Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Last week seems to have been a good week for news in astronomy. At the least of the sorts that capture my especial interest.

From Universe Today, Spot Discovered On Haumea Rich With Organics And Minerals.

Haumea, one of those planets called dwarfs, is notable for its extremely rapid rotation (a bit less than four hours) distorting its shape well out of spherical and its pair of moons (and the origin of those moons being a probable collision early in Haumea's history which stripped much of its mantle and originated the Haumea collision family). I was thrilled to see such a headline, although on further reading of the article it seems a touch premature:

Possible interpretations of the changes in the light curve are that the spot is richer in minerals and organic compounds, or that it contains a higher fraction of crystalline ice.

So although it appears there is a dark patch on Haumea's surface, we won't know its composition until next year at the earliest. Still, I'm excited to learn just about any new details about these worlds.

Via the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (currently 374 planets and counting), a preprint of a paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal: The Formation Mechanics of Gas Giants on Wide Orbits.

Presently there are two major theories concerning the formation of giant planets. The core accretion model holds that if a planetesimal can accumulate at least ten Earth masses before the gas of the surrounding protostellar disk dissipates, it will be able to rapidly accumulate a massive envelope of gas. Meanwhile the disk instability model proposes giant planets form when part of the disk becomes unstable and collapses in on itself like a version in miniature of how stars form from giant molecular clouds.

For a while now the core accretion model appears to have prevailed, I think largely because the two models produce different sorts of planets with only a bit of overlap, and most of the planets we have been finding so far suit the core accretion model far better. That is, planets with up to a few times the mass of Jupiter, on orbits less than 10 - 20 AU (Astronomical Units) from their host star.

This paper reminds that there are now planets being found which the disk instability model explains far better than the alternatives - more massive planets approaching the realm of brown dwarves, on orbits too distant for core accretion to have produced them in situ, with orbital dynamics suggesting they were unlikely to have arrived there by scattering from interactions with other planets.

After reading it, I would not be surprised of Fomalhaut b did turn out to originate from core accretion and scattering, but I think they are probably right about the planets of HR 8799 and that there are many more such systems to be found. Would be very interested to learn if there are inner planets to these systems yet undiscovered, and what happens when both planetary formation modes are at work in the same system.

Another quick bit from Universe Today: Smallest Exoplanet Yet Has Rocky Surface. CoRoT-7 b may not turn out to be the smallest planet orbiting an actively fusing star yet discovered, but it is the one with the lowest mass we are currently sure of. The article is definitely worth reading, as some of the details about that planet are amazing.

A picture from Astronomy Picture of the Day, the Andromeda galaxy in UV. Was thrilled to note that in the mouseover comparison, the correlation of UV areas with bright blue starforming areas.

From The Planetary Society, "Richard Kowalski is the first person in history to possess a piece of an object that he discovered in space", an asteroid detected in space and tracked to its impact in Sudan last year. I don't know how I managed not to hear of this at the time it happened, but here is an account from shortly after it happened.

Two days ago, from when I begin typing these words, that was the declared Australia Day. I've not been enamoured of this day in celebration of white (our) colonisation, as I've not been of the United States' Thanksgiving, and felt no inclination to be celebrating it.

Prior to the day, suggestions of changing the date to something a bit less... blatantly colonialist were on my mind. It seemed a decent idea, though one I'd expect to get more resistance than support in the public or political eye.

And then we get this:

In the Sydney subrub of Manly, hundreds of youths draped in "Aussie pride" livery wore slogans declaring "f--k off we're full" as they smashed car windows and ran up the famous Corso targeting non-white shop keepers.

A 18-year-old Asian female in one of the cars was showered with shattered glass, giving her numerous cuts to her arms. She was treated on the scene by ambulance officers.

A taxi driven by a Sikh Indian was also targeted while an Asian shopkeeper was reportedly assaulted.

Groups of men jumped up on cars chanting race hate to the terrified passengers within, and were heard singing "tits out for the boys" at passing girls and yelled "lets go f--k with these Lebs".

What started as chants of "Aussie Aussie Aussie" at 1pm (AEDT) had in an hour had developed the potential to resemble Cronulla Beach in 2005.

And this:

"It was a mix of hoodlums who had obviously been drinking as well but, to me, there was also an underlying element of racism dressed up as nationalism," Dr Burridge, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, said.

"When they were gathering on the [oceanside] beachfront, that's when they were screaming out 'If you're Aussie and you know it clap your hands' and 'If you're white and you know it clap your hands'."

