The definition of a planet: IAU conference and the issue of 2003 UB313

It's been expected for a long time now; the IAU meeting has attempted to produce the definition of what a planet is.

Pluto was long too small to really match into the classical planets without letting other bodies like 2003 UB313 in, and now a committee has suggested simply the "spherical body not orbiting another object" suggestion, which includes some other minor planets in it including Pluto. You can't have Pluto in a real definition as a planet and not Ceres and some of the big Kuiper Belt objects without putting an arbitrarily size limit on the definition and this drove astronomers to impasse.

The "Spherical bodies" idea was agreed by some as a radical definition that would bestow planet status on many objects; some argued it would dilute the idea of what a planet was. Keeping the old 9 planets and restricting 2003 UB313 was cruel and decidely the wrong thing to do. Putting a higher size limit to keep 2003 UB313 out would have been physically arbitrary and would have forced Pluto out of major planet status.

Brian Marsden, who just retired, long argued that Pluto really was nothing more than a large Kuiper Belt Object. It was unfortunate in my opinion that public sentiment drove the arguments about was a planet was more than science. He makes the point that we will likely have a lot more planets in the near future when we prove the sphericity of the bigger minor planets and KBOs, and if the public doesn't like that, they chose to live with it by forcing Pluto into the issue.

UPDATE: Mike Brown's thoughts. And his NYTimes Op-ed.

Search this blog for "Pluto"

Search this blog for "2003 UB313"

UPDATE: Looks like they've come to their senses.

Tuscola County stupidity: cell phones and Arabs in Michigan

I sincerely hope that pride doesn't prevent Tuscola County, Michigan prosecutor Mark E. Reene from dropping the outrageously stupid charges against three Americans whose only crime was to attempt to make a profit and have dark skin. When they realize how they have no case, they will do their best to have the men plea bargain something, however light, to prove the case wasn't the amazing reach it is. Will Caro, Michigan police chief Benson Page think of the huge waste of resources in pointless extra patrols of the bridge? Why would a terrorist buy a thousand cellphones for a detonator when he needed only one? Why not arrest every tourist who buys a cellphone and takes a photo of the Mackinac? My guess is that no tourists ever go to Caro or Tuscola County, because I surely never will.

Number stations

Speaking of number stations, I have a recording of a strong Spanish number station from December 17th, 2003, at 5:15UT, on 8100kHz (1:00, 705kb mp3). The noise at the end is a local broadband noise source called an elevator.

Some other shortwave / radio posts:
Adventures in Shortwave: more Radio Havana Cuba
Adventures in Shortwave: Swahili on the radio
Adventures in shortwave: last night's Radio Habana Cuba

VLF radio: part 1

VLF Radio part 2: sferics

The Sun as a microwave source

The Sun as a 2.4 GHz source, redux

Weather is not climate

It was a hot one on Monday and Tuesday here in Chicago--hot enough that I avoided getting a coffee to keep me warm in my cold office and opted for a iced drink. The heat wave affecting the Midwest finally broke and those in Chicago generally didn't do the following--

Those who can't remember the weather always say "It's never been so hot before". They tend to forget last year, or 1995, or 1988, etc. They tend to forget 1916, 1911, 1918. The entire Dust Bowl.

It's really important point: Weather is not climate. A heat wave is not the result of a change in climate. Weather is a day-to-day variation in temperature, humidity, etc. Climate is the long-term average of weather. On average, the climate of Chicago gives us 34 inches of water. On average. Look at the variation in yearly precipitation here. Even after averaging over 365 days, the average precipitation varies over +-10 inches of rain each year.

Look at the other graphs on the Chicago climate page.

The whole point is, you can't blame a single event, a single drought, a single year's weather on global warming. You can't. You can make statistical statements, but the natural variability of weather will mask any contribution by forced warming until you look at a long-term average (or some other greatly averaged variable).



Problematic web pages:
Treehugger: The Heatwave is On: Global Warming?
Bruce Sterling: Global Warming Knocks Out MySpace
Washington Post: More Frequent Heat Waves Linked to Global Warming

Someone took the research about reducing the well-known urban heat island effect and blame increasing nighttime temperatures on global warming, rather than accounting for the continued growth in urban areas.

Some comments here: Climate Science:Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group Weblog

Adventures in Shortwave: more Radio Havana Cuba

In light of the news about Fidel Castro's health and the future of Cuba, here are two recordings from last night's Radio Havana Cuba.

