Recently in THE HAPPENING WORLD

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Breakthrough Listen Candidate Signal Evaluated to be Terrestrial Interference

On 2019-04-29, the Parkes radio telescope in Australia was observing the closest star, Proxima Centauri, to study its flare behaviour. The Breakthrough Listen project was conducting a piggy-back analysis of the signals, filtering for narrow-band emissions which might indicate transmissions from a technological civilisation. A signal was received, persisting for two and a half hours, which passed all of the tests for such a signal:

  1. It is a ~Hz-wide narrowband signal, which cannot be created by any known or foreseeable astrophysical system, only by technology.
  2. It exhibits a non-zero drift rate, as expected for a transmitter that was not on the surface of the Earth.
  3. Its drift rate appears approximately linear in each 30 min ‘panel’ (one single-target observation from a cadence of observations that makes up a waterfall plot), but the drift rate changes smoothly over time, as expected for a transmitter in a rotational/orbital environment.
  4. It is absent in the off-source observations (see ‘Initial investigation and parametrization of blc1’), as expected for a signal that is localized on the sky.
  5. It persists over several hours, making it unlike other interferers from artificial satellites or aircraft that we have observed before.

The signal was declared a “candidate” by Breakthrough Listen and given the name “blc1” for Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1”. Two papers published in the 2021-10-25 issue of Nature Astronomy:

have now concluded that the signal was likely terrestrial interference. From the abstract of the second paper:

… [W]e find that blc1 is not an extraterrestrial technosignature, but rather an electronically drifting intermodulation product of local, time-varying interferers aligned with the observing cadence. We find dozens of instances of radio interference with similar morphologies to blc1 at frequencies harmonically related to common clock oscillators.

A popular “front of book” article in the same issue with the somewhat sensational title “Mysterious ‘alien beacon’ was false alarm” summarises the results. The actual source of the signal has not been identified, and the signal has never been observed since.

Here is an interview with Shane Smith, the Hillsdale College undergraduate intern at the Berkeley SETI project, who discovered the signal in the Parkes data.

Posted at 13:43 Permalink

Friday, October 29, 2021

Boeing Takes Another US$ 185 Million Charge on “Hangar Queen” Starliner

Posted at 11:48 Permalink

X1-Class Solar Flare—Coronal Mass Ejection Heading for Earth

Here is more on the event and predictions for its consequences at spaceweather.com.

Posted at 10:23 Permalink

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Intel 12th Generation “Alder Lake” i9-12900K Processor—Press Kit and a Look Inside

Intel's 12th generation CPUs, code named “Alder Lake” is scheduled to launch on November 4th, 2021. Here is a description of the chips and rumoured specifications.

Chips and compatible motherboards and memory are already in the hands of the trade press, with reviews expected to drop as soon as the embargo lifts on November 4th. Ian Cutress is one of those reviewers, and provides a look inside Intel and MSI's press kits sent to reviewers.

German extreme overclocker and YouTuber “der8auer” is also reviewing the chip and managed, by a fat finger, to blow up his i9-12900K CPU. He took the opportunity to remove the lid and take a look inside, evaluating the physical construction of the packaging and its suitability for direct die cooling for power-mad overclockers.

And, by the way, if you think overclocking is some kind of outré activity undertaken by gamers with an excess of time on their hands and a shortage of common sense, did you know that Intel publishes a document titled “How to Overclock Your Unlocked Intel® Core™ Processor” and even provides a free “Extreme Tuning Utility” to aid in the process?

Posted at 13:58 Permalink

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

SCANALYZER Is Moving to SCANALYST

SCANALYST Logo

SCANALYZER is moving. After 2021-10-31 (Hallowe'en!), SCANALYZER is moving to the new SCANALYST site, a Discourse-based discussion forum which will publish all of the current content from SCANALYZER and allow members to comment, discuss, and write their own posts on any topic that interests them.

All content posted at SCANALYZER since 2021-10-04 has been mirrored at SCANALYST, so if you follow this site, just change your bookmark to read all of the same content and more there. If you like what you see, sign up to comment and share your own posts with a like-minded community. SCANALYST has no subscription fees, no advertising, and requires no personal information other than a valid E-mail address to confirm your sign-up. We will never knowingly disclose any personal information about users. Almost all posts at SCANALYST, and every one in the SCANALYZER categories, are readable regardless of whether you sign up or not. If you sign up, you can comment and write your own posts.

SCANALYST is a forum for civilised conversation. Other than momentary lapses of reason, disruptive or abusive behaviour will result in immediate exclusion from commenting or posting at the site without possibility of appeal. There's already too much coarseness in today's world: we don't need any more.

If this sounds like something in which you'd like to participate, just visit the site, click “Sign Up” at the top right, and jump in.

