A Batch of Topics

This post will cover a few articles that I found interesting today. The first one I'd like to address is this one. Here's a snippet from it:

Scientists have found evidence that the kind of low-level exposure to sarin gas experienced by more than 100,000 U.S. troops in the first Gulf war can cause lasting brain deficits...

They found apparent changes in the brain's connective tissue -- known as white matter -- in soldiers exposed to the gas.

The extent of the changes -- less white matter and slightly larger brain cavities -- correspond to the extent of exposure...

So, it would appear that perhaps our warriors from the first Gulf war that came home complaining of puzzling symptoms were not full of shit like the VA and Pentagon have contended. You know the interesting thing is this. The democrats like to pitch a hissy fit over the conditions at Walter Reed and the "shoddy" care the Bush administration has provided for our veterans... You know, Bill Clinton, a democrat sat in that same office for eight years, all the while listening to the complaints of symptoms from GWI veterans and didn't do a god damned thing to help them. Now this tidbit of information surfaces of course you'll see no indictment of Slick Willy's treatment of troops from any mainstream media source.

Moving on to the next article... Here's a snippet:

A man went on a shooting rampage in his central Japan home Thursday, killing a policeman, wounding three other people — including his son and daughter — and taking his wife hostage...

The shooting was the latest in a series of unusually violent attacks in Japan, a country known for its low crime rates and tight gun laws.

So there you have it, definitive proof that gun control laws do not work. The gun control laws are very stringent in Japan. The Brady gang would dance for joy there. and yet, there are a series of shootings in Japan. Criminals will get guns despite your stupid gun control laws. All your gun control laws do is disadvantage law abiding citizens!

Moving on along to the next article... Again a quote:

Three U.S. soldiers slaughtered in a grisly kidnapping-murder plot south of Baghdad last June had been left alone for up to 36 hours in a poorly planned mission, a military investigation concluded. Two officers have been relieved of their commands.

Neither of the officers faced criminal charges as a result of the litany of mistakes that left the soldiers exposed.

If you do not remember this event. It was the 3 soldiers from the 101st airborne that were taken hostage in Yousiffiya that were tortured to death, their bodies desecrated and then left on the street booby trapped. Last June I published a post asking these very questions. How were these men left alone without oversight and back up for so long. So I guess I pegged that one right. In fact, my exact words were, "The fault for this probably falls more squarely on the shoulders of the company CO or platoon leader that planned his unit's deployment and left these men out there as low hanging fruit".

Now on to the last story...

Scientists have located a extra-solar planet named GJ 436 b. This particular one has a few interesting traits. GJ 436 b is a Neptune sized planet that circles a red dwarf star 30 light years (about 176 trillion miles) away from us. It's about four times the diameter of Earth and 22 times more massive. It orbits its host star at an amazingly close distance of only 2.5 million miles, fourteen times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun. Now comes the very interesting part... Scientists surmise that it is composed completely of water. There is so much water there that it would be compressed into ice in spite of the fact that the surface temperature is estimated to be 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The ice that would exist there would be what is called "exotic" ice. You see there are more than one type of ice. This specific kind of ice occurs because of pressure and not temperature.

Astronomy Update

Gliese 581 is a rather unremarkable red dwarf star in the Libra constellation... Were it not for one small fact. It has planets orbiting it, three that we know of. Even that would not make it remarkable. The fact that one of them is the first potentially habitable planet found thus far however does make it exceptional.

Gliese 581 is 20.4 light years (about 120 trillion miles) from Earth. It is so dim that you can not see it without a telescope (Apparent magnitude +10.55). It is one third the mass of the sun and because of this lower stellar mass it's surface temperature is far cooler than the sun's. Gliese 581 is so small it is only 31 times as large as the Earth. The three planets orbiting this star have been given the inventive names Gliese 581b, Gliese 581c and Gliese 581d.

The "c" planet is the first potentially habitable planet that we have found. It has 5 Earth masses and a 170 lbs man like myself would feel like they weighed 272 lbs on its surface. A year on this planet lasts only 12.9 days and scientists believe that there are no periodic days or nights on this planet. One side always faces the star and the other faces away. Its orbit is tidally locked to the star, a common condition for planets of low-mass stars.

There is still a lot to learn. Scientists have no idea whether the planet is a terrestrial planet (rocks and dirt) or an ice ball covered with water. While they are pretty certain that it has an atmosphere, they are uncertain as to the composition of it.

Gleise 581c orbits at a range of only .071 AU (about 6.5 million miles) from the star. That means that the disk of the star in the planet's sky would appear 20 times larger than the Moon appears on Earth.

The other two planets (b & d) are both larger gas giants. Gliese 581b orbits the star at a distance of .041 AU (3.8 million miles), completing one orbital circuit in a mere 5.4 days and is around 16 Earth masses. Gliese 581d (about 8 Earth masses) orbits at a distance of .25 AU (23 million miles), taking 83.6 days to complete one orbit.

Unfortunately it is rather unlikely that we'll be sending a probe to the Gliese 581 star system any time soon. The fastest spacecraft to date was the Helios probes placed in orbit around the sun. They clocked a blistering 150,000 MPH and even at that speed a space craft would take over 91,000 years to reach Gliese 581.

Neptune Times 3

Scientists from the Geneva Observatory have announced the discovery of a planetary system 41 lightyears away orbiting the star HD 69830 in the Puppis constellation. Announcements of the discovery of extrasolar planetary systems have become rather commonplace these days, but this one differs in several ways. Firstly, they've discovered three planets in this system. That in and of itself is not all that spectacular. These three planets however fall in a range of 10 to 18 times the mass of the Earth (about the size of Neptune). That places them amoungst the smallest extrasolar planets discovered thus far. Further, these three planets are not the ubiquitous gas giants most often discovered. they are all rocky bodies, terrestrial planets. The inner two orbit at a range that would indicate that their surface temperatures would be blisteringly hot. The third however orbits at a range that scientists call the "Goldilocks zone"... A distance not too far and yet not too close to preclude the existence of liquid water on the planet's surface. Thus far, scientists have not however proven the existence of liquid water on this planet. The scientists have also confirmed that this planetary system also has an asteroid belt like our sun.

Extrasolar planetary systems have been discovered by two methods. The first method detects the presence of planets by observing the wobble of the star as the planet's gravitational pull tugs at the star during the planet's orbit. The second method detects planetary bodies by detecting the occultation of the star's light when the planet moves between the star and an Earth-bound observer. This second method requires that the planet orbit on a plane perpendicular to the observer. Because of this, it is the less used of the two methods. These three planets were dicovered using the first method.

41 light years is relatively close in our stellar neighborhood, but it is none-the-less an insurmountable distance for us humans to traverse. To put things in perspective, the fastest spacecraft to date was the Helios 1 & 2 space probes which reached a blistering 252,800 km/h (158,000 mph). If it were possible to make the trip at this speed, it would still take about 173,757 years to reach the HD 69830 system.

Hostile Environment

According to the linked article, scientists have discovered the first planet known to exist in a trinary star system. The discovery is forcing scientists to question their theories of planetary formation as their theories can not account for the formation of a planet in such an environment.

Just thought this was an interesting find.

A First in Astronomy

Recent press releases indicate that astronomers claim to be 99.1% sure that they have imaged the first extrasolar planet. ("extrasolar" means "outside of our solar system"). The planet in question is a gas giant about 1.5 times larger than Jupiter that is orbiting a brown dwarf about 225 light years from here.

This is very exciting news for those of us who follow this sort of thing!