sci-fi movie poster collage; including 'Plan 9 from Outer Space,' 'Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,' 'The Thing.'So far, this could be part of a movie: something along the lines of “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”, “Fearful Attack of the Flying Saucers”, “Hangar 18” or “The Andromeda Strain”.

But it’s not.

The Genesis mission’s sample return capsule was literally a flying — or, more accurately, falling — saucer.

But the sample return capsule was not a UFO, an Unidentified Flying Object.

Its return was planned, so when it streaked across the skies of Oregon and Utah it was an identified flying — or, again, falling — object.1

I gather that “UFO” or “UFOB” started as a term the United States Air Force used as a label for an object that’s airborne and doesn’t look or act like a known aircraft. Or bird.

(Air Force Regulation 200-2, Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting (August 12, 1954 version) via Wikisource)

“…2. Definitions
“a. Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOB) relates to any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.
“b. Familiar Objects – Include balloons, astronomical bodies, birds, and so forth….”

That was then, this is now. “UFO” still means something in the air that doesn’t look or act like a familiar object.

But I suspect that for a great many folks, “UFO” means “flying saucer”: and reminds them of tabloid headlines they’ve seen in supermarket checkout lines.

Although, now that I think of it, it’s been some time since I saw an “ALIEN ABDUCTION!” headline. Or one about an Elvis sighting, and that’s another topic.

“Flying Saucers” and Explanations: 1947

Wilmington Star News clipping: 'MORE FLYING SAUCERS SEEN AS MEN OF SCIENCE PONDER SERIOUS ANGLES'. (July 6, 1947)Or maybe not so much.

Whether news media promoted the 1947 flying disc craze, or passively reported it, the fact is that “flying discs” were in the news that summer.

At some point, I don’t know exactly when, “flying discs” became “flying saucers”. “FLYING SAUCERS” were headline material at least as early as July 6, 1947.

What was behind the flurry of flying saucer sightings during the summer of 1947 depends on who’s talking.

Experts said it was mass hysteria, or some other psychosocial malady.

Some folks said they were from outer space. Others, who worked with aircraft, said the UFOs might be jets or other experimental aircraft. Or maybe meteors.

An anonymous “noted scientist” allegedly said the flying disks were from atomic research. The inevitable powerful preachers and wannabe prophets went into doomsday mode. Folks with more sophisticated styles spoke of matters esoteric and etheric.2

Human Nature, Congress and “Mass Hysteria”

Diorama of a Grey space alien at the Roswell UFO Museum; Roswell, New Mexico, USA; G. W. Dodson. (2011)I’m inclined more toward defaulting to ‘natural phenomena’ explanations, and accepting that some observed phenomena don’t have obvious explanations.

Assuming that folks who saw something I didn’t were experiencing “mass hysteria”?

That’s not an appealing notion: partly because I’ve noticed that “mass hysteria” is something that allegedly happens to folks who aren’t high on the socioeconomic scale.

Like the workers in a dressmaking factory who said they’d been bitten by bugs in an infested fabric shipment.

That was in 1962.

An etymologist didn’t find bugs, and most of the workers were women.3 Mass hysteria? Social contagion? Too-tiny bugs? I don’t know.

Quite a bit’s changed in the 76 years since 1947. But from what I see, human nature and the news haven’t.

NASA’s UAP Meeting: Reactions and a Bart Simpson Balloon

NASA photo and text from UAP landing page: 'Members of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team gather for a public meeting in May 2023. Back row, left to right: Walter Scott, Warren Randolph, Reggie Brothers, Shelley Wright, Scott Kelly, Anamaria Berea, Mike Gold. Front row, left to right: Nadia Drake, Paula Bontempi, Federica Bianco, David Grinspoon, Karlin Toner, Josh Semeter, Jennifer Bus, David Spergel, Dan Evans.' (May 31, 2023, screenshot taken June 13, 2023

My hat’s off to NASA, for devoting four hours of their NASA Video channel to the UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) Q&A public panel meeting. (May 31, 2023)

Not everyone feels that way. Someone using YouTube’s live chat feature said the meeting was a massive waste of time and money.

I can see the ‘waste of time and money’ viewpoint, since the 16 panelists could have been doing other parts of their jobs for that half-day. And so could the technical crew.

