The argon bath

Earlier I'd noted dust-repelling surfaces. I wondered if that was possible or always desirable, to make all surfaces dust-repellant. Today we have the excellent news that liquid-nitrogen might wash it all away.

One problem is that nitrogen isn't common where is also regolith. Earth would have to ship canisters to the Moon and to near-Earth asteroids. Maybe Venus could ship it too but they'd be short on canisters and, of course, further down the Solar well. Out where nitrogen is common again, like around Saturn, there's no regolith to worry about.

The nitrogen is presumably compressed from the air that's already been shipped to the station, which structure is sealed, so the gas shouldn't be lost for reuse. Mars cares less about this on account they can just pull more nitrogen from the (admittedly thin) atmosphere.

Mars might be best of all the dusty worlds: half the atmosphere happens to be argon, which goes liquid at a higher-temperature than nitrogen. This means if the Martians (somehow) cool a chamber to about 85 K it should become a literal bath-room of argon in a nitrogen atmosphere. I am unsure how good argon is as a solvent; as documented here, it dissolves better than nitrogen in oils. But with regolith and Martian dust I don't hear anyone calling for solvents, just something reasonably-inert as will wash suits.

Another point-of-interest is that this 85 K bathroom's atmo, in Mars, defaults to 2:1 nitrox. 33% oxygen seems uncomfortably flammable - but is eminently breathable; so, maybe can be allowed to be lower-pressure, saving costs. I'd advise some warming-apparatus before ingesting this air into lungs. Also if the Martians have been breathing natural argox in their suits then they're getting the ol' Grecian Bends herein, which isn't a joke where sequestered from the rest of the habitat. Suits can be loaded up with pure nitrox for the outdoors, so they get The Bends out of the way before they even start.

Move over, xenon: III

SpaceX aren't waiting for the not-Hall for their sat-thrusters and are just going to use Hall with argon. Bold move (Cotton). This was all over space-twitter last Sunday, LouGrims yesterday offering about the best take. With maths.

Basically the cost of xenon and even of krypton is no joke. I never thought it was a joke but, yesterday LouGrims was telling me why. These noble-gasses were mined in, er, the Ukraine. Either-way: argon by contrast is 1% air-liquide: $30-50k savings in propellant. Even if Ukraine and Russia suddenly made up tomorrow and started Eastern Europe's biggest neon-lit gay orgy they still cannot make those gasses that much cheaper.

50% efficiency is great; I didn't think we could have this with a classic Hall using argon. ToughSF chimes in that SpaceX does 1000 W/kg against DART-C 342 (a third the alpha!).

The empty tomb as Marcan ineptum

First thing this morning I happened upon Vridar concerning Michael Duncan's brilliant 2022 book, Rhetoric and the Synoptic Problem. The Gospel take on Christ's famed tomb, absent Christ, intrigues me.

The Baghestan is Tertullianist in its approach to Christ's biography - it holds to the Dissimilarity Principle. We should entertain a gospel claim when said claim is ineptus against the Gospel, of Jesus as the Christ and living Lord. I hold three such claims as troubling for historic Christianity: the virgin-birth, the baptism by John, and the Cross itself. On reading Duncan one might be tempted to add the empty tomb - for Mark and Matthew, anyway.

Since Duncan has disclosed his biases, I shall do likewise: unlike Duncan, I am a Christian. I am "however" also a Catholic who does not necessarily agree with every word of the canon text. I will exercise my right to bring in Patristic evidence, starting with Ignatius and Jerome (setting aside for now the Epistula Apostolorum).

Matthew is a pro-Peter gospel. Duncan sees Mark as instead pro-Paul. But Evan Powell back in the 1990s found that Mark, like Matthew, supported Peter; namely against John 1-20, or against John's source (Evan's already un-spliced one chapter, the rest of us may as well go all-in). A direct Petrine witness to Jesus' resurrection should serve Mark's purpose best. Inasmuch as Mark doesn't claim this, the scene of an empty tomb with said tomb discovered by Mary of the Tower and maybe other women (who aren't Peter by definition) is ineptus to Mark. Epistula Apostolorum's account even refutes Mark, if we believed it.

Powell might claim Duncan's reading as vindication: if someone not Peter (like Mary) claimed to meet the risen Lord first, this forced all the Petrines into the fallback position: of denying direct access to this first post-resurrection appearance, from anybody. Mind, Powell would have to explain John 20's infamous footrace between Peter and the Beloved Disciple, which only exists due to the assumption of an empty tomb. Recall that Powell recognises only a diatesseronic Christian transposition upon John 1-20, not any Johannine redaction of a prior now-lost gospel. Duncan can explain this footrace as John reacting to Mark [UPDATE 2/28 or, er, to canonical Luke]. But this just makes Powell's problem into Duncan's problem: who came up with the tomb first, and why?

Maybe Powell would allow Paul's ἐτάφη. To that there are burials and there are burials. John 19:41-20:1 / Mark 15:46 depict a μνημεῖον: hewn from the rock and intended for someone else, not dug from the ground as if to dispose of rubbish.

Another possible subtext presents itself: claims that Jesus had no μνημεῖον. In parallel Ignatius offers his own pro-Peter take, in his letter to the faithful in Smyrna. Jerome will flag this as a citation of the "Gospel of the Hebrews". Ignatius cares that Jesus came in the flesh, after his body was nailed to the cross. We care that Ignatius, whether Christ was ἐτάφη or not, doesn't mention the tomb. Ignatius was responding to a docetic narrative, which docetism may - like John 3:14+12:34, and Sura 4 v. 157 - imply only an Ascension. But before all that, must have been talk that the Romans (and/or Jews) simply took Jesus' body away for the ravens, stray dogs and buzzards.

If this Ascension tradition be earliest, then the empty-tomb is no more ineptum for Mark. The four canon evangelists' shared problem is the lack of a chain-of-custody for the crucified Christ, prior to his appearance before Peter or Paul or even Thomas. (Evans argued that John 21 is this chapter missing in Mark; Duncan might bring Paul's claims in the epistles.) The empty tomb is how they keep Jesus' body safe from their rivals, which rivals start with the ... well, with the Jews.

More Doppling

Katherine Laliotis et al. have/has flushed neo-Vulcan for good and all. Besides HD 26965 / 40 Eri; HD 114613, and HDs 20794 and 85512 as published in the same paper, got buhleeted. I feel most sorry for F. Pepe and his 2011 crew.

I guess this happens when you spot a 40 day periodicity for three-four cycles. You cannot sit by the 'scope forever.

But the news is not all bad news.

