The rain on the moon

Last night Fairbanks, Alaska brought us some details on the lunar rain. Our Moon gets water from several sources: hydrogen (ionic) from the Sun, various hydrogen and oxygen compounds from meteors. Rod Boyce claims oxygen comes from the Sun also but, I doubt enough to matter, and the Moon doesn't need it.

Anyway the 3500 km³ of water in the Moon's polar craters might fall from our own Earth. Like Venus, Earth has a tail of gas streaming from the sun's radiation, albeit of course not as strong as Venus'. Also - here is the new research - the Moon interferes with the Earth's magnetotail. Ions which would otherwise keep blasting beyond 1 AU get recombined. This not only creates water, but the water ends up pulled back to Earth. Where the Moon is in the way; far side, at that. Which border circle includes the poles.

I'd constrain this process to our times when the Earth has a magnetosphere, which it didn't always. I take it this must be newer water. Also the Moon was closer in older aeons and the sun dimmer, but these factors might be negligible over this ('zoic) aeon in question.

Solar for firstcomers

Some excellent news for the first Martian visitors: there's a race between small-scale nukes and solar panels, and solar is now winning. At least - for getting an energy-supply OVER there.

This only holds true for the insolation available at the Martian tropics and, I suspect, its moons. But still: gram by gram, solar is better here. This matters for the first visitors. It also relieves Earth of the problem of getting fissile material into orbit where it's not, er, legal.

Later, Martians can probably find some uranium around the planetary surface or dropped in from an asteroid. Large-scale colonies might want these. The polar regions will want these; so will Ceres, I gather.

Goldilocks, or not

This just in, for Earth Weekend: "The Outer Edge of the Venus Zone", by Monica R. Vidaurri, Sandra T. Bastelberger, Eric T. Wolf, Shawn Domagal-Goldman, and Ravi Kumar Kopparapu. Missed the Appreciation Day by a... hair.

Overall, these five argue that runaway Venus can happen further into the habitable-zone than previously thought. Much then depends on the planet. This isn't well-constrained for Venus herself, although we're getting better. Of course for extrasolar planets this isn't constrained at all, although - they note - Webb will help.

I assume as rule-of-thumb that Venus will come for the heavier planets with presumably-thicker atmospheres of carbon, first. Especially if the water isn't there. Also I am unsure that these researchers should even have bothered with the M systems given that their "habitable" zone will be tidally-locked, and often subject to flare. Like Proxima next door.

One strike of bad news falls upon the K systems with their presumed "Goldilocks" planets. K (and M) delivers more radiation into the infrared which is exactly what a greenhouse will trap: K5V (0.70 M_☉) is 0.68 AU. UPDATE 10/8: If the orbit and rotation are in a Mercury resonance then its planet is basically a rotisserie.

COLD WATER 10/12 Ethan Siegel. NO PLANTS 3/5/23 Spectra.

The sidelining of nonSyriac Aramaic

The Near East which adopted Arabic had, beforehand, spoken Aramaics. It's commonly mooted around Christian circles that "Aramaic" was "the language of Jesus". This is true inasmuch as Jesus was a Galilean where (before the Revolt) Hebrew wasn't a spoken language. Leaving aside to what extent Qumran and the Shephelah, and parts of Jerusalem of course, were all keeping Hebrew current, as we'll read in Mishnah.

My issue with the general, not to say vulgate, Christian opinion is that Jesus as a Galilean should have been speaking a precursor of a Palaestinian Aramaic. We actually have quite a bit of Christian Pal[a]estinian Aramaic in writing, albeit biblical and patristic rather than, oh, contemporary literature. Christian Aramaeans by the seventh-century AD corresponded in Edessene Syriac, as when Ishoʿyahb III was writing to Jerusalem.

Anyway they'd all end up in Araby. But how?

The first Arabic Christian bibles cluster in the Jerusalem region and the later/ʿAbbasid eighth century AD. The Jews were probably at least targumising their own scriptures around this time (before Saadya). The Had-Qnoma came to claim that Mar Johanan himself had commissioned an Arabic Bible: which might be a Gospel (harmony?) although Genesis is noted as a point of controversy, so - perhaps a lectionary with bits and pieces.

One factor in the Malkiya was that these Arabophones, not being of the Church of the East, and also being closer to Constantinople (over the ninth century, starting to Make Rome Great Again), had taken notice of the Peshitta / Masoretic commonalities. Some parallels were (and are) innocuous to the Divine Oeconomia. Other parallels work against us - Agapius and Theodore Abu Qurra called out the (shorter) Masoretic chronology, in particular. And as sometimes modern Protestants have adopted LXX here; back then, Elias of Nisibin, an Oriental himself, came to accept this Melkite argument even against his own Bible. Some Muslims like Abu'l-Fida followed, of interest just for their interest in abrogated kutub.