The quality of public participation, reflected in YouTube’s live chat, would be another reason for seeing this sort of meeting as unproductive, at best. Take these cherry-picked comments, for example:

“Public Meeting on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (Official NASA Broadcast)“
NASA Video, YouTube (May 31, 2023)
Top Chat Replay (excerpts copied June 15, 2023, usernames redacted)

“…fake nasa data…
“…END THE TRUTH EMBARGO…
“…NASA IS A JOKE…
“…What a waste of Americans’ tax money, glad am not an American…
“…​aliens are real but we still have not got the data and we cannot say because we are being told to keep quiet
“yep. listen to zach folks. there is a few black operations……FACT…
“…​Then why was the transiting plane not moving like that ?…
“…​they are not Ours . they are trying to Pass the UAP buck and we will not have it…
“…​Please watch Mars Attacks! – it is based on real events…
“…​​I just want to know how these things fly, and who is making them and how…
“…​​aliens came to free Kurdistan…
“…​​NASA is full of schizos, they should all get fired ASAP…
“…​why do people want it to be an alien ship?…
“…​​It looked like the three dots were on the lens of the camera that was moving….
“…​​Can a World Government and a New World Order protect us from the Aliens?…”
[emphasis mine}

I’m pretty sure that some folks participating in the video’s chat weren’t serious, and that some were raising what they saw as valid questions.

I think one of the valid questions was “…why do people want it to be an alien ship?”

I know why I’d like solid evidence that we’ve got neighbors.

But my reasons may not line up with those of folks who insist that nefarious schemes are afoot, preventing us from learning that “​aliens are real”.

“May not line up”?

Make that don’t line up, since I don’t “believe in” space aliens who are just simply itching to fix our problems. And I’m not at all convinced that shape-shifting space-alien lizard-men are even now plotting against us. Although it’d make a good story.4

Virginia Beach UFO, Identified: a Bart Simpson Balloon


(Four-hour video, playback with Scott Kelly’s remarks starts at about 2:52:00)

Maybe “seeing is believing”, but I think verifying what’s seen is a very good idea.

Mainly because seeing something a second time may yield different results.

Pilot and astronaut Scott Kelly’s “UFO encounter” is a case in point.

“Public Meeting on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (Official NASA Broadcast)“
NASA Video, YouTube (May 31, 2023) (excerpt from remarks by Scott Kelly, astronaut; my transcription)

“…the environment that we fly in … [is] very, very conducive to optical illusions. So I get it, why these pilots would … think it was going very fast. I remember one time I was flying in the warning areas off of Virginia Beach … my RIO thought, the guy in the back of the Tomcat, was convinced we flew by a UFO. So, I didn’t see it, We turned around, we went to go look at it, it turns out it was Bart Simpson, a balloon….”

Our brains are very good at spotting patterns: so good that sometimes we see patterns that aren’t there.

Sometimes, as in Scott Kelly’s experience, observers can get a second look. But sometimes, as with observations of Martian canals, we must wait until we get better data.5

Aliens and Alchemy, Attitudes and Assumptions

NASA UAP panel meeting agenda: 'NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team Public Meeting'. (May 31, 2023, screenshot taken June 13, 2023

Again, I think verifying data is a good idea. And I think that eyewitness accounts, are, by their nature, not completely reliable.

That’s not even close to believing either that no eyewitness accounts contain any useful observations, or that any data supporting a particular conclusion must be false.

The UAP public meeting’s Top Chat comments often rang the changes on “aliens are real”. “Aliens are real” is a whacking great assumption, with little to no supporting data. So far.

On the other hand, I gather that some — not all — scientists assume that extraterrestrial spacecraft must not be near Earth. And, therefore, that anyone who presents data which might be evidence of an extraterrestrial spacecraft must be a fool, a fraud, or both.

Given how loud “aliens are real” folks can be, and their newsworthiness, I can see how a scientist might adopt a “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts” attitude.

But I think that lumping serious research in with crackpot enthusiasm isn’t a good idea.

That would make as much sense as dismissing chemistry as “alchemy”. Particularly since alchemy was serious research until non-grifter alchemists rebranded their studies as “chemistry”.6 And that’s yet another topic.

I don’t “believe in” or “not believe in” space aliens. I also think that we don’t know everything there is to know about natural phenomena on and near Earth.

So I agree with Nicola Fox. Harassing or stigmatizing folks who study currently-unknown phenomena is a bad idea.