The paper's abstract raises Delta Pavonis, HD 190248 to its friends. This is out at 164 mas parallax so 6.1 pc from us, so quite close; and it's almost exactly one solar mass at G8IV. If the periodicity be a planet its mass would be quite a bit less than Saturn's 95 Earth mass (69 Earths) at a very Saturnlike 11 AU from the star. Eitherway this rules out any Jovians nor even Saturns interior to that.

Strangely δPav didn't make the Discussion at the paper's end. This made more of the three Neptunians aroud HD 69830, and of Gliese 688's spectroscopic-binary "SB1"; both herein constrained. GJ 688 is also here marked (as K2.5V) so - I dunno. Is that companion a dim red dwarf? Why is it so dim that it can't be constrained even in mass? even from 11 parsecs?

Elsewhere 61 Virginis' three planets, or HD 115617 if you're them, got constrained. The outer one "d" is confirmed. Mind, the star is 0.82 L_☉ and this planet is at, what, 0.476 AU. Assuming rough coplanarity its inclination won't be much less 75° so mass not much more than 10.82/0.96592583 = 11.2 Earth masses. Looks beyond Venus; looks like a Sudarsky III. And its Hill might crowd out an Earth in the Habitable-Zone especially as coupled with the gravitational effects of the planets inward even of that.

Science-fiction authors should get quite a bit out of all this. They don't prove Earths in any of these HZs but also (61 Vir aside) don't rule them out, inasmuch as they've ruled out Neptunelikes in these HZs.

Guyénot the Monothelete

Laurent Guyénot offers about the most-cogent attack on the Papacy-as-Papacy as we'll likely read. Certainly better than his last confused effort.

Guyénot argues that the Christian religion belongs under a Christian empire which empire incorporates Western Europe and supports local bishops. Guyénot, French himself, suggests Germany and perhaps Russia as well as the nations best suited to anchor such an empire.

Guyénot deliberately does not mention theology - so I will. The formula such a Church requires is Monotheletism - the Church and the State are of one indivisible Will. This is most powerfully stated in the Ecthesis as an outgrowth of the relationship between the Father and the Son. And why not; the formula has been tried and found, in fact, to work...

... for less than a decade, in the AD 630s / AG 940s.

The Papist argument is that European nations should indeed remain small, divided, and weak but fit to produce healthy, united, and strong Christians. These would (ideally) go to war only for just causes, such as a Crusade. This works well with the Libertarianism, for what that is worth.

SO NOW WE KNOW 3/31/23: His whole view on history is wrong. Why trust him?

To dust we shan't return

As noted by Nyrath, this anti-dust tech is a godsend for regolith-haters. Not just the Moon, but also Mars' rovers - and, this blog must submit, for Deimos and the asteroids, which have their own dust.

The dust which won't stick to the surfaces will, however, have to go somewhere else; and if they are "rolling off due to gravity", there's a question about whether lower-gravity will prove sufficient. Also: aerosols.

Perhaps coupled with cheap adhesive coatings for habitat floors would work to catch falling dust-particles in airless spaces, like airlocks (obviously), storage, and server-farms.

The other Raptor

Stoke Space think they have a competitor to the Raptor. This is a methane rocket-engine, lightweight, powerful. Like Relativity's [UPDATE 3/23: which actually works].

I hope it is, at least, fit for installation in a SuperHeavy. Commoditising the rocket-engine space (as it were) might even save SpaceX the cash and the hassle. Although Stoke may have some way to go before they beat Elon Musk's 29.5/31 high score.

Admittedly vendor woes are (almost) as bad as government licencing when it comes to, say, nuclear power, or to building reservoirs in California.

Enoch and Hesiod in George Syncellus

The Western rediscovery of five of the many Enoch books, the five most-revered in Ethiopia, is nowadays given in scare-quotes. This is a common trend of modern #wokery to erase the achievements of our forebears. It seems clear to the rest of us that the West did lose the original text of these five books - most of which books were indeed composed in the Levant (maybe Similitudes and 1 Enoch 83-84 in Egypt or Nubia) - and that James Bruce did find and publish the Ethiopic, however belatedly, in 1773.

My post mainly concerns one of the sporadic semi-rediscoverers of the Middle Ages (another problematic term, but - whatever): George, patriarch Tarasius' syncellus.

Theophanes Confessor continued George's work giving rise to the never-dispensable Chronography. Zonaras and Cedrenus relied upon George (via Theophanes); likewise, I think, Anastasius among the Latins. George's Byzantine MSS were likely looted by the Venetians; although apparently not going further asea than Corinth, whence one J. Goar finally published it in Paris. Since then, classically Westerners have scoffed at George for credulity, for instance McClintock and Strong - but I'll get back to this.

As a result of George's publication, his Enoch excerpt was already loose in the wild as of 1773. Since 1727 it has even enjoyed an English translation courtesy of William Whiston. In the West, much of George was only had from excerpts of this sort, if you weren't a Byzantinist or at least a Hellenist. For Anglophones since 2002 a translation of all Syncellus can be had for, admittedly, a pretty penny. I don't suppose we are allowed to thank William Adler and Paul Tuffin, either.

As to George's (un)reliability Luca Arcari would beg to differ. George was an excellent scholar, if a bit autistic, and attempted to deliver his sources (like Julius Africanus) to the best of his copious abilities. If there are problems in George those are usually problems in his sources. So is the case of his transmission of the "Enoch" material. George tries not to do mythology, but made an exception here, because textual fidelity was paramount. Also it seems George was himself much less of a misogyne than was his version of Enoch. Arcari sees a reader of Hesiod between Aramaic Enoch and George.

Besides the anti-woman adaptation of 1 Enoch 8:1 in George's excerpt, also there seems a harmonisation of 1 Enoch 7:2's giants. The Enochian tradition, which (per Boccaccini) includes post-Enochian Jubilees, recalls giants, Naphil, and Elyo. The Enochians with Jubilees probably considered them as contemporaries, maybe subsets maybe synonyms. For George, one led to another led to the last, the Elioud (somewhat reminding me of Viles, Demondim, and Waynhim / Ur-Viles in Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever). Matthew Goff sees parallels in [Iraqi] Rabbinic literature and calls it a Biblical eisegesis. I submit that here we have more Hesiod, before the Flood as it were.

Carimokam's argument

Sahaja Carimokam, a pseudonym, attempted in on the "counterjihad" with Muhammad and the People of the Book. Xlibris "published" this book, which I assume is a Createspacelike from the early 2010s. This explains its solecisms and minor errors: it didn't get edited.

I don't see that the book got very far. Other books resemble it as confront the Sîra / Maghâzî through its own words. Anyway now David Cashin has posted the whole thing on academia.edu.

