Eggshell

From last Tuesday, the eggshell planet. That's a planet with a small lithosphere, defined as the nonviscous (brittle) crust plus outer-mantle.

As having smaller lithospheres I am interested (lately) into how they factor into the mantle rocks we see in defunct A and F systems. Planets as are not in A and F systems (on up) could be old; too old for an eggshell. If far from the star, also - no shell. And small Marslikes won't have a shell either. I don't see how any of these "pollute" the inevitable white dwarf.

So I take further away that the A and F pollutants were mostly eggshells, potentially anyway. That is: we do not see lithosphere in those pollutants, only asthenosphere. Of course it's all too late now for them.

The study is "The Effects of Planetary and Stellar Parameters on Brittle Lithospheric Thickness", doi 10.1029/2021JE006952. The various pressers tease that three not-dead-yet exoplanets are candidates. Implicitly our own good Earth is NOT an eggshell: our crust is famously shallow although I am less sure about our mantle.

Dustposting, III

Up this afternoon/evening:

"R'ha" was a decent man[nish]/machine tale, "Thalamos" was bad. "Good Business" was almost good, ruined by a male actor faking a good-ol'-boy Southern accent badly. "ARK" was... let's just say, well done; basically a stage play. "Merv", postapocalyptic meh. "FLOATERS" was funny but a timewaster. "Traveler" was timecrap. Or whatever; had a Buckaroo Banzai vibe which I also never liked.

"ALONE" wins the night as a damned gut punch.

UPDATE 7:00 PM MST - "State Zero" is a passable vampire / zombie postapoc like I Am Legend. "The Leap" turned out to be good.

Dustposting, II

Armistice Day, day off. Used to be that only veterans got a day off but, now, they don't matter as much as Protected Groups, so - day off for my civilian self too. Carry on, citizen!

Following up on watching these, I've now seen some of the longer ones: "Atropa" three/two nights back, which was basic-bitch timeloop Trek; and "The Big Nothing" last night, which was more Outland (but better, if possible).

I suppose that timeloop dodge was how "Atropa" got away with the Magick Gravity Floor. I won't allow that excuse for "TBN" which is set in Saturn's rings that is, supposedly Hard SF. The rings also look ... pretty near to the ship. I don't think they are this close together normally but, maybe that's the vein of (neodynium) ore they picked.

Also on deck that 9 November night were some Biblical expies: "Pulsar" (Jonah) and "Anomaly" (Matthew / Luke). Both were inept and bad. "CARONTE" was arguably not sci-fi at all being a Terabithia expy although, it was good, so I don't regret watching that one. "Outpost" was a passable love story; "Beachworld" was a passable adaptation of Stephen King's not-so-classic short.

Yeah I have to say, my second night's selections weren't nearly up to the par of my first night where I went 4/4 (unless you count two eps of "Atropa").

With one major exception: "Happy Hunting", a sendup of Youtube Influencer / gamer chic. "Sky Fighter" might be a minor exception as a mindf0rq (thought it was going to be an Ender's Game at first; maybe that's the aesthetic it was going for).

Last night, besides "TBN": "Eden" was just terrible, "Zoe" was stupid and maudlin, and "Origin" was incomplete. "New Mars" isn't good enough for me not to spoil it: pandemic-Karen parable with "All Summer In A Day" in its DNA. "The Looking Planet" is a passable Magrathean creation-story. "Star Dogs" is hit-or-miss Red Dwarf Firefly.

"Final Offer", also channelling Hitchhiker's Guide, is hilarious.

"The Leap" looks promising [UPDATE PM: so I watched it this day].

Project Babylon

From 22 October, da man Zim points to SpinLaunch. This is Jules Verne's notion to defeat Tsiolkovsky: blast the cargo from Earth's surface (or maybe from a balloon; single-use highflying ramjet is never going to be a thing) on a ballistic trajectory toward something higher-up which can catch it. Also a notion of, er... Saddam Hussein.

That's 981 km/s² at the surface, 200 kg at a time, to be fired up at 2235 m/s. That is not full Escape Velocity as I recall exploring here a couple years ago, but it is good enough for LEO.