“…Before I begin, I want to echo Dan’s words that it is disheartening to hear of the harassment our panelists have faced online all because they are studying this topic. NASA stands behind our panelists and we do not tolerate abuse. Harassment only leads to further stigmatization of the UAP field, significantly hindering the scientific progress and discouraging others to study this important subject matter. Your harassment also obstructs the public’s right to knowledge. Our panelists are leading experts in the scientific, aeronautics, and data analytics communities. We are very lucky to have them onboard to share their invaluable insights to inform NASA on what possible data could be collected in the future, and how it can be collected, to help us better explain the nature of UAP….”
(Nicola Fox Remarks UAP Independent Study Meeting May 31, (May 31, 2023) from NASA transcript)

“The Language of Scientists is Data”

Apollo 11's photo: Earth. (1969) via NASA Johnson Space Center, used w/o permission.One more excerpt from NASA’s UAP pages, and I’ll start wrapping this up.

A major takeaway here is that understanding the unknown requires data: what this NASA resource calls “high-quality observations”.

UAP FAQs
Science Mission Directorate, NASA

“1 Will NASA be referring to UAP as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena?
To be consistent with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), NASA will be calling UAP ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena’ instead of ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’. NASA’s UAP independent study will be largely focused on aerial phenomena.

“2 Why is NASA involved with studying UAP?
Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are. The nature of science is to better understand the unknown – but the language of scientists is data. The limited number of high-quality observations of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, currently makes it impossible to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events. Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to shed light on UAP. NASA is commissioning the UAP Independent Study Team to examine unidentified anomalous phenomena from a scientific perspective – with a focus on how NASA can use data and the tools of science to move our understanding forward….”

A is for Anomalous

Ball lightning entering through a chimney, from Hartwig's 'The Aerial World'. (1886)
“Globe of fire descending into a room.” From Dr. Georg Hartwig’s “The Aerial World”. (1886)

Something I like about the focus of UAP studies is — well, their lack of focus.

Analyzing data from anomalous phenomena won’t be easy. Particularly since I suspect that scientists won’t know what to make of what they’re studying. Not at first, anyway.

But I think it will be worthwhile. Maybe not in terms of developing new consumer products, and I’m wandering off-topic again.

Although predicting what UAP studies will uncover is an exercise in futility, that won’t stop me from speculating.

I remember when ball lightning was (allegedly) something reported by superstitions yokels. Which, in some cases, it probably was. It’s still a phenomena that lacks a thorough scientific explanation, but at least now it is recognized as something that’s real.

And maybe now we’ll collect enough data — “high-quality data” — to work out what makes those luminous ‘it isn’t either lightning or St. Elmo’s fire’ spheres.

I’ve already seen something like that happen.

There was a time when reporting lights shooting up from thunderheads was a good way to get classed as unstable and/or a drug user. Then a scientist with the University of Minnesota recorded sprites with a videocam.

To their credit, the scientific community did not close ranks and declare that videocams were hallucinating; or maybe doing drugs.

I don’t think that would have been likely, actually. Although individual scientists can be as daft as anyone else, as a group they’re quite interested in facts.

So now we’ve got a pretty good notion as to what thunderstorm sprites are: a sort of cold plasma phenomena, a bit like fluorescent lamps. Only naturally occurring.

Seriously Seeking Something Odd

XKCD: 'The world's first ant colony to achieve sentience calls off its search for us.Studying data that doesn’t quite fit into “we already know about this” categories might end the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Then again, it might not.

An argument against our having neighbors in this universe is that we’ve been scanning radio frequencies for artificial signals for decades: and come up with nothing.

Maybe the frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum we call radio waves is the only way anyone could send messages between stars.

But if it’s not, looking for “anomalous phenomena” — something odd — that we weren’t expecting might start a conversation with folks who aren’t human.

Or, like I said, maybe not.

“…A Mighty Soberin’ Thought”

Walt Kelly's Pogo (June 20, 1959) via WIST, used w/o permission.
Pork Pine, pondering implications of extraterrestrial intelligence. (June 1959)

Those three panels from Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” comic strip make a good point.

Right now, we’ve got reasons for thinking that people who aren’t human might be living on some other planet.

But we don’t have solid evidence that any sort of life exists on other worlds, let alone the sort of living creatures we are.

Whether we are alone in this universe, or share it with others: as Porky Pine said, “ether [sic] way, it’s a mighty soberin’ thought”.