Since I start as a skeptic of the sources, the chapter of value to me is the penultimate one, exactly on the historical reliability of the sources. Carimokam here argues from Tertullian's ancient standpoint that the Hadith generally was seen as ineptus (citing Waqidi); therefore, is trustworthy. He brings in (pre-2010) Harald Motzki to buttress certain anedotes as authentic.

In particular: the Prophet's reliance upon what Ismailis might term "assassinations". One wonders what Carimokam would have made of Roohi. I assume Carimokam knows the Astinameh malarkey and righteously dismisses all that.

Outside sources are deemed equally as polemic and problematic as the inside sources, if not more so. These weren't separated from Islamic origins by time and 'Abbâsî-era orthodoxy... but they were so separated by space, and although Christian orthodoxy doesn't come up much until John Damascene, there was instead a Christian haeresiology, which had trouble figuring out what Islam even was: a subset of Judaism? Arianism? - anyway, this is perhaps Carimokam's strongest point, that attempting the history of a movement just from reading its enemies' propaganda is, at best, a wash.

Carimokam owns more dissonance about the Quran: the powers of the Rashidoon state are assumed mighty and undivided, which enforced an orthodox text, against its rivals which rivals Carimokam also concedes. I don't know how Carimokam digs himself out of this hole but, if I were to present his argument for him, I would say something like "the canon of suwar is rarely disputed in Islam, and their internals are not disputed sufficiently against my moral concerns".

Carimokam argues that Islam was an experiment in cobbling together an antiChristianity and an antiJudaism, intended to rule over both, from an Arabian base. This comes close to Durie's voodoo-theory. Unlike Durie and more like Hawting (acknowledged - Carimokan is very wellread) Carimokam sees Arabian paganism as basically dead. By the way this suggests that Carimokam might come around to Gibson and, yes, to Crone that the whole "Meccan period", featuring those pagans, was a phantasy, a town of sand as Rushdie so-memorably composed it.

This chapter's pro-Sîra argument depends mainly on the "Madinan" suwar (2-5, 9, 24, 33, 48, 57-66 etc) where they attack Judaism. If these suwar were composed during the great invasions, why would they even bother with The Jooos - Carimokam asks. Later suwar outside Arabia should oppose Christianity; pretty-much alone, given how far Magianism had collapsed. Sure: I might be able to respond to this chapter's argument, but it would take me some effort to confront said argument, because it is a good argument.

I am not Carimokam and, personally, I would not have attempted a project like this. If commissioned to write an antiIslam book, as opposed to a research/critical book, I would have started with Casanova's avertissement upon the overall Sîra and Qurân as problematic. Having so guarded my flank I would explicate such morally-problematic ahadith as Motzki and Roohi would accept. I would discuss / dismiss the "Madinan" texts in an aside, as outgrowths of those ahadith; perhaps incorporating elements of Muhammadan law in postMuhammadan revelations.

DOCSIS 3.1

Today it is James Earl Carter, Jr Day among other presidents we honour despite them being racist and evil. I don't exactly have the day off of work but, best I can tell, nobody is working. What I do have, at home, is a slow connexion, topping at 280 Mbps (last they looked at the outside equipment, couple years back, they were saying 70). Inasmuch as this home is my office I deem research to boost this bandwidth further, as work-related.

My CableLabs service-provider has informed me about Data Over Cable Services Interface Specification. My old modem is on DOCSIS 3.0. A "3.1" now exists.

Said old modem was, I think, bought in 2016. I don't find an Amazon order-code so it may have been purchased from the ISP. In theory the ISP (with 3.1) allows up to 2.3+ Gbps. In practice the cable is promising 800 Mbps. Still better than what I got; ISP may boost it further.

W00T 5 PM - It's set up. Arris Surfboard 'case you were wondering; those guys are all right, although it cost me $200+tax. I am definitely getting higher speeds on fast.com. I had to call the ISP to register the thing which, further, required unplug-and-replug. ER 5:03 PM - and it just randomly reset. I hope this thing makes no habit of that . . .

B& FROM 4CHAN 5:30 - Proxy/VPN. Your ban was filed on April 25th, 2020 and expired on July 24th, 2020 at 14:06 ET. I am pretty sure an IP switch was had.

Ceres isn't alone

Driss Takir, Joshua Emery, et al. "Late Accretion of Ceres-like Asteroids and Their Implantation into the Outer Main Belt" is now published and linked around Space Twitter.

Although queen Ceres is at 2.8 AU from the Sun, several more asteroids exist of that (very dark) spectral type, between 3.0-3.2 AU... mostly. These include some you've heard of, like Hygiea the fourth-biggest. Dr Kirkwood imposes his famous 2:1 gap at 3.279 AU, for everybody; outside that, Cybele (herein reclassified) lives at 3.4 AU. Here also lives "Rosetta comet" 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at semimajor 3.463 AU also, remember, inclination 7° (contrast Oort-origin retrogrades like Halley). Jupiter's moon Himalia is further of this type.

The spectrum is, per Rosetta, consistent with ammonia salts. Those could form only in Centaur distances, past Jupiter. As salts they won't boil off anymore down at 2.8 AU on up.

This pileup of Cereslikes in the outer Belt, and of an actual Jovian moon, reinforces theories of Ceres being brought into the Belt alongside those others. They are all comets, in a way; or, at least, once were.

Roald Dahl is in the public domain

Roald Dahl was a sh!t in life who, at its end, did not stand against censorship when that stance would have supported Salman Rushdie. I have not bought a book of his since 1990. (Not that this hurt Dahl any, who buggered off to Sheol that very year.) Now the Dahl estate and Puffin have between them given to the old Norseman the medicine he concocted.

I own no dog in this particular fight.

I do submit, instead, that a publisher's decision to "fix" older works, suggests that those older works are public-domain as far as downloads. You say your new version is better to which end you're charging us, not for distributing Dahl's vision, but for your corrections. Fine! The originals are hereby depublished; they're first-draughts. They're Project Gutenberg.

The law, I submit further, needs to keep up. As for the corrected version of an older text, this needs the coauthor's name on the front, like when Silverberg redid Nightfall - no fine-print! The concession I'll grant to the fat ugly bird, as long as they hold the rights to dump on Dahl's car, is that other publishers cannot sell derivative works in parallel. So: no "heckin' based" versions of (say) Chocolate Factory (already plenty based enough).

As least with Dahl I am not about to read him either way and I don't suggest reading him to my readers, either. But there exist better men (and better authors). As a higher level of principle than any level Dahl himself stood for: Puffin's precedent should not stand.

