The Dopple World is back, baby

On topic of Gaia BH1, it occurred to me - hiking to the gym and back - whether the G star could support a planet. Maybe if the ten-solar-mass black hole was three times bigger.

If your first instinct is to laugh then, yeah - I've beaten you to it. We don't even have to do any maths to realise that the G star's first Libration point - the Hill Sphere - is (much) less than 0.5 AU. I don't even think it can get away with a Mercury. If this star formed more AU away and was a K type, then we'll consider it. Although if the star's a capture with an eccentric orbit, internal tides should make it warmer, constraining the habitable-zone again.

So then I considered Dopple World. I've generally dismissed the 1 AU equilateral Trojan haloes when Doppling an Earth-mass planet, due to mutual tides again. But here we got a Solar-mass anchor.

We don't really care, here, how a Sun orbiting a black hole has happened; but we do know that it has happened, 1600 light years away/ago. Lagrange (not just Hill) steps in when the mass-ratio exceeds 24.96, so BH1 itself - maxing at 10 - isn't a candidate.

But suppose BH1's central mass be about 25 M_☉. Could a G star form at 1 AU around it? If so, I assume that star quite metallic, if only because forming that monster of a hole would blast out volatiles far far away. Likewise the matter in its orbit. Dopple World will have an iron core like we do. The freakin' magnet should help as its planet oscillates to and from the star. Averaging 1 AU from a G means, well, Earth.

One exception: I expect its day/night cycle to fall into resonance with its orbit around the point because, once more, tides. Here's our Mercurylike, Queen fans.

One serious issue will be comets. Asteroids, meh; I expect Dopple World has cleared the Libration halo in forming. And if our snow line is 4 AU [Ceres forming outside it] then this system's snow line should be 5 AU from the hole. But everyone's got an Oort Cloud and if one of those iceballs gets perturbed, that central mass is going to pull it with absolute Hammer Of Thor force into anything in its way.

Gaia BH1

Black holes are normally found when they pull matter inward at an accelerated rate which beams out radiation, like the one in Cygnus. That "first Cygnus X-ray source" X-1 is draining its orbiting star. If the companion is far enough away, then it won't be drained; we'd have to look for that (visible) companion orbiting something invisible... which might take years for us to notice, given Kepler. It looks like we've noticed one, 1600 light years away: 4373465352415301632. h/t Science Daily and this release UPDATE 7:20 PM MST and Bad Astronomy and Nyrath.

We're lucky that Gaia found this, its first black hole; score another W for the DR3. Incredibly lucky, some might say...

The 185.6-day period is such that the orbiting star, which is a G class 1 M_☉ like our sun, is estimated at 1 AU from an 11-sol-mass barycentre. The just-under-10 M_☉ black hole, when it was an O star, should have been 20 M_☉. So how did it die without going supergiant in between? Our own dwarf Sun is supposed to puff out to about 1 AU!

I don't think the G star is a capture, since its orbit would be madly eccentric if so (and they'd tell us). Maybe the dying star puffed out most of its hydrogen before going supergiant, such that it only got to, oh, 0.5 AU radius. Maybe the central hole wasn't from one star but from two very heavy stars which merged - a neutron-star devouring a companion whose mass was just enough to erect an event-horizon, but quietly. Although there too I'd have to ask how the G star got here in a circular orbit.

The neutron-star scenario opens a hypothesis: secondary formation. The black hole after implosion left behind it a lot of gas. Neutron-stars (like classic black holes) always form from young stars so still own primordial plasma. This plasma might, post-implosion, even contain the ripped-up remnants of the companion. The debris, then, whirled around the black hole in an accretion-disc perhaps pushed to 1 AU by the gravity-waves and gamma-rays of said implosion. As normal systems form planets like Jupiter, this system - so much more massive - formed a star like our Sun. Computer-modeling might tell us if this is possible.

Rocket Lab takes a bath

I didn't pay attention to Rocket Lab's "Electron" launch but it looks like the helicopter-catch is still a wash - literally. They didn't even bother sending the 'copter after the falling stage.

It may be that the carbon-fiber chassis of this light rocket is protecting the engine sufficiently, from seawater, that they don't, strictly speaking, need to catch it.

Obadiah's synoptic-problem

Among the Biblical texts given credence by the recent magnetic discoveries in ruined Israeli[te] cities, is Obadiah. This "servitor of YHw" is among the Twelve Minor Prophets.

In Greek form, Obadiah was likely always in that collection (pdf). The Nahal Hever fragments witness a collection of Minor Prophets in Greek, although we're unsure if Rahlfs 943 was truly a "8HevXIIgr" since our book isn't in it. Also the overall "Septuagint" collection was translated by one person (or by a very tight committee). Questions remain about the author's familiarity with the Greek Jeremiah.

Obadiah owns thematic parallels with the full text of Psalm 137 (136 in Greek) inasmuch as both encapsulate an antiEdomite polemic. It owns text parallels with Jeremiah 49 (in MT edition; 'tis 29 in LXX) such that it's a Synoptic Problem. Most assume that Obadiah used Jeremiah.