Now, the usual links:

1 History and movies:

2 More history and “mass hysteria”:

3 More of the same:

4 The silly and the serious:

5 Eyewitnesses, observations and collecting data:

6 Science and a scientist:

7 A very quick look at:

Posted in Exoplanets and Aliens, Science News, Series | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

WASP-18 b and Other Wonderfully Weird WASP Worlds

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Brian H. Gill
K. Miller/IPAC's artist's concept: WASP-18 b, a gas giant exoplanet 10 times more massive than Jupiter, with day side temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 2,700 C. (May 31, 2023)
WASP-18 b: a hot Jupiter with an unexpectedly cool twilight zone. An artist’s concept. (2023)

When I started writing this, I’d planned on talking about WASP-18 b, a hot Jupiter: how we’ve found water in its atmosphere, and something odd about the planet’s temperature on the edge of its sunlit side.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Exoplanet Designations and Cosmic Scale

John Tenniel's 'The White Rabbit' from 'Lewis Carroll's 'The Nursery Alice.' (1890) from the British Library, via WikipediaAs I said, my plan for this week was talking about what scientists are learning about WASP-18 b.

Then I typed WASP-18 b into Google Search and noticed Google’s occasionally-helpful “People also ask” snippet feature.

  • People also ask
    • How big is WASP 18b?
    • How was WASP 18b discovered?
    • Why is WASP-17 B odd?
    • Does WASP-12b still exist?

The last two, “Why is WASP-17 B odd? and “Does WASP-12b still exist?”, aren’t about WASP-18 b.

So I started looking up WASP, WASP-12, WASP-17, and related topics.1

My powers of concentration are just fine. Their focus, however, often jumps the tracks, or forgets that there are tracks.

I could complain about Google Search pushing me down a rabbit hole, but I won’t.

Instead, I’ll count them as helpful, since they give me an excuse to talk about weird worlds and exoplanet designations.

Plus, I eventually got around to the “People also ask” list. And, more to the point, a little of what we’re learning about WASP-18 b.

Astronomical Designations: A Discursive Digression

Frederik de Wit's 'Planisphaerium coeleste' star chart. (1670) Frederik de Wit, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.Back in the day, some of the few thousand visible stars had names.

That worked fine, and still does.

Although things get tricky when a discussion involves Thuban, Zǐ Wēi Yòu Yuán yī and Alpha Draconis. All of which are the same star.

Bayer designations, starting in 1603, helped; and that’s another topic.

The good news is that designations for most stars are fairly consistent: thanks partly to the IAU (International Astronomical Union).

And partly to generations of astronomers, frustrated from dealing with star catalogs assembled by many individuals, with little if any concern for cross-catalog consistency.2

Exoplanet designations, although somewhat standardized, are new. So the designation standards don’t quite fit the reality of some exoplanets.

First Known Exoplanets

NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC)'s artist's concept of the PSR B1257-12 planetary system. (2006)We didn’t know for sure that there really were exoplanets until 1992.

That’s when two planets orbiting a pulsar were confirmed as being real.

They’ve got assorted designations, but at least there’s only one name for each:

  • Poltergeist
    • PSR B1257+12 c
    • PSR B1257+12 B
  • Phobetor
    • PSR B1257+12 d
    • PSR B1257+12 C

Some of the pulsar’s planets were first detected in 1988 or maybe 1990. Then the Arecibo Observatory confirmed that the planets were real in 1992.3 Probably.

PSR B1257 et cetera’s muddled designations and jumbled history may be due to their being the first confirmed exoplanets.

We’ve been learning a lot since then.

A Circumbinary Planet’s (allegedly) Impractical and Unworkable Designation

Mengzy's diagram: 'Typical configuration of a circumbinary system, in which A and B are primary and secondary stars, ABb is denoted as the circumbinary planet.' (June 15, 2016) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.For example, there’s PSR B1620-26 b.

It’s (probably) a gas giant, about two and a half times Jupiter’s mass, orbiting a pulsar and a white dwarf.

The pulsar and white dwarf orbit each other, PSR B1620-26 b orbits both, so it’s a circumbinary planet.

I’m not convinced that the “PSR B1620-26 b” designation is official, although it’s used in both NASA’s Exoplanet Catalog and the planet’s Wikipedia page.

PSR B1620-26 b doesn’t have an official name, but it does have two nicknames: Methuselah and The Genesis Planet.

