Citizen scientists have spotted almost 100 of our sun’s nearest neighbors. Space.com reports: In a new study, members of the public — including both professional scientists and volunteers — discovered 95 brown dwarfs (celestial objects too big to be considered planets and too small to be considered stars) near our sun through the NASA-funded citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9….
Tag: neighbors
With the Most Deaths In 150 Years, Sweden Reveals New COVID-19 Test-and-Trace Strategy
AleRunner writes: In the first half of 2020, Sweden has recorded its highest death total in 150 years. “In total, 51,405 Swedes died in the six-month period, a higher number than in any year since 1869, when 55,431 people died, partly as a result of a famine,” reports The Guardian. In what may be a reaction to this failure, which makes…
100 cool worlds found near the Sun
How complete is our census of the Sun’s closest neighbors? Astronomers and a team of data-sleuthing volunteers participating in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a citizen science project, have discovered roughly 100 cool worlds near the Sun—objects more massive than planets but lighter than stars, known as brown dwarfs. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cool-worlds-sun.html…
Citizen scientists discover dozens of brown dwarfs
How complete is our census of the Sun’s closest neighbors? Astronomers and a team of data-sleuthing volunteers participating in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a citizen science project, have discovered roughly 100 cool worlds near the Sun—objects more massive than planets but lighter than stars, known as brown dwarfs. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cool-worlds-sun.html…
Facebook Abandons Broken Drilling Equipment Under Oregon Coast Seafloor
Kale Williams, reporting for The Oregonian: Lynnae Ruttledge was worried when she heard Facebook planned to build a landing spot for an undersea fiber-optic cable near her Oregon Coast home. Tierra Del Mar, where the 70-year-old retired government worker lives part-time, is a tiny community north of Pacific City with no stoplights and no cell-phone service. The enclave, all zoned residential,…
Coronavirus Infection Rates: 10 US States Higher Than Any Country in the World
The New York Times has created a surprising interactive analysis of the number of coronavirus cases (per million residents) in different countries:
With its cases surging since mid-June, the United States is squarely in the top 10. Leading the outbreak now are countries in the Persian Gulf, where the virus has spread rapidly among foreign laborers. [Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait.] Rounding out…
Why Did a Tech Executive Install 1,000 Security Cameras Around San Francisco?
The New York Times explains why Chris Larsen installed over a thousand surveillance cameras around San Francisco to monitor 135 city blocks:
It sounds sinister. A soft-spoken cryptocurrency mogul is paying for a private network of high-definition security cameras around the city. Zoom in and you can see the finest details: the sticker on a cellphone, the make of a backpack,…
Six Former eBay Employees Charged in Federal Cyberstalking Case Targeting Natick Couple
Six eBay employees including a former police captain in California last year engaged in a relentless campaign of harassment and cyberstalking of a Natick couple that published a newsletter critical of the online retailer, sending items including fly larvae, live spiders, and a bloody pig mask to their home and travelling to Massachusetts to conduct surveillance of the victims in an…
Where is Proxima Centauri?
You probably know the very nearest star to our sun is Proxima in the triple star system we call Alpha Centauri. Guy Ottewell shows you where in space Proxima is. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/where-is-proxima-centauri…
Ultra-bright X-ray source awakens near a galaxy not so far away
A new ultra-bright source of X-rays has awakened in between our galactic neighbors the Magellanic Clouds, after a 26-year slumber. This is the second-closest such object known to date, with a brightness greater than a million Suns. The discovery is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-ultra-bright-x-ray-source-awakens-galaxy.html…