Gliese 3378

GJ 3378 is a red dwarf and plantary system 7.73 parsecs from us, toward the "Camelopard" north-polar orthogonal to the galactic plane. Two years ago was floated that this was a system. This planet is now recovered - rather, a different planet is recovered. Hat-tip to Pixy Misa.

As usual, more data refines the estimate. I am somewhat intrigued by a planet which is refined to such a statistically-different orbit. Moutou et al. supposed over five Earth masses and orbiting 24.7 days, with a high eccentricity. This new solution from Paul Robertson et al. has two(-plus) masses, at 21.5 days and orbiting possibly circular.

We are dealing here with a spectrograph, not a transit. At this potential angle of separation, transits can be too much for to hope. Thus, above, the language of minima: masses are calculated in m sini, i being rather less than ninety degrees. I also don't know the inclination of the star. Nobody has detected additional planets here, either. Robertson's crew did manage to duplicate Moutou's result with the SPIRou - alone; blaming this instrument for leading them agley.

Will say this: a brown dwarf can be ruled out. For the star, Copilot is asking me about metallicity and rotation. It's slightly less metallic than our own Sun - the latter (circumstantially) suggesting it formed around when our Sun formed. We are not told of a moving-group for this system; suggesting, further, gigayear drift from origin. Rotation is consistent with a stellarish age of five billion or more years. Assuredly a brown dwarf won't have cooled enough for nondetection in Gaia at this distance.

As for other planets, if this star formed in its own nebula as it probably did, larger planets might not have formed at all. Given maybe three years to find other planetary signatures, I assume anything important up to 2 Earth masses and up to one year period should show up. Unless it... has? That "24.7 day" false-positive could signal a 49.4 day true periodicity. It would be too small to do the Von Zeipel.

Timothy's counter to Pope Leo III

Leo III crowned Karl emperor of Rome, and by it claimed the headship of all Christian bishops - as their Papa, they would say now. Naturally the kings in Constantine's City did not like this, deeming themselves as the Empire's heirs. Rome the city could claim that Peter had set them up. Constantinople couldn't claim New Testament sanction, so they went with a theory of the Rhomania.

Nobody over here out West noticed, but the East already had its own Christendom. Under the Mutazila, the "new Jews" at al-Raqqa / Callinicum permitted Christians to state their case more freely than since. The Oriental Church under Timothy issued this letter which we'll look at today.

Timothy states adamantly from the Gospel of Matthew that Mary gave birth to Jesus called the Christ (in his translation). Not to "God"- and not really to a little boy either. Timothy's Christ is something subtly different. Timothy may or may not be lifting from Nestorius, who taught that "Christ" here means a blend; John Chrysostom likely would have agreed, maybe even Jerome. This need not detain a filioque believer.

Timothy accepts four Gospels, but he's really only using one: Matthew. Mark is ignored. Timothy does, yes, make one diversion to the Prodigal Son. This is now found in Luke; it perhaps originated from Peter, but anyway Timothy treats it more as a nod to shared lore than as a prooftext - the Diatesseron would do. John ... I don't see John. Timothy nonetheless claims four and moots a fifth gospel in the message of Paul.

Timothy knows from Matthew (and Mark, and John 21) that Peter matters. This exposes him to the apostolic claims of the various Romes. To them, he lumps them all in as "Rome". He implicitly dismisses the other Petrine sees of Alexandria and Antioch, now under Islam. Timothy as an Aramaean Semite would rather lay claim to Christ. Not for him is Luke-Acts dragging the Spirit to the Seven Hills. Instead he appeals to Abraham's birthplace and to Eden.

That's where Timothy brings the number five - as something of a quincunx with a nexus in the centre. Eden had four rivers, flowing from one source. In Oriental theology Eden was a real place, a now-occulted mountain reaching to heaven. Timothy would have Babylon as the Edenic river, from which all the Petrine churches flow.

As to, what to make of this argument: unfortunately the letter breaks off, so I might have to fill in for this pope.

Like Babylon, Jerusalem can't claim Peter - but it is Jerusalem, so doesn't need to. It may be that the quincunx should be most like a tripod with the Spirit showering from Babylon to Jerusalem, and thence the three Petrines. Also, perhaps, as the Spirit went to Rome in the past, it is now in Babylon.

That's about the only way I can make an argument for Babylon's right to a nonPetrine see. This incidentally tracks Ezekiel's argument, that his flock in Babylon was now superior to the remnant in Zion. Maybe Timothy is going to try it.

Two Venus statites

When I was looking at Venus floaters and airships six years ago, I was unaware that the professionals had already been at it. The most prominent 2000s-era pro was Geoff Landis; in 2004 he got Tony Colozza on the case.

As of then Colozza knew that at the 53-5 km tier, temperatures and air-pressures reach Earth life standards. At 55 km, 302.3 K = 29.3° C and we're well above the clouds. That pressure happens to be 0.5314 bar, so he's not really talking about humans. (Yeah I know, just use 40% O₂ bro; let's hold off on all that today.) Colozza is pondering if unmanned aircraft can be kept in eternal daylight up there. The mission is for 50 days consecutive. Earth-sent probes.