Those monikers reflect one of the three things making this exoplanet stand out from the five-thousand-plus others we’ve found so far. It’s:

  • The first circumbinary planet confirmed
  • The first planet found in a globular cluster
  • One of the oldest known extrasolar planets

About the PSR B1620-26 system’s age: it’s just outside the core of the M 41 globular cluster, so the PSR B1620-26 stars almost certainly are part of M41’s set.

We figure all stars in a globular cluster form at about the same time. Since M 41 is probably around 12,700,000,000 years old — that’s a lot of zeroes — the PSRB1620-26 system should be, too.

As for how “The Genesis Planet” ended up orbiting a white dwarf and a pulsar? That’s yet another topic, for another time.

The best-known circumbinary planet is probably Tatooine, fictional setting for parts of the Star Wars saga.4 And that wraps up this bit about one planet orbiting two stars.

Exoplanet Designations: A Work in Progress

Visual overview of input catalogs and methodology used in constructing the TESS Input Catalog (TIC). (2019) From Stassun et al. 2019, via NASA, used w/o permission.Right now, basically, often, an exoplanet’s designation is [star’s designation] [letter of the alphabet, starting with “b”].

This system’s based on Harvard’s Washington Multiplicity Catalog (HWMC), and has the IAU stamp of approval.

By the way: don’t bother trying to memorize these names. That goes double for the designations. There won’t be a test on this.

Again, with this sort-of-HWMC system, [star’s designation] [a] is the star. Unless it’s upper case A for the star. I’ll get back to that.

And if you think “PSR B1620-26 b”, that circumbinary planet’s designation, doesn’t quite line up with the designation system, you’re not alone.

Back in 2010, some researchers said that the then-current exoplanet designation system didn’t work — at all — for circumbinary planets. I think they have a point, and that’s yet again another topic.

The sort-of-HWMC system isn’t the only one in play. Researchers working with data from TESS, for example, use their own designation system for a catalog of some 1.5 billion (mostly stellar) objects.5

My guess is that we’ll never have a standard, one-size-fits-all designation system for each and every star, planet, asteroid and pebble. Different researchers have different needs. There’s also the matter defining “planet” and “asteroid”, and I’m drifting off-topic.

I’m forgetting something. Designations, numbers and letters, being consistent. Right.

Designations and Alphanumeric Alternatives: a Hypothetical Hodgepodge

Patrick Moore's sky chart of Caldwell Objects. (September 3, 2006)) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission. Moore used his other surname, Caldwell, to avoid confusion with the Messier Catalog.Let’s say there’s a star, designation Prufrock 918273645; with a planet, Prufrock 918273645 b.

Nice and simple, right?

Based on how I’ve seen different folks interpret exoplanet designations, I very strongly suspect that the planet would be called:

  • Prufrock 918273645 b
  • Prufrock 918273645 B
  • Prufrock 918273645-b
  • Prufrock 918273645-B
  • Prufrock 918273645b
  • Prufrock 918273645B
  • Prufrock-918273645 b
  • Prufrock-918273645 B
  • Prufrock-918273645-b
  • Prufrock-918273645-B
  • Prufrock-918273645b
  • Prufrock-918273645B

There are more possible variations, but you get the idea.

The first one, in bold, follows the IAU convention, with a lower-case “b”.6 The other versions might be close enough, at least in context, to avoid confusion.

The good news here is that things like Google Search generally recognize alternatively-accurate designations and yield usable results.

I don’t like discombobulated designations, but maybe that comes from having two librarians as parents.

“People Also Ask”: Strange Worlds and Cosmic Scale

Pixabay's photo of marshmallows, via Smithsonian Magazine Sarah Kuta's 'Puffy, Marshmallow-Like Planet Could Float in a Bathtub:' about exoplanet TOI-3757 b which has the same average density as a marshmallow. (October 25, 2022)Finally, I’m back to this list:

  • People also ask
    • How big is WASP 18b?
    • How was WASP 18b discovered?
    • Why is WASP-17 B odd?
    • Does WASP-12b still exist?

First of all, WASP stands for Wide Angle Search for Planets: a bunch of academic outfits looking for exoplanets. They’re using the transit method, with two robotic telescopes. I’m not talking about that (them?) today: so if you’re curious, check out footnote seven.7

WASP-18 b is about as big as a gas giant can get before being a brown dwarf. It’s roughly 10 times as massive as Jupiter. It’s a gas giant, but more tightly packed than the Solar System’s largest world: with a diameter about 1.1 times Jupiter’s.