I hope to welcome many readers of this site to SCANALYST.

Posted at 13:27 Permalink

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Weekly Space Report: Starship Static Fires, Catcher Arms Installed on Tower, NASA SLS Stacking Complete

Posted at 11:10 Permalink

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Announcing: Fourmilab Blockchain Tools

Fourmilab Blockchain Tools provide a variety of utilities for users, experimenters, and researchers working with blockchain-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. These are divided into two main categories.

Bitcoin and Ethereum Address Tools

These programs assist in generating, analysing, archiving, protecting, and monitoring addresses on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. They do not require you run a local node or maintain a copy of the blockchain, and all security-related functions may be performed on an “air-gapped” machine with no connection to the Internet or any other computer.

  • Blockchain Address Generator creates address and private key pairs for both the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, supporting a variety of random generators, address types, and output formats.

  • Multiple Key Manager allows you to split the secret keys associated with addresses into n multiple parts, from which any k ≤ n can be used to reconstruct the original key, allowing a variety of secure custodial strategies.

  • Paper Wallet Utilities includes a Paper Wallet Generator which transforms a list of addresses and private keys generated by the Blockchain Address Generator or parts of keys produced by the Multiple Key Manager into a HTML file which may be printed for off-line “cold storage”, and a Cold Storage Wallet Validator that provides independent verification of the correctness of off-line copies of addresses and keys.

  • Cold Storage Monitor connects to free blockchain query services to allow periodic monitoring of a list of cold storage addresses to detect unauthorised transactions which may indicate they have been compromised.

Bitcoin Blockchain Analysis Tools

This collection of tools allows various kinds of monitoring and analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain. They do not support Ethereum. These programs are intended for advanced, technically-oriented users who run their own full Bitcoin Core node on a local computer. Note that anybody can run a Bitcoin node as long as they have a computer with the modest CPU and memory capacity required, plus the very large (and inexorably growing) file storage capacity to archive the entire Bitcoin blockchain. You can run a Bitcoin node without being a “miner”, nor need you expose your computer to external accesses from other nodes unless you so wish.

These tools are all read-only monitoring and analysis utilities. They do not generate transactions of any kind, nor do they require unlocked access to the node owner's wallet.

  • Address Watch monitors the Bitcoin blockchain and reports any transactions which reference addresses on a “watch list”, either deposits to the address or spending of funds from it. The program may also be used to watch activity on the blockchain, reporting statistics on blocks as they are mined and published.

  • Confirmation Watch examines blocks as they are mined and reports confirmations for a transaction as they arrive.

  • Transaction Fee Watch analyses the transaction fees paid to include transactions in blocks and the reward to miners and produces real-time statistics and log files which may be used to analyse transaction fees over time.

Details

You can download the complete source code distribution, including ready-to-run versions of all of the programs, from the Fourmilab Blockchain Tools home page.

All of this software is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Please see the Fourmilab Blockchain Tools User Guide [PDF] for details or read the complete source code [PDF] in Perl and Python written using the Literate Programming methodology with the nuweb system.

Posted at 15:20 Permalink

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

SpaceX Starship SN 20 Pre-Burner Test

This appears to have been a single engine pre-burner test of Raptor vacuum engine number 5. The pre-burner powers the turbopumps that force fuel and oxidiser into the combustion chamber. In a pre-burner test, the main combustion chamber is not ignited. This is a normal step on the way to a full thrust static firing.

Posted at 11:09 Permalink

Sunday, October 17, 2021

Weekly Space Report: Mechazilla Rising, NASA to Monitor Starship Re-entry, Relativity Space 3D Printed Launcher

Posted at 11:38 Permalink

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Rwanda Files to Operate 327,320 Satellite Constellation

Satellite Network Filing RRW2021-42537 was received on 2021-09-21 for the “CINNAMON-937” constellation, which is described in the supplementary notes [PDF] as:

An orbital shell is here defined as the set of orbits with the same inclination. There are 27 of such orbital shells. Each orbital shell, except the equatorial shell made of one single plane, has a total of 12,960 satellites. The 27 orbital shells comprise of 327,320 satellites.

Satellites are to orbit at altitudes between 550 and 643.6 km in shells arranged by inclination,

Posted at 13:49 Permalink

Top Ten Assets by Market Capitalisation

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The Infinite Market Cap Web site ranks more than 13,000 assets by market capitalisation, which is defined for various assets as follows.

  • For precious metals the Market Cap is calculated by multiplying the its price with an estimation of the quantity of metal that has been mined so far. These estimations are updated annually.
  • For stocks it is calculated by multiplying the amount of outstanding shares with the current share price.
  • The Market Cap of cryptocurrencies is calculated by multiplying the circulating supply with the coin's price.