I had trouble understanding Colozza's conclusion in part due, unfortunately, to typographic mistakes (see below). So I'll do my best.

The main body recommended the perma-airship for altitudes below 10 km. This is also not near the clouds. It is however hell down there. Moreover, much of the incoming light is blocked. Solar panels, in his day, degraded in high temperatures and pressures, and were only 20% efficient at peak. The paper also thought solar panels were skewed to absorb blue where, for silicon anyway, it's more the opposite.

The other option is a non-airship, more like a Reaper drone. That can fly 71-76 km, for 9-12 m wingspans. There the temperature is around 220 K which is -53° C (the paper lost the minus sign here). It can if needed dip down to lower altitudes as long as it returns. Perovskite is coming on-deck these days; this is rated for 350 K so 50+ km altitude, and could well lower the wingspan.

As far as the purpose of either, that would have to be for mapping the surface and/or surveying the atmosphere across latitudes. Radar for the drone; slow photography for the airship. (If we wanted aloft over a fixed position for 50 days, I'd tether a kite to Maxwell and power it by windmill. But this assumes a space-economy good for shipping dozens-kilometers of thick steel wire to Venus, which we might not yet have.)

From LEO to HEO

Fifteen Starship flights to fill up a fuel depot in LEO. 3-4 flights a month. And then you have to keep methane and oxygen cold for months. At 1 Solar luminosity.

A darkhorse alternative has been on various drawingboards for some time, as ToughSF notes: the tether. Looking around, a Tamil, name of Nagaraj Arjun Raja, suggests the Rotating Skyhook.

The idea is to get something to "space" but not yet to orbit. For orbit Raja expects 9.4 kilometers per second δV; BraveAI confirms this figure accounts for the 7.8 km/s orbital velocity needed to maintain orbit, plus 1.5–2.0 km/s lost to atmospheric drag and gravity drag during ascent. I assume Raja assumes this to be launched from Sri Lanka so he's already using the equatorial surface daily velocity.

Raja notes that drag becomes negligible in the short term at 300 km altitude. We don't orbit sats there because sats are supposed to run for the long term. So if Raja's customers can just get something parabolic at apogee 300 km, Raja can catch it before drag and gravity matter. That δV is more like 7.

The skyhook's nexus orbits ~500 km going 7.612 km/s. The tether spins around such that, such that at 200 km below, the velocity is -3 km/s. That leaves 4.612 km/s to pick up the cargo. At the top of the tether, which is 800 km altitude, is +3 km/s. 10.612 km/s around that altitude is a trajectory to almost wherever you want, mate. Cargo will still need to correct that trajectory toward the mission parameter. Although that is Someone Else's Problem; Raja does suggest solutions to that Someone Else in section 7.

This costs up to 4.55 × 10⁷ J per tonne, going back down to Earth; so 4.55 × 10¹⁰ J per kilotonne. Raja believes that can be countered with a honkin' magnet on the nexus, gradually pushing Earth's 25 μT at that altitude. The magnet is in part powered by the current along the tether, presumably conductive along with its other magic properties. That conductive (silver?) wire is not load-bearing; it's just along for the ride. Also various radiators and solar-panels can be attached to the nexus. The more massive the nexus, the less it dips down per cargo load. The skyhook can also catch cargo from outer orbits to bring them down to Earth-capture. That boosts the nexus' orbit for free.

Raja has one more contigency: an ion thruster running 1-5 kW delivering 3000 s of specific-impulse. Of course then you have to deliver ions.

The 200 km of cable can be Zylon worth 7-14 T. "Carbon nanotubes" are also on the table like they always are in articles like this, which would cut down a lot of this mass, if and when we can spin 200 km worth of it (hey at least it's not GEO-length). Likewise I'm not requesting anhydrous silica... yet. Raja is optimistic we can in fact get a good-enough CNT rope in 5-10 years, at the 13.8 GPa which competes with Jensen's anhydrous.

Zylon at this scale would be delivered by the Falcon Heavy. CNT, lighter for the requirements, could go to Rocket Lab. The overall timeframe is maybe 13 years from now.

As for section 7: that is where Raja suggests next-steps. One example is to put more tether-systems in higher orbits to catch and correct those Molniya orbits which the main tether will create. #7.3 handles trash removal. #7.4, most gonzo of all, would pick Mach 10-15 scramjet loads from the 30-50 km upper atmosphere. We would here need to dangle the rope so its velocity is -5 km/s (2.612 km/s in atmo). Drag would start getting serious so this length cannot be permanent. The cable dips down and pulls back I guess.

PUSH 7/9: That "honkin' magnet".