WASP-18 b was discovered in 2009.

WASP-17 b has several weird attributes.

It’s first planet we’ve found that orbits backwards. Its sun spins in one direction, WASP-17 b orbits in another. The plane of its orbit is at about a 149° angle to its sun’s equator.

WASP-17 b is also a super-puff planet, which sounds like the name of a breakfast cereal to me; and that’s still another topic. The planet’s between one and a half and two times as wide as Jupiter, with only half the mass of our big gas giant.

WASP-12b is still around, but won’t be for long. it’s being ‘eaten’ by its sun at a rate of about 189 quadrillion tons a year.

Back in 2010, NASA figured the planet had maybe another 10,000,000 years before WASP-12 finished its meal. That’s a short time. On a cosmic scale.

One more thing. WASP-12 b is a hot Jupiter, whipping around its star in about 24 hours. And it’s really hot, around 5,225° Fahrenheit.7

WASP-18 b: Discovering Something Odd

R. Hurt/IPAC's illustration: 'The team obtained the thermal emission spectrum of WASP-18 b by measuring the amount of light it emits over NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's NIRISS SOSS 0.85-2.8 um wavelength range, capturing 65% of the total energy emitted by the planet. WASP-18 b is so hot on the day side of this tidally-locked planet (the same side always faces its star, as the Moon to Earth) that water vapor molecules would break apart. The Webb Telescope directly observed water vapor on the planet in even relatively small amounts, indicating the sensitivity of the observatory.' (May 31, 2023)
WASP-18 b’s thermal emission spectrum, from JWST NIRISS SOSS. (May 2023)

WASP-18 is a spectral class F6V star: a bit hotter and more massive than our sun, and quite a bit younger.

One or two — there’s an ongoing debate over that — planets orbit WASP-18.

Gnathan87's chart: results for an archaeological simulation, an example of Bayesian inference. (October 2011) via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permissionWASP-18 c‘s year is about 51 hours, 44 minutes long. It’s very roughly an eighth as massive as Jupiter, or about twice as massive as Uranus or Neptune.

Kyle A. Pearson found WASP-18 c by applying Bayesian statistics and machine learning to data from TESS. Maybe that’s why some researchers don’t think WASP-18 c is really there. Or maybe the issue is that not enough other folks have crunched numbers and gotten similar results.

Anyway, WASP-18 b‘s year is about 22 hours, 36 minutes long. It’s about 10 times more massive than Jupiter, only somewhat less massive than the lightest brown dwarfs.

And, like WASP-12 b, WASP-18 b will soon be gone. “Soon” on a cosmic scale. By one estimate, the planet will fall into its star in about a million years.

But unlike WASP-12 b, WASP-18 b isn’t being ‘eaten’ by its star. Tidal effects are slowing it down, bringing it closer and closer to WASP-18.

Besides orbiting a bright star, WASP-18 b is nearby: again. on a cosmic scale. The WASP-18 system is just over 400 light-years out, in the constellation Phoenix.

That, and the Webb space telescope’s instruments, are giving scientist a pretty good look at this hot Jupiter.8 And they like what they see. Not that we’ve got images of WASP-18 b. Scientists have been studying light collected by Webb’s mirrors.

“…The discovery: Scientists identified water vapor in the atmosphere of WASP-18 b, and made a temperature map of the planet as it slipped behind, and reappeared from, its star. This event is known as a secondary eclipse. Scientists can read the combined light from star and planet, then refine the measurements from just the star as the planet moves behind it.

“…’It was a great feeling to look at WASP-18 b’s JWST spectrum for the first time and see the subtle but precisely measured signature of water,’ said Louis-Philippe Coulombe, a graduate student at the University of Montreal and lead author of the WASP-18 b paper. ‘Using such measurements, we will be able to detect such molecules for a wide range of planets in the years to come!’

“Researchers looked at WASP-18 b for about six hours with one of Webb’s instruments, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), contributed by the Canadian Space Agency….”
(“Discovery Alert: Webb Maps and Finds Traces of Water in an Ultra-hot Gas Giant’s Atmosphere“; Kristen Walbolt, NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program; News; Exoplanet Exploration, NASA (May 31, 2023))

I’ll mention NIRISS and SOSS, acronyms, from that illustration’s caption, after the next bit.

This WASP World’s Winds: Weirdly Warped?