Dr Burridge said an 18-year-old woman was traumatised when three teenagers jumped on the car she was in and smashed two windows.

The youths went on to jump over other cars and damage shop awnings as they ran through the area chanting "Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi" and "Aussie pride".

"When I was on the beach there was a bunch of them ... and these are teenagers -15, 16-year-olds - with slogans on their backs and postcodes with Penrith and Londonderry," she said.

And yet we get this sort of response:

But Commander Darcy from Manly Local Area Command said the group, most of whom were not from the area, were no worse than a rowdy "old cricket crowd".

"To suggest that there were racial overtones there is, I think, way over the top," he said.

"I personally gave them a good looking over, just assessing them. There was an intensity there that no doubt would be confronting to some but at that stage they hadn't crossed the threshold of criminality."

I'd point out that racist slurs are not exactly unknown in cricket, but that still seems a rather inappropriate comparison. Since I don't dare hope these reports to be false, I'll hope instead Commander Darcy was ignorant of the details at the time this statement was made, and / or quoted out of context. Not a hope I am confident of seeing borne out, but it would be nice.

To understate: I don't like this. Something, probably a whole lot of somethings, need(s) to be done. Australia Day, as it stands, I am inclined to think ought not continue. We might move it, we might attempt rebranding, but I think incidents like this are reflective of national identity and narrative and those need changing before any national symbol-day would cease to be associated with racist violence.

Personally I'm inclined to give up any sort of nationalist holiday, even one moved or under attempted rebranding. Might try establishing something new before phasing out the old to avoid association but I really am at a loss for devising some positive value celebration that would not readily be coopted for white nationalist violence.

Ah well. 'Tis always a long project, not a near future fix, and hopefully better minds than mine will conjure better ideas - I don't pretend to think I'd by myself overcome the world, not tonight.

Edit: I've missed a lot which ought have been said, concerning especially Indigenous issues, but though too weary now to form well my own words want not such to go without acknowledgement. So we reproduce as stand-in this comment here:

I don’t really think it’s appropriate to identify and celebrate another day, until we actually honestly address the problems that resulted from both colonisation and federation. The jingoistic blah that surrounds Australia Day offends me, but unless we partake in some genuinely honest self-appraisal as a nation, an alternative day will be just as bad.

The first story was about the horrible, 'shocking' treatment people sometimes receive, such as a woman left to die on a hospital floor, a man who was hit-and-run and then ignored laying on the road in a daylit New York street, or the boy who was tipped out of his wheelchair and ordered to stand up to be searched.

As soon as I saw the segment advertised I made a bet with myself, that the people - person, since I only saw the first example advertised beforehand - would be white, and perhaps a member of some other socially sympathetic class. Because this sort of thing happens all the time and seeing it spoken about made me wonder what about this case was getting it airtime?

Far as I could tell I was right, all three individuals appeared (from grainy video footage) to be white. The first two were I believe classed as elderly, the last a teenaged or young adult male in a wheelchair, sets of person generally classed as helpless and to be pitied.

Point is cynicism about what it takes for media to notice a problem, and even so still regarded as isolated shocking incidents and how could this happen in the United States? My whole life I have seen problems talked about and people ask 'How could this happen here, in this nation of wonderfulness?' (and in case you are wondering, I mean Australia too and probably several other nations) and while I suppose many people find this nationalistic ethnocentrism charming and perhaps even spurring-to-action, it gets rather tiring seeing such things portrayed as shocking, surprising when they go on happening all the time and are not really very hidden and oh goodness the people involved generally have to be some form of acceptably pitiable to even be noticed.



The second story, the first words I heard were from a video interview: "At what point do you stop defending paedophiles?"

I imagine most people can tell this is a rather loaded question in the present society. As far as I could tell, the matter in question involved a man who had served fourteen years in prison for child sex abuse, had after release been accused of abusing a young girl and, I surmise, this story had been prompted by his recent release from prison relating to that matter.

I make this supposition because the man being interviewed pointed out that the man in question had served out his previous prison sentence, had in fact been in prison two and a half years for the more recent matter of the girl despite not having been convicted for it, and that the girl in question had in fact fingered someone else as the guilty party (presumably a factor in his release).