Wolf 1069's Huronian planet

Yesterday the dreaming horseman found Kossakowski et al.'s Wolf 1069 article and commented.

The news is exciting. Unlike some stars we can mention, Wolf 1069 didn't flare during the observations and, best we've seen, it tends pretty quiet generally (so is old). At (barely!) triple-parallax 31.3 ly it follows Proxima Centauri b, Gliese/GJ 1061 d, Teegarden c, and GJ 1002 b and c in being HZ; especially since, unlike Proxima, it doesn't take flares. Out at 0.0672 ±0.0014 AU (the stellar mass is well-constrained so, Kepler helps) gets "incident flux" 0.652 ±0.029 S_⊕ not unlike GJ 1002 b's 0.67 "F_⊕". If that means irradiance, that's a bit more than Mars gets; closer to the ~70% S_⊕ for the Huronian Earth.

A 90.3 day periodicity is also pondered. The authors don't presently care, since - if that signal exists - it's of an obvious iceworld.

Whether the inner planet's orbit be tidally locked, or Mercurylike, is the question. It doesn't transit and we can't see it. If locked, the planet should be habitable at the circle of eternal noon (because its sun doesn't flare). If not, er. For other reasons than K2-415's reasons W1069 offers little constraint of planetary mass beyond that minimum 1.26 ±0.21 M_⊕. At least radius would force some density-rules. A waterworld or an iceworld is possible. Even hycean is possible: a large Hill-radius could explain why this planet is (so far as we know) innermost.

Let's be nice and assume <2 M_⊕.

The planet is close-enough the snowline that I have to suspect a formation with much water and hydrogen. I mean: it might have formed further in, with a Io-like planet inward of that, which planet has been eaten by the star and pushed this one further out. The paper speculates at a violent formation. But speculation is a harsh mistress.

I foresee a thick atmosphere rich in helium, argon, nitrogen - greenhouse gasses none of them. H₂O snows out around the rim; even CO₂ snows out the back of the ice. What CO₂ is left sunside is vulnerable to cyanobacteria. So what's left to warm the place, um. Nitrous oxides?

If a terrestrial world that habitable circle looks... small. I expect a high albedo (tholin-poor water ice) around it; and internally should be stormcloud around the ice. Definitely Huronian which, you'll recall, was snowball-Earth.

And I don't think this one is terrestrial. I think it owns more water than Earth owns. Also the ocean is probably saturated with ammonia; although, this (and salt of course) might allow more liquid water on the surface. Best case: thin ice at the central point of noonday.

It will get warmer but it's not going to get much warmer anytime soon.

Eastside, westside

That whole question about a Jerushalmi Talmud / Bavli Talmud stretches further into the Targumim, where some exist in Palaestinian Aramaic and others, downstream of Hatra. Targum Jerushalmi called "Pseudo-Jonathan" - possibly composed in Palaestinian - went unknown (say) to Rashi. We can also note the 'Alaynû or the Qaddish widely popular, but not in Qumran - nor anywhere else in preIslamic "Southern Syria". Are these texts later than modern Jews think? - Sure, maybe. But maybe it's... regional bias. By then "Aramaic" had become a Semitic Romance, a collection of languages not-entirely-comprehensible to one another. So: on to Waller's bowls.

Waller provides the inestimable service of flagging a non-Jordanian text with an aleph ℵ. By "Dead Sea Plain" we are including Masada, Nehel Hever, and "4QGenesis" notably protoMasoretic and not part of the Qumran dissident sect. His ℵ - intentionally or not - tells us where some verse might have been popular in one whole side of the Near East (beyond the Qumran cult!) but not the other.

As Waller notes some "Biblical" witnesses in these bowls may not be Masoretic after all - directly. For instance: ʿAmram bar Sheshna (d. AD 875) ascribes a catena of Psalter 89:53, 106:48, 72:18-19, 104:31, 106:47 to some "later rabbis". Turns out - he was right! the bowl M 108 as published Levene (2003), 71 parallels this very catena. As with Qaddish and 'Alaynû none of it is in Qumran.

Psalm 91 is used by Jews everywhere to ward against Evil. Qumran's Cave 11 had a collection of magickal spells "11QPsAp" of which some form of Psalm 91 was one (pdf). The bowls in the Iraq do not disappoint, often splicing it with Deuteronomy 6:4 sometimes Exodus 14:31 too. But the use in each place is different.

As for that Haggada tradition, one bowl brings Isaiah 51.15 / MT Jeremiah 31:34 and Psalm 115 into the Red Sea crossing, the Prophets to illustrate how the Sea was, in fact, cloven in twain. Do we see this in Qumran? The Eastern bowls make much of Exodus 14:31-15:7...

... which the Jordan Desert, somehow, does not. The Samaritan version may be instructive: their v. 2 promises a "habitation" to the Lord; not in LXX either, although all versions more-or-less agree upon the coming mountain v. 17 upon which the Lord dwells right now. Inasmuch as Samaritans and Jews agreed inasmuch as this abode wasn't Sinai, or at least shouldn't stay there, this Sinaïtist hymn "needed work", one might say.

The Jordanian proTemple(?) tradition made more of a parallel song-of-Miriam tradition in parallel with Exodus 15:21; looking particularly at 4Q365 and Targum Jerushalmi. East-only(?) Exodus 15:1,10 do find parallels in that western tradition.

We need a Beastie Boys soundtrack for this post...

The Bible in the Bowls

On the very day the Lenovo update bricked this machine, I was sticking comments upon Daniel James Waller's The Bible in the Bowls in PDF which Davila found at the AWOL blog. Here Waller presented the magickal tradition of Jewish Babylonia. Waller notes that some Bible citations in the 'Iraq were not picked up back home in Judaea-then-Palaestina. So they represent the first Hebrew (or Jewish-Aramaic) witness to many passages in the Masoretic Text.

I may as well post what I'd found, tonight; as I'm on topic of the early Bible. For this blog Late-Antique Near East takes precedence but... these bowls are VERY late-antique . . .

As to modern controversy the JBA bowls are Schøyen bowls which Iraq has claimed were stolen. I hold the opinion that these bowls belong to Israel's Mizrahi community. Political Iraqis (like Greeks and like Egyptians) might own a claim to what archaeology they would "take back"; but not to Jewish treasures, Iraqis having over the generations stolen rather a lot from them.

The Jewish language of the Mesopotamia in preIslamic generations was Eastern Aramaic, something like Hatrene and (at a remove) Syriac. Some bowls do their thing in both this downstream Aramaic and in Hebrew. Mostly Hebrew was preferred because, hey: magick. Where it's Aramaic there's hint at a Targum tradition as Psalm 115.