One can quibble with these definitions: for example, silver, ranked as the 7th largest asset, is an industrial metal which is consumed in many of its applications, so there is a large gap between the total amount mined over history and the existing above-ground supply. For cryptocurrencies, estimates are based upon circulating supply in public hands, excluding funds believed to be lost, some of which might reappear in the future. Obviously, all of these asset prices are volatile and this ranking represents their valuation as of the date of this post.

A few observations: it is stunning to observe that, among companies in the top ten, only Saudi Aramco is not a technology company, and is the only one founded prior to 1975. We often think of Big Oil and Big Banking as archetypes of corporate wealth and power, but only one oil company and no bank made the top ten. The highest ranked bank, JPMorgan Chase, came in at 16th, just before the Ethereum cryptocurrency at 17th. The largest traditional industrial company (but with a strong presence in technology as well) was Samsung at 22, and brick and mortar retailing leader Walmart ranked 23.

The total valuation of the top ten assets combined was US$ 25.7 trillion, which is less than the U.S. national debt of US$ 28 trillion and change.

Autodesk ranks number 306, with market cap US$ 64 billion, beating out Northrop Grumman at 307 and US$ 63.3 billion and Ford Motor Company in 312th place at US$ 62.7 billion. Also in the cheap seats are Federal Express (322), UBS (324), General Dynamics (341), and Honda (381).

Dogecoin is hanging in there at 705th with market cap US$ 31.5 billion.

Posted at 12:15 Permalink

Friday, October 15, 2021

Shenzhou-13 Crew Launch to Chinese Tiangong Space Station

Shenzhou-13 launch is scheduled for 16:23 UTC on 2021-10-15. The launch is to carry a crew of three to the Tiangong space station for a planned six-month stay.

Posted at 14:11 Permalink

Lucy—Visiting Eight Asteroids with One Spacecraft

NASA's Lucy mission is scheduled to launch on Saturday, 2021-10-16 at 09:34 UTC. Its planned twelve-year mission will use multiple Earth gravity assists to fling it on a path through both the leading and trailing Trojan regions of Jupiter, where it will encounter seven asteroids, including some believed to date from early in the formation of the solar system. Lucy will also fly by a small main belt asteroid on its outbound trajectory. Here is a live Webcast of the launch.

Posted at 11:57 Permalink

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Space Tourism Companies Prohibit Passengers from Selling Souvenirs

“Commercial space” for vendors, not customers.

Posted at 12:52 Permalink

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Blue Origin New Shepard NS-18 Launch

The Webcast coverage is scheduled to start at 12:30 UTC on 2021-10-13.

Posted at 11:38 Permalink

Monday, October 11, 2021

Attack Submarine USS Connecticut Collides with “Object”—What Happened?

Here is more about the incident at the U.S. Naval Institute Web site, “Attack Submarine USS Connecticut Suffers Underwater Collision in South China Sea”. This is the official statement by the U.S. Navy. The name of the Connecticut's captain is Bill Clinton.

Posted at 12:20 Permalink

Tesla Rolling Out “Full Self-Driving” Beta 10.2 by “Safety Score”

SCANALYZER has previously written about Tesla's “Safety Score” spyware which monitors customers' driving behaviour and reports back to headquarters. Now it's official: customers who have paid for Tesla's so-called “Full Self-Driving” capability will receive beta test updates in descending order by safety score, with only those who have a perfect score of 100/100 in the last 100 miles receiving the update first.

Perhaps a future update will monitor their customers' body mass index based upon seat settings and a weight sensor in the driver's seat and refuse to drive to fast food restaurants if it's too high.

“They'll go into debt to buy their own shackles” — Kelvin R. Throop

Posted at 11:17 Permalink

Sunday, October 10, 2021

Weekly Space Report: Starbase Developments, 33 Raptor Super Duper Heavy, Amazing 3D Raptor Model, Ingenuity Grounded

Posted at 11:20 Permalink

Friday, October 8, 2021

Elon Musk at the 2021 Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting

“Over time, you'll see all manufacturers will make electric vehicles, and eventually all manufacturers will make autonomous vehicles. Tesla is open to licensing autonomy.

“… you can recycle battery materials. You can think of batteries as essentially high grade ore. So you can get your lithium and your nickel … from rocks or from batteries. It's much better to get them from batteries.”

Posted at 14:52 Permalink

Thursday, October 7, 2021

„Вызов” (The Challenge)—Teaser Trailer

Filming (or, more precisely, videography) of the 30 to 40 minutes of the feature film „Вызов” (literal translation: “Doctor's House Call”) is presently underway on the International Space Station.

Posted at 13:13 Permalink