NASA/JPL-Caltech (R. Hurt/IPAC's infgraphic: 'scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the exoplanet WASP-18 b and its star before, during and after the planet was eclipsed. By measuring the change in light when the planet travels behind the star, the planet's brightness is revealed. From these measurements, scientists were able to make a temperature map of the planet's day side. Displayed temperature range: 2,800 to 4,800 degrees Fahrenheit.' May 31, 2023)
Exoplanet transits and eclipses: how scientists mapped WASP-18 b’s day side temperatures.

First, getting those acronyms out of the way. NIRISS and SOSS stand for Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph and Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy.

SOSS is what the NIRISS does when scientists have it getting light from a single object: two objects, actually, in this case. WASP-18 and WASP-18b are so near each other that it’ll likely be some time before we can get images of the star and its planet(s).

The infographic you’ve scrolled past — or, better yet, read — outlines how scientists collect light — infrared light in this case — from the star. They collect three samples: the star being slightly eclipsed by the planet, just the star (while the planet is behind the star) and the planet reflecting some of the star’s light.

Basically. That’s an extreme simplification.

Those samples let scientists subtract the star’s light from the star’s and the planet’s light. And that gives them a sample of light from just the planet, which they run through a spectrograph.

Plus, studying changes in the light reflected by the planet lets scientists work out how the light (infrared, again, in this case) near the center of the side of the planet facing its star compares with light near the planet’s edge.

Since WASP-18 b is a hot Jupiter, a large gas giant, winds in the planet’s deep atmosphere should be distributing heat from the day side to the night side.

That’s not what scientists found.

The odds are very good that WASP-18 b rotates in about the same plane as its orbit and its star’s equator. JWST instruments shouldn’t have picked up all that much temperature difference from the planet’s east and west limbs, as it moved behind its star.

But they did.9

Over-the-Top Winds on WASP-18 b?

NASA/ESA illustration: WASP-43 b, a hot Jupiter orbiting its star. 'A team of scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has made the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a turbulent planet outside our solar system, revealing its secrets of air temperatures and water vapor....' (last updated December 15, 2022)
An illustration of WASP-43 b’s orbit, and heat distribution on the hot Jupiter. (2022)

If WASP-18 b’s observed disk had been about the same temperature, east-to-west, on its day side; that would have been useful information.

It would have been another example of how winds carry heat around massive planets like WASP-18 b and WASP-43 b. WASP-43 b is the hot Jupiter in that illustration.

Instead, we have a hot Jupiter that’s not acting the way we’d expected. One of the possible explanations for this minor weirdness is that WASP-18 b’s magnetic field is affecting its winds: so that instead of flowing along east-west lines, they’re moving over the poles.

Late this week, I’d tracked down an illustration and discussion of that idea. But, like I said earlier, I got distracted. So I’ll set that aside for another time.

Another item that’s in my ‘to do’ list is what researchers said about air and ocean currents, temperatures and habitability, on an Earth-like world orbiting a red dwarf star.

Living in Vastness

Torben Hansen' photo: the Andromeda Galaxy, in visible light. (September 1, 2011)
M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. (September 2011)

Once, decades back, my father and I were in a location with a really dark night sky.

He tried to show me what, in my youth, was still called the Great Nebula in Andromeda.

It was almost directly overhead. The sky was clear and dark. I could see each star my father pointed out, but not the vast and subtle brightness of the Andromeda Galaxy.

There’s probably a lesson in that experience, involving metaphors and allusions. Allusions, not illusions, and I’m drifting off-topic.

There’s also a more practical lesson from that and similar experiences. My night vision isn’t and hasn’t been good enough for me to get seriously involved in amateur astronomy.

But that hasn’t kept me from enjoying what others report, and trying to keep up with what we’ve been learning about this vast and ancient universe.

All of which has a serious “wow factor”. And helps me remember just how “wow” God is.

“Indeed, before you the whole universe is like a grain from a balance,
or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.
“But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things;
and you overlook sins for the sake of repentance.”
(Wisdom 11:22–23)

Somewhat-related posts:

1 Fascinating (to me) distractions:

2 Names and designations for stars and exoplanets:

3 A pulsar and its planets:

4 First confirmed circumbinary planet, and a fictional planet:

5 Catalogs, names and designations:

6 A poem and IAU naming conventions:

7 Finding strange new worlds:

8 Math, numbers and exoplanets:

9 That’s odd:

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