Where I might speculate on when and how, exactly, Exodus 14:31-15:7 and 4Q365 duked it out (and we gotta ask about the LXX); Nehemiah 9:32 (which is just Deuteronomy 10:17) is, I think, kosher Qumranian as well as Iraqi. I wonder if the Temple Scroll parallels any of it. Also although the Priestly Benediction is absent from Qumran's Biblical texts I expect it will be everywhere in quotation and allusion. The Jerusalem Targum called "pseudo-Jonathan" uses this Benediction, to ward against demons.

Aerogel NERVA (for robots)

I've scented some skepticism from Nyrath and others on rogget-twitter about whether NTR/NTP will ever happen. One serious problem is, of course, the environmental problem: getting these dangerous metals into LEO space is dangerous for LEO, and by extension to us. But: the nuclear fission fragment rocket engine doesn't have so much metal. Also leaves more mass for the mission.

This foamy uranium can burn for 15 years, with appreciable propulsion. Apparently this gives a small-ish cargo the fissile material it needs in a similarly lightweight, er, propeller. That's enough to get out to that 550 AU lens-range on about which Centauri Dreams keeps banging.

The scheme needs a superconducting magnet too but, you know, after those first dozen AUs, liquid-nitrogen temperatures are pretty-much a gimme. Just radiate out the heat from the core (bro). So: needs that first push, to 12 AU. This blog has already suggested hitting up zodiacal systems like 55 Cancri, to take advantage of planetary boosts. Venus and Jupiter, at least; since we're already planning for the long term. Out in the scattered-disk transKuiper some shielding from Sun-orbiting dust would be needed, as well.

Mind, if we're just taking this jalopy to Haumea or to Eris - maybe to decelerate halfway? - dust is less a worry. And these are ecliptic-enough.

What G-d revealed at Horeb

Thetorah.com is leaning hard into the Ten Commandments' origins: Horeb / Sinai and then the Decalogue. "Decalogue" interprets that 'asharat al-kalimâti construct as a compound word, as perhaps it should at least in Hebrew. I'd not blogged the former but, two make a trend, especially if Paleojudaica notes both.

From Edenburg: Exodus 19 is a theophany, of YHWH, who does not propose to reveal the Law there. In the next chapter the people react to the vision of their Lord. So at first, He was to reveal only Himself. The Law which we modern readers read there got inserted there, by a time-traveller from the more-orthodox Jewish future. So far, so Mattison also; Mattison points out that the Covenant Collection was delivered to Moses afterward in private. Mattison further views Exodus 24 as Priestly so unconcerned with ethics, to no Edenburgian objections. Exodus 24 is, for Mattison, a witness-to (even an argument-for!) the non-Torah version of Exodus 19-20. Neither author so much as mentions Leviticus' Holiness Code; I must surmise Mattison, at least, considers it on par with Jubilees.

Back to Edenburg: Deuteronomy 5 concedes a law revealed to Israel but is inconsistent about how. Hosea 4:1 and Jeremiah 7:9 cite Things Not To Do but don't refer to Sinai/Horeb (you'd think that Jeremiah, at least, would know Deuteronomy).

But but but Mattison says Deuteronomy's whole point is the Decalogue; Deuteronomy is, here, overturning the Covenant Collection. Edenburg would counter: okay... but which Decalogue? There was no prohibition against muh graven images for the Ark itself! Exodus 34:17-26 offers ten such words. They're cultic, not moral.

Edenburg instead sees the moral precepts of Torah as an outgrowth of wisdom-literature and proverbs. Hosea and Jeremiah would be party to these as well, although perhaps not the same copy; it may be Jeremiah simply cited Hosea, and from memory.

Go back to class, Lokesh

Lokesh Mishra comments upon a paper he helped write. This collects findings based on the M and K stars with planets lucky-enough to transit against us. A Nature Astronomy article also exists, "Finding order in planetary architectures"; but doi 10.1038/s41550-023-01895-0 is paywalled.

Mishra says: About eight out of ten planetary systems around stars visible in the night sky have a "similar" architecture. Those are the series of super-Earth hot planets we've seen around stars not visible in the night sky, sans 'scope. The stars visible to most of us in semiurban North America are gas giants probably too young to have planets, or else are about to explode and destroy their planets. So - I wish he hadn't said that.

Our system is "ordered". This is - supposedly - rare. But we haven't been able to see Venus/Earth sized planets out at a 365 day period around a G star. We might not ever get to see these. It's difficult enough to spot a Jovian at 5 AU out; that's after many years of observation.

I'd like to see a few more constraints and a lot less hype, in sum. Phys.org, in its turn, should consider asking these questions of the Helvetian press-releases rather than just palming the whole content upon the rest of the Internet.

K2-415b

Centauri Dreams posts on K2-415b; a transit uncovered from the second Kepler mission. This transit is also found by TESS which catalog is TOI-5557.

It is the closest of Kepler's transits at 22 parsecs (70 ly). TRAPPIST-1 at 12 pc still wears the crown for transits overall; and there's 55 Cancri at 12.587 pc and so on. Of course other planets have been spotted closer still by the radialvelocity. Transits offer (so far) the only constraint on physical size of a star-orbiting small planet.

And K2-415b is small: about the size of Earth.

Sadly the star seems a bit flarey, as so many Ms are, so even with the inclination nailed to 89.32 ±0.41° the constraint on mass is laughable: 3.0 ±2.7 M_⊕. Which the authors point out: just by assuming near-solid iron (like Mercury) the upper bound should be 2.2 Earth masses.

On to lowerbounds, starting with... clouds. The 4.83 ±.43 S_⊕ insolation would strip away the obvious, hydrogen and helium. Moving on to oceans: yeah, no water here, either; and carbon-dioxide is supercritical at the surface and not liquid. These lads get BIG ups for calculating insolation, and thence pegging possible albedi of 0 or 0.3 before getting into temperature. Sudarsky fails on Venus irradiance which is 1.911 S_⊕ but I doubt even acid clouds can survive five times Earth's. Given that the transiting circle is near-enough the rocky basalt(?) crust of the planet, lower bound mass cannot be much less than Earth mass.

As the Chief Dreamer points out, this is not a holiday destination. But per Haruka Hoshino and Eiichiro Kokubo many systems churn out similarly-sized planets at similarly-spaced semimajors (20 Hill radii); so this star may host another Earth-mass orbiting 10-15 days. But no *-415c transits so finding such needs (probably) radial-velocity measurements, which - as noted - the star makes difficult to constrain.