Radio Habana Cuba end of editorial, religious response, music at end(04:14, 1.7MB mp3)
Essentially, the statement was, the Cuban people will continue to do all the good things they do now, and imperialist conspirators and their evil plans will not work.

Well wishes from world leaders and imprisoned Cubans in the U.S. (07:35, 3.5MB mp3)

Both were recorded on 9820kHz. There were thunderstorms in the vicinity. I used Audacity to record and removed some hum and nearby carrier whistles with some notch filters.

P.S. See also recordings from 2006-12-18 and 2006-07-13

NEXRAD radar and cars

The NEXRAD radar near Chicago is bending back down to ground and lighting up cars on the highways south of town. I've labeled the image above with arrows to the returns. This image adds the highway overlay to the radar, showing the returns to be from I-65, I-57, and I-39. Earlier you could see I-55 on the return as well.

Looking at a balloon sounding from the nearest area (Lincoln, IL) shows an inversion at about 6000ft (1800m):
.
This could be bouncing the beam back onto the ground on this hot steamy night.

The smallest arrow on the annotated radar image--what is that sitting out in eastern Lee County? It's static in the animation.

UPDATE: Google Earth link. What's at the corner of Beemerville Rd, Compton Rd, and 251?
2nd UPDATE: Silos on a topographic high?
Or a tall AM antenna? Probably the antenna.

3rd UPDATE: The antenna is 150m tall, listed in the FCC Antenna database, owned by ComEd.

Radiation readings

My long-term radiation average for my basement Geiger counter here at the Regenstein Library is 7.6uR/hr. Lately it's been elevated a touch. For the last 1372 minutes (or roughly a day), it's 7.95uR/hr. Over the last hour, it's at 8.38 (EDIT: in the space of writing this the last 60 count rate went down to 7.67. Love them statistics). All of this is so small that it doesn't matter but it's an interesting variation. Merely putting a simple aluminum can near the Geiger counter can drop the reading by 0.5uR/hr, so these changes aren't significant. I wonder if I've made some change in my office (or perhaps in the next office) that has changed the local background rate. The air is off too; perhaps that's allowing a small amount of radon to appear (which is normally non-existant in the library).

The popular Geiger Counter post. In which I graph the radiation on an airplane flight. And radon decay.

See the Genesis-1 spacecraft tonight in Chicago

The inflatable and privately-owned Genesis-1 spacecraft will be visible tonight from Chicago. It was built by Bigelow Aerospace, headquartered in Las Vegas (my hometown).

The spacecraft rises in the northwest at 10:08PM, and passes the Big Dipper on its way to its maximum altitude of 62 degrees above the horizon in the southwest, above Arcturus, at 10:12PM. It enters the Earth's shadow at 10:13.

It should appear as a faint star, not much brighter than the faintest stars you can see (in Chicago), so get away from light sources and let you eyes adapt. It would be dimmer than most of the stars in the Big Dipper. Binoculars should help.

Don't confuse it with the Helios 1A rocket, which will be visible at nearly the same place and same time. You will be able to discern between them because the rocket body is moving to the north while Genesis-1 will be moving south-ish.

Pass details

Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later?

Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later?

"This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger's locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP is being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, the companies I trust to free information are my enemies, the people looking out for me are being watched. As if that weren't enough, my own computer spies on me daily, my bank has been compromised, my phone is tapped--has been for years--and my phone company is A-OK with it. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?"

n-body orbits

Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance points out some bizarro but valid orbits of multi-body gravitational systems mentioned at "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics". Any system of more than two bodies is very difficult (or impossible?) to reduce to simple mathematical statements, although you can find occasional stable orbits of n-body systems. Cris Moore found some and Michael Nauenberg animated them.

Adventures in Shortwave: Swahili on the radio

Last week, I had a rare night of exquisitely clear shortwave radio reception. I recorded a number of stations--either strong, non-American broadcasters, or rare catches (for myself). This was with a Hallicrafters S-40A shortwave receiver and a simple random wire antenna on the roof of a six story building. I'm awaiting a new digital receiver to finally be able to actually know what frequency I'm listening too--on the old tube it's always a guessing game.

I recorded a scan through the 31-meter international broadcast band, which is filled with stations on many nights. To me, this band is from 10MHz down to 9, but I think officially it's just 9500-9900kHz, although the frequencies around it have some broadcasters. I cut some short segments out of the big recording.