Obadiah does have an agenda and has likely inverted a text, here Semitic treaty boilerplate. Psalm 137's parallels with Obadiah can be explained as sharing this subversion of the treaty topos, in the psalm's case Aramaic. Both would then react to a perceived betrayal of Judah from Edom. I find this plausible.

Whether we assume that Obadiah has likewise riffed on the future Jeremiah 49 is another matter. Some (mostly evangelical) argue for Joel's use of Obadiah which would put Obadiah's polemic 801 BC, long before Jeremiah. Wikipedia prefers Ehud Ben Zvi's 1996 argument that as Obadiah imposes his views upon the shared text... so does Jeremiah. Behind each is, then, a "Q".

Misusing scripture

Zwinglius a few weeks ago poasted this announcement of a bad book. Yesterday he posted a "carnival" aggregation of blogposts - I hadn't seen one of those since the early 2000s when the blogosphere was still cool. In it he linked his own October post, as a link to that book.

The book's Jeopardy-style title is Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing with the Bible?. I disclose: I, too, bear little love for biblical-inerrantists or for HillFaith or for the rest of them. These days however I see a focus on these hucksters and their dupes as a means to tie them with popular Christianity as a whole, in service of a generally antiChristian agenda.

As example Tony Keddie proposes "Second-Amendment Exegesis of Luke 22:35–53: How Conservative Evangelical Bible Scholars Protect Christian Gun Culture". It's bad when Christians seek means of self-defence, see. Christians aren't supposed to notice when the world despises them. As for guns not owned by Christians - like those owned by Sikhs (as a literal divine commandment) - not Keddie's department.

I'd argue, with Hobbes and - incidentally - with Darwin, that some laws of Nature exist whether or not a Divinity commands them. One law is: the unarmed man is the slave of his armed companions. Some Christians do misread Luke 22 (disclosure: I don't care for Luke). But we can see an antislavery subtext throughout early Exodus, and a skepticism against kings in Judges and 1 Samuel; the Israelites are happiest when free, and in that time and place this meant they were armed, with slings and arrows as well as with swords. Christians today, and not just the conservative-evangelical bogeymen, dispute that our time and place be so different from theirs.

I'm leaving aside Susanne Scholz' wordsalad "Essentializing “Woman”: Three Neoliberal Strategies in the Christian Right’s Interpretations on Women in the Bible"; I'll just assume it's as bad as its title.

Overall the book looks like it's set up some massive strawmen. Other contributors might have something useful to say, noting in particular William Dever; but they are lending their weight to an overall flawed product. Consider if Russell Gmirkin contributed to a book about Jewish self-presentation in literature... edited by Kevin MacDonald and published by The Occidental Observer.

Back to Zwinglius, I find some irony in his complaint about misuse of Scripture where he cites this: Andrew M. Mbuvi destabilises dominant white Euro-American approaches to biblical studies, positing the need for biblical interpretation that is anti-colonial and anti-racist. "Anti-racist" tends to mean anti-white and anti-European; and in any case it will be difficult to extricate the Bible from its context, which is Levantine with some spillover across the Mediterranean into Hellas and Italia. BACKTRACK AUGUST 2023: Zwinglius' actual-ego points out that, indeed, progressives do it too. I vaguely recall his blog has rapped some lefthand knuckles before 1 November 2022; but on this day, Mbuvi presented him with the duty, which duty he failed.

Barnes and Noble, our free-speech publisher*

*... for now. But until then:

Contra Robert Spencer, who discloses himself a personal friend of Ibn Warraq, I've had mixed reviews of Ibn Warraq's work over the decades. As of, oh, 2020 I'm more nuanced about Islam than I once was. I do however think that Ibn Warraq is interesting and that his works deserve a hearing, especially his more-mature works, of which The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology appears to be one.

I'll note that Barnes and Noble still stock this book. I hear they've been based lately what with stocking Sowell and Limbaugh as "Heroes of Liberty". That hedge-fund might actually have done some good.

But... for how long? When Amazon block a book, other sellers consider it Extreme. Because when you own 70% of the market, you become the Moderates by sheer bodyweight.

Falcon Heavy

The big bird has flown. All the way to GEO.

I missed the launch stream but I did review the highlight-reel maybe thirty minutes late. If you were checking out the runup to this launch, you know it was ambitious for the parameters. Direct-to-GEO is a major win for SpaceX especially given Merlin's kerosene/oxygen. If our government has any brain at all, SpaceX should be good for the SuperHeavy / Starship test later this month or next month.

Note there is still no successful retrieval of the central Falcon Heavy rocket. (The side-boosters are back in South Padre, chilling with margaritas.) It happens this mission was government-sponsored, so the client agreed to expend that core and to accept the charges for its loss. Personally I'd be interested in a core retrieval just so more heavy-lifting can be economical - read, privately-funded.