BACKDATE 2/15

... like a bird needs a bicycle

Never mind the 2014 clickbait which bait ToughSF, sadly, took. Unlikely is that humans on Titan, cold as it is, and low-G as it is, are getting that runup for flight. Usain Bolt's muscles are built for Earth. And all agree the wingsuit will be bulky.

I do wonder, however, about bicycles.

The wingman does not train for the track; he trains for the pedals - which training he can do in Titan G. As he leaves the gym he's wearing his mesh-suit against the cold, not too bulky. He's got his mask and breathing-equipment; his main tank is attached to the wings he's about to unfold.

The rest is just engineering. Doesn't seem like a lot of engineering, at least not for a colony somehow already self-sufficient on freakin' Titan.

Winter count

Pastoralists and hunters know leather. They also write on leather. Observe: the Lakota Winter Count, from 1786. Based on a 2007 book so, maybe more such calendars exist or might be found in some cave somewhere.

This looks for all the world like Aztec pictography, before the rebus they came to use. The linguistics tell us that Nahua tribes came from buffalo regions, along the Front Range down to Texas. So I expect the genre dates back at least to the AD 800s, in reaction to the drought. A script-of-their-own may explain how, although assuredly exposed to the Maya Hieroglyphic, the postToltec Nahua Altiplano did not adopt this foreign script or even abandoned it.

From El Norte - and conversely - this might further explain how we don't find the Lakota using "their own" calendar until they moved into those Plains (they came from the Lakes). Taken from the locals, methinks; as today, newbies need a simple manual.

I don't know if any pictographic system ever came into use south of Sahara. I do know that subSaharans (and Saharan "Berbers") took to (alphabetic) writing as soon as they found out that writing was possible. I also do not know if we might find similar Winter-Count systems in some tundra in Ice Age Siberia...!

Upload #208: legacy of forgery

Over the fortnight of no-content I started research on this bad boy. New project: "Walâyat". In summary I can prove Walâyat a forgery, derivative of suras 26 and 41, and parallel to a bronze-ish plaque at the Dome of the Rock. I cannot (yet) prove Walâyat derivative of anything past that. In fact sura 42 might exist to refute it.

This also affects "Near-Faithful Greek Qurân" which has new content as a result, which result is mainly of me remembering that I wrote two relevant projects now in A Garden for the Poets. And I'd found that Jeffery's 17:16 is just Qurtûbi's. In one place, however, I should put "new" in "scare" quotes. I admit: the sura 9(/61(/48)) is copy-pasted between the two projects. The crosstext is an obvious LPU but, before pulling all that out, I really do need more pages, and maybe a coherent theme. These projects are all draughts, remember...

Also fixed: "Sodom's Elephant" and "The Last Word". The Shî'a agreed on 105+106. And the latter was, or so I gather, templated from an older document of mine so here just needed better formatting.

Madrassa.

Nine dangerous Papist sites

One would have hoped that this sort of thing would have been over and done with at Westphalia but, apparently not. Running through the list:

• Catholic Apologetics International
This is Robert Sungenis. Thinks Catholic Answers doesn't go far enough.
• Catholic Family Ministries
They got a news site; it cites Viganò a lot.
• Christ or Chaos
This is Dr. Thomas A. D.'s blog. They don't recognise Cardinal Bergoglio as Pope; although maybe they can accept him as archbishop of Rome and of Lazio.
• Culture Wars
Another personal site, here E Michael Jones a fixture over at Unz Review.
• Fatima Rosary Crusade
I find several sites of this name but SPLC has in mind The National Committee for the National Pilgrim Virgin of Canada.
• Spirit of Chartres
More into conferences, publications, interviews. One interview was with Sungenis.
• The Remnant
A group blog under Michael J Matt.
• Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Nuns and Sisters, who have married Christ; some men as well. The Vatican holds them as Feeneyites. They got a news site.
• Tradition in Action
1990s-style group blog.

Of these mostly what they share is opposition to Pope Francis and to Vatican II. There is a lot of NO VAXX in here. Some are one-man shows or may as well be; Sungenis and especially Jones [UPDATE 1/12/24 ironically pro-Pope] hardly speak for the Catholic Tradition at large.

As far as where I stand, I dispute Fatima as contradictory to the Dormition (Mary never felt the heat of Gehenna so cannot show visions of it). I moreover think little of a nun's vows as "Bride Of Christ"; I am traditional enough to hold that a woman's husband is... her husband, male and earthly, with all a man's foibles which - G-d willing - she can help him overcome. And Viganò is kinda loopy these days. Most if not all of these sites, I suspect, I would disapprove.

But - no canon of any Council has appointed me as Grand Inquisitor. Which canon has so appointed the FBI?

... and who's next? Where Jones goes, Sungenis will follow and then the list becomes seven. The SPLC, which is little more than a fund-by-spam org, will simply find some other site to replace them. Church Militant? OnePeterFive?

JONES 1/12/24: Yeah - "Papist" fit. To a fault. What a disaster.

The golden plates of Gomorrah

Mark Durie has pointed out reskins of real religion, such as the Voudoun. I was wondering now about people just sort of making up a religion as they go along. I don't think the Haitians did this, so much as translate their West-African orthodoxy. But the Romans assuredly did a LARP, to the religion of Mithra. How much does any of that "Mithras" stuff have to do with the Iranians - or even with the Pontians and Armenians? Not much I think.

So: the Dabistan in its third English volume. The first page caught my eye. The author, more interested in the Parsees himself, noted a cult of Musaylima in India in his days. They called their sect "Sadiqiya". Well that is interesting. Is this like the Oyo or the various paraMuhammadan saint-followers who dispersed around North Africa?

David Shea the translator notes that the "Sadiqiya" has overlapping names, a sect of Ismaili Shi'a calling themselves by this name, to boast their descent from Imam Ja'far. Shea also notes that no Shi'ite would ever associate himself with Musaylima considered an archeretic in Islam.

We also must consider the Asatru and Wicca. And the second group of "Sabaeans" who sprung up at Harran. And the "Gospel of Judas" maybe most of all. In all that space between Iraq and India we can read Crone's Nativist Prophets for the Yezidis.

Sometimes a dissident will aim to shock the establishment. What better way than to appropriate the establishment's ancient nemesis, or at least one claimed as a nemesis. If the nemesis no longer has any actual followers then - well, that just makes it even MORE difficult for anyone to contradict you.

The Arab Prophet was not a nonce

Christopher Melchert and 'Isa Little propose that Muhammad did not marry 'Âisha at least not when she was a child.