The War Scroll's Ezekiel

Among the first surviving witnesses to Ezekiel's oracles is 1QM, the "war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness" or War Scroll for short. Ingrid Lilly, who perhaps more than anyone has raised 𝔊967 and parallel Wirceburger Latin to scholarly seriousness, on 2015 presented a paper on how, exactly, 1QM was citing the oracles. I don't know how the paper was received, but she posted her notes. Where the Scroll deals with Gog is column 11, lines 14-16.

(Lilly ignores 4Q491. Phillip Lebsack likewise calls 4Q491 out as a summary, intended for the outer circle of the Yahad. But more to the point 4Q491 and others simply don't cover this column.)

Mostly ll. 14-15 parallels Ezekiel 36:23. The narrator (the people) is addressing an Entity. This One is to make a name through the ensuing wars; to show Thyself great and holy among what's left of the nations (okay; goys) that they know. What they will know is not preserved (Ezekiel would have it I am YHWH). What is preserved shows (already!) an identification with the object of supplication, with Hash-Shem. But wait! - there's more! Line 16 immediately refers to the judgements against Gog.

1QM col. 11 skips over the whole chapter 37 about those dry bones. Lilly here points out that so does P967. For the Greek (and Latin), the bone chapter comes after the Gog oracle to introduce that great new Temple to come.

Texas doesn't need our Ogallala

I'm keeping tabs on the water we ain't got in the Rockies' foothills. Estes Park and the Thompson down to Loveland and Greeley drink it from Grand Lake, whether or not they should (the Colorado watershed thinks we shouldn't). Much of the Platte basin / watershed is instead pulled up from the Ogallala (map). That sunless freshwater sea is running dangerously low.

Hydraulic fracking involves hydro, sure; but that imported water goes even further down than the aquifer. More on that, anon...

Townhall, of all places, is ringing the alarm. This may represent that intersection between farmers and conservatives. Flanakin has an aside on the desal which Corpus Christi isn't doing. That on its face is a Texas problem downstream of us - so, I'll try mainlining Flanakin's aside.

Five years back I'd pondered drilling into the aquifer to channel the north, with more water; to the south, with more sunlight. Mind: my side of the Front Range will suffer even more. Such puts more pressure on the Thompson therefore on the Colorado. It also gives south-coastal cities like Corpus an excuse not to do infrastructure (Jevons' Paradox again).

Flanakin is mainly summarising Scott Tinker and Andrew Coppin. Tinker is focusing on the Permian - the Texas side. Flanakin doesn't say, but drillers know: the oil in the Permian comes with water of its own, beneath the Ogallala. Problem: that fossil water is in-situ with the... fossils. Which were ocean fossils. So it's all seawater - saltwater. Tinker believes that the wastewater could be desalinated and sent to the farmers. The Permian farmers, then, won't need the aquifer.

Luckily energy is cheap out there on the Permian, like it used to be along the Columbia River. I just mentioned the south gets more sun. And they're using it!

Meanwhile aquifers and the deeper salt seas might consider monitoring the stale air.

Beryllium everything

As Elon Musk loves stainless steel, and Jensen adores anhydrous glass; in the 1950s Isaac Asimov had a crush on beryllium. He thought in 1953 the asteroids would host a beryllium economy. The only catch was that the dust is toxic inducing the condition berylliosis. Asimov had to address this in another story the following year, "Sucker Bait".

As to, why the fourth element: the Young modulus against density. Such has kind of been a thing around these here parts. This is why anhydrous glass elsewhere - one reason. For smaller chassis-es Delta prefers this to titanium. I mean, why not, for unmanned craft; frankly all metals will get our monkeys nuked outside our magnetic shield.

Beryllium also promises heat capacity. After storing the heat, a sat can expel the heat for short bursts of high I_sp. No nukes! (Just the, uh, beryllium.) Also no radiators, since this whole setup is the radiator.

This would seem excellent for station-keeping an unmanned sat. Assuming you couldn't use a sail and the sat didn't need to be cooled unreasonably low. Lunar-orbital course-corrections? Solar flybys with Oberth?

Now: I've had trouble lately with Google AI. Lately it has hallucinated D&D modules HWA4-7 which never existed (nor should they). Here, take the following with grains of the sodium chloride.

Beryllium is Toray-esque brittle under 300° C (2-4% elasticity) but above that gets more "ductile". Melts at 1284°. Compare silica 1713°. I think the deal with "heat capacity" is that the metal will take a long ass time to push over that limit before it finally gives up and melts.

As far as, where to mine it: I think Asimov was under the (correct) impression that it would accumulate in the asteroids. For the smaller C types it does not concentrate in veins; but the larger ones might differentiate. Asimov didn't know, so projected the beryllium mines for Pallas. Ceres too, I'd recalled; maybe in the first edition of his book, which he subsequently quietly edited out.

Beryllium happens to be lithophilic. That means it should be gathered from regolith in subplanetary crusts. Our own Moon is that; also Vesta. If we were looking for siderophiles like tungsten we'd get that from Psyche or scout out craters.