I'd pondered if anyone here had bothered with the local Palaestinian Aramaic tradition but, it seems not. There exist Arabic / Greek multilinguals touching upon Aramaic, foremost Russian State Library 432. This Aramaic was Syriac.

I conclude that the Melkites of Jerusalem read Syriac and Greek, and ʿAbbasi-era Arabic. The Melkites under Islam ignored Palaestinian Aramaic, shunting this aside. And nobody in the Had-Qnoma ever touched the stuff; Mar John in particular being a Syriac man.

As for modern claims that the Syrian villages which have preserved Aramaic might speak descendents of ancient non-Syriac dialects; I don't know. If so these villages did not contribute to any independent Christian literacy. Where they own Bibles they are Syriac Bibles or VERY recent translations.

Mar Mattai and Tikrit

Having blown the greater part of last winter on the Oriental churches, I've this morning stumbled upon Marianna Mazzola in Le Museon 2019.

Ishoyahb as bishop in Nineveh, on its way to becoming "Mosul", dealt with two centres of "Heresy". One was Tikrit; the other, Mount Alfaf. Alfaf (we find elsewhere) is host to the monastery of saint Matthew, Mar Mattai in east-Syriac.

Mazzola calls this "Mor Matay" in a nod to the Western pronunciations - for my part, I grant to the Had-Qnoma more agency in the East (cf "Cave Of Treasures"). In fact Mazzola argues similarly: Athanasius blessed the new bishoprics in the East on condition he not subject these to the West. It seems Athanasius' sincere belief that an orthodox metropole look to its own hierarchy without a universal pope. The Nestorians, by then, looked up to a "Catholicos", at least ideally.

Mazzola would divide the post-Athanasian Orient further: that Alfaf was a metropole looking over the Jazira, whilst Takrit took on only the six episcopacies across the south. There might be a metropolitan in Tikrit with sufficient personality and wisdom that his opinions be respected in the north - Marutha assuredly fit this bill - but, sometimes, a "Matthean" bishop would assert himself as archbishop, to the irritation of the Takritis.

I will keep Mazzola in mind, when looking at Church politics from the seventh century onward. Although honestly as I read Ishoyahb, Tikrit does seem like the metropole. Alfaf acts as maverick: Ishoyahb can sometimes work with its leaders, but sometimes thinks he can appeal over/around them - at Tikrit. This may reflect the political realities of the Arabs who had sultan "KBB" (Khabib?) at Tikrit, with no direct presence at Alfaf.

Elite

I found out about Elite in late 1987 when I went to England and saw people playing that on Acorn machines. First reaction: "this looks like Starflight except you can't land". Starflight came to the Isle a couple years later... mostly pirated.

Elite was already an Old World classic by 1987. If you were an American, as I was (effectively), you found out about Elite about when I did. The sequels (Frontier) and... whatever Dangerous is, were more international in reach. But of course they are not the same.

Unlike for Starflight there exist Elite remakes. The first was Christian Pinder's 1999 "The New Kind"; an illegal reverse-engineer of the code to C. The original developers disagreed on whether to permit this piracy: David Braben disapproved, Ian Bell approved. Braben won and got TNK yanked off the Internet. Then came "Oolite", for the Mac at first, but done in object-oriented language (which C is not) as would compile for PC also. Somehow Braben was convinced not to block this version. "The New Kind" meanwhile has resurfaced, freeware as of the "30 year anniversary".

This blog cannot advise which to pick up; I never played any of these. I lean to "Oolite" on account, if you really want the TNK experience, there's probably a mod for it. Called "ODX" in their jargon.

BACKDATE 4/23

Un-boondoggling the ice-planet mission

I had to LOL over Zimmerman's summary of the National Academies' decadal priorities which, being National, they'd like NASA to do. Insert he's right you know Morgan Freeman meme. UPDATE 4/24: not the same document as NASA's actual budget (pdf) but . . .

Zimmerman's post does note the Cassini-Uranus proposal, which this blog has been mooting. It doesn't note Voyager III-Neptune because - Z assumes - NGMI. UPDATE 7/7: and China might be doing an orbital on a nonreusable Long-March. With Uranium Nitride. GLWT.

I say that both planets are similar so both missions will be using similar instruments, so NASA may as well start making those instruments now. Thus: a quick scan of the ice giant on flyby. Radar for the moons. Sensors for how the moon looks in daylight (going up toward the subsystem). All testable at Venus and/or Jupiter en route (Venus is a gas dwarf for this purpose). Aim for as much science to be done in the shortest timespan of intercept, in case it's blasting past (i.e., Neptune).

Personally I think the most value can be had from a Uranus longterm mission, even if we lose the Falcon Heavy [UPDATE 7/11 - note that SuperHeavy doesn't have to be lost]. Voyager III (or whatever the Chinese are doing) can await the results from Uranus; we might get other launch-windows later (maybe from a Deimos colony...?).