Joshua Little blames Hishâm bin 'Urwa, 'Urwa being a scion and survivor of the Zubayrid caliphate. 'Urwa is credited with much of the Prophetic biography especially in its Madina phase. His son Hishâm hived off to the 'Iraq and published his argument over there. Both men held the respect of many experts in fiqh so Hishâm's traditions have spread throughout the Muwattâ and other such collections.

Where I'm hazy is how Hishâm was responsible for this tradition and not his father. Or before! Little claims that the Muwattâ should have noted the Hishâm tradition and did not. Perhaps in light of Ibn Hishâm (no relation) including the tradition where Ibn Ishâq did not.

But: Where the counter-evidence? Say: of Malikî fiqh imposing age-of-consent? Failing that: Shafi'î? 'Abd al-Razzâq and Ibn Abî Shayba? I suppose John Damascene or Leo III or others could have noted a child-marriage as long as they were castigating the Prophet for his other escapades, like swiping a wife from Zayd. Where was Roman law on this practice?

I'll lay out my cards: I follow Harald Motzki's madhhab. I trust the Marwânî-era transmitters, but not the sources which they cited.

I've long thought 'Âisha was the kádhiba here. She wanted to be calipha, and used the patriarch Zubayr to take over the Madina in the wake of 'Uthmân's murder. Then she moved upon the 'Iraq where, it seems, she and hers failed to oust 'Alî. As no amira of the believers, she clung to the title of the umm of believers - in her (enforced) retirement.

The child-marriage meme came about when the Believers came to meet her and did some of those maths for which Muslims remain famous. "A bit young, though, aren't you, sweetie?" The reason John didn't note it is because John was fencing Damascenes - Umayyads - who were slower to accept 'Âisha than were the Zubayriya.

Anyway, that's where my fatwa stood, as of maybe 2005 or so. I haven't read Little's thesis yet.

THE UMMA ON THE OTHER HAND 6:25 PM MST - Jonathan Rape-Rape Brown, not to my surprise, supports the Sahihayn. That's the one man in our Plantation South allowed to support slavery including the sexual kind. Because imposing our values - our scholarship - upon a nonOccidental set of texts is Orientalist. Unless it agrees with Brown, note his (mis)use of Motzki.

Question the timing

In the wake of that earthquake machine borrowed from The Core to shake up Anatolia - according to the most reputable source on the Internet - comes a look at a past disaster, this one striking a bit further north. Three years of drought hit the Hatti, at or right after 1200 BC. It's a round number but the error-bars are only another three years.

As the paper points out, in the latest 1200s BC the king Suppiluliama, or "Suppiluliuma II", had successfully quelled a number of rebellions around the empire. But as Brian Boru learnt, sometimes a rebel can rise again. Especially if the capital city, already stretched for funding (because the money was blown on soldiers), now cannot get that funding (because the men roaming around Cilicia and Caria weren't minding the farm and the aqueducts back home).

'Tis a pertinent warning for labarna Recep as he's now facing that earthquake in Kizzuwadna. Blocking Twitter was not a Good Look. And I'd not advise him to blame outsiders, either.

Upload #207: return and review

Over the past fourteen days, unable to write (properly) I did some re-reading instead, of some books I'd not used lately. I dug out FE Peters' reader on Classical Islam and Michel Cuypers' Composition. The former just gave me Kashî again but the re-read did help my "Bankipur" project.

Cuypers by contrast involved suwar 74, 81, 85, 105, 110 so: "Mantle", "Reminder", "From Hell's Ditch", "Sodom's Elephant", and "The Last Word". I'd bought the book in 2017ish but found it useless at the time. Clearly since then we've done more work; not so useless anymore...

Elsewhere although Bert Jacobs doesn't want the quote, I can give him the credit, for warning us who use Hoegel that we might not actually have a "Near-Faithful Greek Qurân" as my title goes. Meanwhile I remembered that I had a parallel project on the earliest Umayyad Theories Of The Cross. I have inserted a section on "exegesis".

Madrassa.

Laptop is back (again)

Thirteen days later, I have the Lenovo again. Last August they claimed it was the battery; this time they claimed the motherboard. Replaced each time. A regular laptop of Theseus, here.

This time Lenovo didn't charge me. So, that's good...

I did end up in another cycle of Windows, AMD, and other updates but it is working.

Meanwhile somewhere along the way a company called "Brother" had installed some 32-bit printer-software on this thing; BrUSBSIB.sys from 2014 ("oem86.inf") but last updated October(?). Also BrUSBSLB.sys. I guess because this is a 2021 machine whose previous owner used a Brother printer on Windows 10.

Brother are a legit company so, YOLO (or YOL1), I ran their uninstall tool. I have no idea what printer used to be installed on this thing; it was no help in the least.

So I just went into Windows\system32 for BrUSBSIB.sys. BrUSBSLB.sys unfortunately was in the \DriverStore\FileRepository\. Can't delete/rename that. Right. PowerShell!

pnputil /delete-driver oem86.inf

That failed too of course. So, Device Manager, show hidden devices, and devices by driver. I got rid of BrUSBSIB.sys; but again, not BrUSBSLB.sys.

Then it was time for a fratricidal rampage: 31, 37, 69, 132. Still have 10, 188, 189 print-drivers. Can't delete... so, screw you three:

pnputil /delete-driver oem189.inf /force

That did the job, coupled with simply renaming the thing in Windows\system32. Worst brother since Chet in Weird Science. Cold day in Gehenna before I buy any Brother hardware, I promise. Ugh.

Tiqqun

If we're going to agitate for a climate-crisis, this is where I'd start. Point out how a planet can go full Venus, and explain how come the Permian traps - destructive as such were - did not suffice to bring us to Venus.

Climate activists (as opposed to local environmentalists) cannot be taken seriously as caring about the climate; they keep telling us as much, that their aim is Social Change. (Maybe Policy.) If they were advocating for mining in (say) Alaska for those semiprecious rare metals which electric cars need, or for more electricity for same - I could take them seriously. Bal! climate activists are brownshirts; the internationally regnant political-party's shock troops on Whose-Streets-Our-Streets.

Environmental anti-mining groups, which ranks include Michael Hudson, make a deal with the devil when they deal in "climate".

As for repairing the worlds for mitigation, I suggest to start with Venus.

De Spiritu Sancto Vero

On reading the "Triune Nature" I agree with Samir and with Harris, and to be fair with Gibson, that Gibson's title was to be treated as tentative. On the other hand: were I a contemporary I should be tempted toward Latin, "De Spiritu Sancto Vero".

Much of the beginning introduces the Godhead as incorporating the Holy Spirit, and arguing that from Christian literature still in-process of being translated to Arabic.