Deutsche Welle, broadcasting in Swahili (6:06, 3MB mp3). This recording is 6:25 in length, recorded on 7/11/2006, at 3:54UT, until end of transmission. Station ID is at 6:06.
The Program Schedule indicates I was listening to Jukwaa. The recording is a little shaky at the beginning, fighting with an adjacent American religious broadcaster playing music.

Everybody's favorite, the BBC World Service (4:32, 2.1MB mp3). I am guessing that this is a relay broadcast from Guyana, pointed towards the Caribbean. EDIT: In discussing this in the comments, I've found that it was broadcast from the UK towards South America.

Radio Habana Cuba, in French (1:19, 621kB mp3). As I wrote in the previous post, we receive Radio Havana Cuba pretty well here in Chicago. Station ID at 0:21.

The Voice of Russia (0:31, 251kB mp3).

Radio Netherlands 9845kHz (5:43, 2,680kB mp3). A story about new boat technologies. Radio Netherlands is a continued supporter of shortwave broadcasts to North America in the time of shrinking audiences.

Radio Croatia (I think), (1:03, 271kB mp3). This was recorded near WWV at 10MHz during a scan from WWV to 9MHz, so the frequency was near 9990kHz.

Kol Israel (1:41, 693kB mp3). To be honest, I have trouble distinguishing Hebrew and Arabic, but this definitely is Hebrew. I assume it's Kol Israel, but I know Family Radio out of Oakland California occasionally broadcasts in what sounds like Hebrew or Arabic.

Finally, a tougher recording. This is WWVH at 15MHz. (0:27, 427kB mp3). From 0:05-0:10 you can hear the female voice of WWV-Hawaii saying "At the tone, the time will be two hours, thirty-six minutes, Coordinated Universal Time". Normally we don't hear the Hawaiian time broadcast in Chicago; whereas I hear it all the time on the west side of the Rocky Mountains.

See the first post in this series:
Adventures in Shortwave: last night's Radio Habana Cuba

Adventures in shortwave: last night's Radio Habana Cuba

The Professor, a DJ at New York City's independent radio station WFMU, has a fantastic series in his regular blog about listening to old-time radio: that of long-distance AM radio and shortwave. He ends up posting audio clips of various shortwave stations you can hear. While it sounds boring, it's actually quite interesting. I offer up a 5-minute clip of Radio Havana Cuba from last night, with their regular news report. Cuba's propaganda station always highlights how the US is "actively conspiring" against Cuba or some random nation. Volume is a little low on the clip, so you might need to turn it up.

This clip was recorded from an ancient vacuum tube radio, a 1940's era Hallicrafters S-40A, in the Ryerson Astronomical Society's office. The signal-to-noise ratio wasn't anywhere near what is was a week ago, but it's ok. (I have a lot of recordings from that night to process).

P.S. Looking for the manuals to the S-40A? Bama.sbc.edu has 'em.

Planet orbiting Pollux

Systemic, everyone's favorite extrasolar planet blog, talks about the detection of a 2 or 3 Jovian-mass planet orbiting Pollux, aka Beta Geminorum. Preprints here and here

P.S. The graph above shows Pollux's velocity towards and away from Earth. You can see how it varies back and forth in a regular period, especially with the newer higher-quality data. Given the period and amount of wobbling, you can discover planets and their minimum masses.

Particulates in Chicago: source

The Terra satellite people released a gallery image of fires in Saskatchewan and Manitoba on June 26th that probably are the source of the Chicago particulates mentioned here.

Mayflies on Mississippi River show up on radar

Mayflies flying along the Mississippi River in Wisconsin were numerous enough to show up on NEXRAD radar.



NEXRAD radar is usually cleaned up a huge amount before it's released--things like ground clutter and bird returns are removed.

I grabbed a processed return from the archive at UCAR here.

It's not as dramatic as the processed return shown in the news story. I wonder where they got that particular image.

Massive insect swarms are nothing new for residents of the Midwest near lakes and rivers. On occasion, I've seen swarms of gnats take up residence in the lees of buildings along the lakefront in Chicago thick enough to resemble smoke.

Another common anomaly on NEXRAD radar is the Sun rising or setting--since it's a source of radio waves--strong enough to be detectable.

Via Boing-boing