At this point the host interrupted to say "But he has a track record." Which apparently trumps such trivial details as evidence and who the victim accuses and whether he has actually been convicted for the crime in question. This hysteria troubles me, in the way people who have served their sentences are not then permitted to live their lives after, and convicted in public sentiment forever after. See this case, where based on what I heard it seemed the host was insisting this man must somehow be punished, be held in prison, be prevented from living his life despite the matter having been looked into legally and his having been released rather than convicted of it and there being someone else accused of the crime.

    Found here, source here. Likely everyone who this news matters to will have seen it elsewhere by now.
( Text behind cut here )

    So. It turns out it was not a stroke Terry Pratchett had. Instead, he has been disagnosed with a form of Alzheimer's. I am not going to eulogise him, not yet, even knowing that with such a condition there may come no other clear point before death that such a thing might seem appropriate. As he says, he is not dead yet and I have done enough mourning the living.
    Although I am sad (have cried, am crying)... I do not know how to finish that sentence. I would like to feel that nothing has changed because nothing has, except an increase in my knowledge of the state of the world. A reminder. It is a reminder. I might have thought him immortal otherwise and humans being humans, doubt I am alone in that.
    To request cheerfulness, well. It is not a thing many could manage at such a moment. In the future... people can manage many things but I am not right now looking forward to the next time I read one of his books, yet of all times to be reminded of transience, of sadness, that is one of the best. I do not imagine reading one of his books without being filled with, not only laughter (not mere I might say, except laughter is not) but life and love and hope.
    His works are thoroughly humanist. They capture the smallness of our species, the bizarre and even awful things we do, just because that is what we do, or it is our job, or we mean well. And what it is that the universe simply is and has no thought or care, no malice or love for us or any other clump of metal, and the simply amazing way we make up things like love and justice and evil and don't even realise how odd it is to be human and maybe people do awful things to each other but they also do wonderful things and without us maybe there would be no one to appreciate what a- what a wondrous/beautiful/amazing universe it is in which we exist.

    Alzheimer's is one of the reasons people in my family favour euthanasia. Although I never knew her, I have heard more than once of my great grandmother who lost her mind to it a decade before her body died in a nursing home. It is a fate many seem to find especially frightening. We are our minds, after all, more than our bodies, even if we cannot exist without both. I will take the rest of this thought train elsewhere.

    It seems I have eulogised without meaning to. Well, as much as I like to think myself an independently inventive creature of thought, we all have influences. Terry Pratchett and Greg Egan perhaps played the greatest in shaping my thought. Certainly they are the only writers I can think of who I can read and say "Yes." I had been intending to say earlier that he (and, Egan added, they) understand how things are, but given the order of things, perhaps it is I who see what they say. It is not as if being the centre of one's own lightcone gives one priority.

    I am mad, too. If something happened to an actor (and of course by this I mean an officially famous actor, not all those millions of others. haha) it would be all over the news. Why then no mention of one who writes the words that touch many millions of people? We are social creatures and often hideously vain. It seems not right that someone who has created a connection between so many, who writes so affectionately of what we are, faults and virtues both, should not have such significant personal news remarked upon.
    Bah. At other times I write wishing there would be less celebrity. This time I am being annoyed that the creators of art are not seen to be as important as those who create it. They are prettier though. Better finish this post before things get any more out of hand.

    There is something else humans have invented: Hope. Perilous to rely on, sometimes the strength it gives can make it a self-fulfilling idea.

I found this interesting.

    That headline certainly grabbed my attention. Did it grab yours? The Science Daily headline seems to be overstating the case a tad, as news headlines often do. What the original article seems to be about is gene expression as related to phenotypic sex and independent of chromosomal sex. Specifically, the role of androgens in genital development studied in XY AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) and non-AIS individuals.
    It has nothing to do with testing to identify a person's gender. However, it is interesting to learn more about the particulars of human development. I was going to say something like 'which aspects of development are determined by genes and which by hormones' but, as I understand it, genes call for hormones and hormones trigger genes so it is not quite so clear cut. In this case, I think the difference is between the effects of a Y chromosome with the aid of androgens and the effect on development of a Y chromosome without androgens.

    Sydney now under permanent water restrictions.

    matociquala  has read the sequel to The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick, called The Dragons of Babel. Her verdict: very positive. I still have not read the original, nor ever seen a copy, but I would like to.

    Several cities, in including Toronto, apparently are planning to replace civic lighting with LEDs. Apart from the environmental and financial benefits, this will hopefully also be an opportunity to reduce light pollution. Victory all round.

    Courtesy, Corpus Callosum.


(Isn't this neat? After posting here for so long I find I already have tags for nearly everything)