The Tract's first batch of Qurân quotes is Q. 90:4+54:11 then parallel-6:94 (starting tâtûnanâ - no hamza). The commonality I perceive in these three verses is that each presents the Divine Author as "We": which supports the Tract's plural Godhead. This triad, if you will, is followed by a free(r) parallel to Q. 16:101b-2 upon how - bal! - the Spirit sent, from thy Lord, His Word as a Mercy (sic) and a Guidance.

I find of interest how this is introduced: wa-aydâ fî rûhi 'l-qudusi. wa-aydâ is not a Qâric term; it is a literary term, "and again". As if the Tract was introducing a sura by its name. This nuance is lost in Gibson's translation.

Sura 16 for its part parallels Q. 6:154 and others which had referred to the Book and then its tafsîl as given to Moses hudan wa-rahmatan (never rahmatan wa-hudan!). It was sura 16 in v. 64 by which the Celestial Court brought these revelations anzalnâ. I concur with Gibson the Tract has the canon sura 16 in mind.

If the Tract's target was indeed 16th as our postUmayyad sequence or at least 15th as Nicetas - Allâh a'lam. But the Tract certainly witnesses to the canon reading of v. 102's "spirit of al-qudus".

Melkite Arabic disputation

As I was considering Mingana - and BarSalibi and Nicetas - I moved to considering what sort of collection of Christian controversy might have inspired those two, to compile Arabic text in West-Syriac and in Greek (respectively). A brief check upon Hoyland turned up pap. Schott-Reinhard 438 (apparently now catalogued "MS Heidelberg, Institut für Papyrologie, P. Heid. Inv. Arab. 438 a-d") and "On the Triune Nature of God".

The latter Sinai 154 was penned at the turn of the AD 8/9th century, Sinai/Negev: Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (2010) doi 10.1086/597764. Its content was edited and published eleven centuries later, by one Margaret Dunlop Gibson. This was so long ago, that a lot went missing - as happened to Agapius on his way to Vasiliev. Also, Mrs Gibson likely used a chemical to bring out the faded lettering, which damaged the text for future readers. This is all lamented by Samir Khalil Samir working from a new photo taken in 1994.

The seminal pre-Samir paper is Rendel Harris "A Tract on the Triune Nature of God", who was not an Arabist and admits as much. Harris cared most for what the Tract said about this Arab's use of Biblical material. He found that it is ancient and even paraBiblical in parts; repeating apologetics against the Jews back to the days of Irenaeus and (especially) Justin, who did not use Westcott and Hort. The Tract would, then, not be a witness to the Arabic Bible (not even to "the gospel"). This argument is the argument which Sidney Griffith has been arguing, with some force.

For the Arabic of the Tract Hoyland points rather to John Wansbrough, who in one of Sectarian Milieu's more comprehensible moments flags the Tract's Arabic as, specifically, Qâric.

The text is not the autograph. In fact in this papyrus itself, the essay follows upon a translation of Acts (from chapter 7) and then the Catholic Epistles. The translation was done in an archaic hand, one assumes from an 'Abbâsî MS. (Gibson offers a photo. She's not joking!) The Tract is more modern in style. Some would date the autograph to the AD 750s / AH 130s, under al-Saffah or maybe Mansur. Either way it smells like a predecessor to Theodore.

I don't know that the Tract owned any Greek. Did the Tract use Palaestinian Aramaic or Syriac, to learn how to dispute the Tawhid?

Hall erosion rate

Some how I missed this Hall Thruster news: the ongoing saga of ionic erosion, here xenon against carbon. Illinois are trying to mimic this in a well-walla laboratory.

I take it that the Hall-with-wall shall be used for some time.

We have xenon-carbon Halls in orbit, so effectively they are the laboratory. On Earth, labs have, like, walls and stuff. Xenon flies into the chamber wall and returns to the thruster with more ions. That's not happening in space even assuming Kessler.

The lab reduced this effect and found that the type of carbon didn't matter; it all erodes - "sputters" - the same, even diamond. So it's not a crystal problem, it's a chemical problem. At least, using xenon.

The same technique will be needed for krypton-84, which as a lighter element than Xe-131 will be flung out that much faster.

Einstein's scale

Yesterday was a slow day; today by contrast we have a new mass-constraint, this by the most direct means possible namely gravitational microlensing. It affects white dwarfs.

The nearest six are Sirius B, Procyon B, van Maanen, LP 145-141 = LAWD 37, 40 Eridani B (boo!) and Stein 2051 B.

Johan Stein, SJ, got to name his star-system on account he seems the first to notice it as a double-star. Before that, I think, it got confused with Gliese/GJ 169. By that token, hey, it was close to at least one other background star, which occultation was recorded in March 2014; doi 10.1126/science.aal2879.

Direct measurement was and is hard to do with a binary. Hence why Sirius B hasn't been so measured to my knowledge; at 20 AU system semimajor it's probably too close to A most the time. That goes double for 40 Eridani classically confused with omicron-Eridani. These get measured by Kepler. Stein 2051 is contrarily a wide system whose motions relative to each other exceed a millennium, thus making Keplerian analysis impractical since identification in 1908. Kind of like Proxima versus Alpha Centauri; we didn't even know they were bound until the last decade or so.

It also helps, I further imagine, that white dwarfs are so small for their temperature, meaning their luminosity is low, so they don't interfere with the gravity-bump. Wide-angle brown dwarfs should be even easier.

LAWD 37 by itself and owning no close-in planets cannot be measured by Kepler... at all. Luckily the direct measurement has now constrained its mass: to 0.56 M.

By this token it should add to our knowledge of white dwarf evolution - this one blew up 1.25 Gya so many galactic spins ago, so certainly formed in some faraway cluster not many My before that (as a giant). This is data to add for such dwarfs as are not yet measured so directly, starting with those closer three and like 40 Eri B.

Perovskite update, II

Carrying on from December a couple of articles came out 26-7 January. More stability on 210-350 Kelvin swings on Earth; a radiation-barrier in zero-atmo.

Both have obvious space applications. Even Lunar.

Assuming we're allowed to mine for any of it.

Our system is still active

Not much to report on this first day of ... a month. I do see some news on the gas-giants' moons: Mimas and Valetudo.

Mimas, they say, is a water-world covered in ice like Enceladus. But it wasn't always so! It became internally slushy recently.

As for Valetudo my first reaction was, WTF is this, I've never heard of this kilometer-wide captured asteroid. Where was Valetudo when the Galileo probe was wandering all over the Jovian system? and why didn't Hubble see it?

I think Valetudo's capture is very recent. I'd love to see how its dynamics pan out but my suspicion is: fantastically eccentric over the 1900s, only brought into a visible orbit in the last decade. Or less.