Of course most organics and, for that matter, electronics won't survive a 981 km/s² pounding; Rocket Lab (e.g.) ain't dead yet. And I'd be leery of nuclear material near the critical-mass. But SpinLaunch claim some <200 kg satellites can handle this. If from a balloon, SpinLaunch can hire Rocket Lab to retrieve said balloon and the launcher.

For the future, as Zim points out, initial "jerk" won't matter for nonfragile material like chemical fuel if said fuel is sequestered from anything as might react with it. As for nuclear, we're only sending HALEU from our gravity-well.

I could envision, also, stations in orbit rocketing supplies 200 kg at a time into higher orbital tiers. The issue is in how to dispose of the lowest tier.

UH OH 12/3: It's run by the Yaney brothers.

Did we find Planet Nine in 1983?

No we haven't capital-F "Found" Planet Nine. But. Michael Rowan-Robinson of Imperial College (London) has an idea where to look: in the IRAS Point Source Catalog 1983. h/t the Turtle.

MRR is the real deal. He was one of the original "Planet X" skeptics, before Neptune's orbit was decisively fixed. In fact he was the d00d who compiled IRAS in the first place! So if he thinks he has found something, this should be taken seriously.

MRR's search is for such objects as move slower than Eris but not as slow as, say, Proxima Centauri. He finds nothing in PSCz nor RIIFSCz. His candidate is a triplet R20593+6413, R20592+6411, R20562+6408 in single hours-confirmed (1HCon) sources. Those would be in the Reject File of 1983, thankfully undeleted since.

If they be the same moving target then, surmiseth MMR, they should count as a triple confirmation.

This - if legit - would be a ∼3-5 M_E planet at ∼210-240 AU ... at very high ecliptic latitude and at low Galactic latitude. So, in the middle of the Milky Way and not easily detectable from the 1980s; and off-zodiac so ignored by Moonbeam from Sedona. And by whoever in Flagstaff was out for that phantom Neptune-disturber, of which MRR at the time was one.

The manuscript is unpolished and any editor could suggest plenty of readability improvements. Against that, I suggest that the news cannot wait. The arxiv exists for a reason and among those reasons is to get followup research done A.S.A.F'n.P.

All I can say is... happy hunting.

NAHH 5/23/2025 but now they are looking elsewhere.

Blooger

Blogger (not Blogspot) has been squirrely today both on its own side and as linked on any blogspot.com site. Blogger's header works on my gmail account ... elsewhere; and it seems fine so far on this laptop. It is doing less well on my PC.

If I were being QANON, I'd wonder about that. Back in that storied year 2018, Blogger didn't let me search mine own history before about 2016 or so. At the time I figured, hey, there's some server restriction.

Now I dunno. I like to think I've been behaving myself but, goalposts shift. Just ask Dennis Prager.

It might be the Visual Studio install (which I coupled with an uninstall of 2015 and 2019).

RESOLVED 11/13 AM: Passive-voice because I, personally, did nothing but check up on it. Three annoying days including a Bank Holiday.

Vox Day was right

About Dennis Prager: During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users...had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are? But it would've been inconceivable

As frequently noted, Prager didn't just classify actively-homosexual men and IV drug users as sinners or "disordered" or what have you. I do not dispute that correct classification. He downplayed the research itself.

This despite that there were real reasons for normies to fear the GRID before... the research was done; this despite that virus research is good for its own sake, lest some other virus show up with similar characteristics. Also it turned out the specific (retro-)virus has been useful for understanding how genes are edited; there's your CRISPR.

And of course men like Prager did much work to make these sinners, to be judged in the next world, fit for judgement in this one. So this can you imagine doesn't have to be imagined for those of us, like me, able to read during the 1980s. Prager is not yet so old he can be unaware of those times; I expect he remembers them clearer than I remember.

I conclude that Prager, like the Republicans in our Senate, has taken the L and moved on. We won't be seeing that marriage-definition Amendment soon, barring a new religious reaction.

Vox Day warned us about men like Prager - and so, before him, did Christ. Prager is a fake. He just plays to his audience. To put it in other terms: shande.