On Christmas morning of 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched from Earth. Thomas Zurbuchen, now NASA's associate administrator for science, had made the call. If Webb was going to fail, he would take the blame.

Not only did Webb launch, but its Ariane 5 rocket performed the flight with such precision that the spacecraft was able to save precious fuel for maneuvering, thereby extending its lifetime. Over the next two weeks, engineers and scientists executed hundreds of steps to unfold and fully extend the telescope and its massive sunshield. And then, finally, on Monday, the spacecraft performed one final major burn of its thrusters, falling into a halo orbit around the L2 point.

This means that the Webb space telescope has reached its final destination, a 180-day orbit around this L2 point, which keeps the telescope in line with the Earth as both the instrument and planet orbit around the Sun. Here, while using a minimum amount of fuel to hold its position, Webb can use its sunshield to keep the infrared telescope and its instruments cold.

The work is not done. The telescope has 18 primary mirror segments, which are moved by 132 actuators. These actuators have already been tested and shown to work. Now, over the next three months, telescope operators will fine-tune the alignment of these mirrors. During this process, scientists will use a Sun-like star named HD84406 to focus the mirrors. This star is located about 240 light years from Earth and can be found in Ursa Major near the bowl of the Big Dipper.

At the same time, in the wake of the sunshield, these mirrors and their scientific instruments will continue to cool in order to be able to detect the weak, ultra-distant signals of heat from the Universe's oldest galaxies. //

What is it about HD84406 that makes it the one to use for focusing the mirrors?

There are probably lots of criteria, but I only know two of them:

1. It's in the same 1/3 of space that JWST can see (i.e. the telescope doesn't have to look towards the Sun to see it)
2. It has to be relatively bright (HD84406 is not visible to the naked eye but can be seen with binoculars).

I can't find a reference now, but IIRC it was also selected because it's isolated with nothing behind it that's close (in interstellar terms), so it's easier to determine if the focus is good because there's less background light.

he sought to make the public case against the conservative doctrine of "originalism." He wrote two books arguing for a different interpretation of the Constitution and often debated conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in public. Scalia's often-repeated view was that the Constitution, as he put it, "is not living but dead," and it must be interpreted as the Founding Fathers would have. Breyer's view was that the founders understood perfectly well that nothing is static, citing for example, the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"Flogging might have been fine in the 18th century," Breyer said in a 2010 interview with NPR. "That doesn't mean that it would be OK and not cruel and unusual punishment today."

What's more, he observed, even historians don't agree on what the founders meant at the time they wrote the Constitution.

"History is very often in these matters a blank slate or a confused slate, and if you want to govern the country by means of that history, then you better select nine historians and not nine judges to be on the court," Breyer told NPR. "And I'll tell you, those nine historians will very often disagree with each other."

The job of a Supreme Court justice, Breyer said, is to apply the Constitution's values to modern circumstances, using the tools of judging — precedent, text and the purpose of the constitutional provision at issue.

You can think of the Constitution as laying down certain frontiers or borders, he said. "And we're the border patrol."

"Life on the border is sometimes tough, and whether a particular matter — abortion or gerrymandering or school prayer — whether that's inside the boundary and permitted or outside the boundary and forbidden, is often a very, very difficult and close question," he said.

Airbus A380 landing in a crosswind Airplane

Shortages typically lead to higher prices, and this is exactly what happened here as well. As a result, the cost of solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries started climbing—a development that virtually no renewable energy forecaster had anticipated.

Bloomberg reported this month that solar panel prices had surged by more than 50 percent in the past 12 months alone. The price of wind turbines is up 13 percent and battery prices are rising for the first time ever, the report noted. //

That lending problem for the mining industry as well as oversupply in some segments of the metals market led to lower investments in new mines in recent years. That added to an already existing problem of falling ore grades: now, a miner needs to dig out a lot more ore to find the same amount of copper, for instance, than they had to 20 years ago.

This means that the extraction of a ton of copper has become costlier even without the rising demand. With the rising demand projections, the outlook for copper and other critical metals is definitely bullish. But a bullish outlook for copper means higher prices for windmills and solar farms, and for EVs as well.

APUs became common in the 1960s, with Boeing including the first commercial APU in the 727 in 1963. While the technology had existed in military planes as early as World War 1, their move to commercial flying came as flying became more popular.

The presence of an APU in the 727 allowed airlines to avoid reliance on ground power at smaller airports. The turbine came to be included in all subsequent Boeing aircraft, including the 737 and 747 families. Since then, all modern jets and even some turboprops have come with their own APUs.

during early flight testing at Area 51 with the A-12s, Jim Eastham told me that A-12 #128 flew as fast as any A-12 during testing. On the particular day that the A-12 red lined everything.

“During a routine top speed envelope expansion flight, A-12 #128 was having a hard time getting past Mach 2.7 as the outside air was too warm. The reason for the flight test card that day was to validate a new inlet bypass door schedule.

“Jim said he dropped the nose down a bit to see if he could at least reach Mach 3.0. Out of nowhere, Jim hit good air and in the dive with good air he red lined everything. He went into his descent profile and headed back to the test site.”

Goodall concludes:

“When all was said and done; and for a very brief 15 seconds, Jim hit Mach 3.56, or just under 2,400 mph. Mind you, this was a one-time event and was never duplicated.”

Two Christian leaders in Finland stood trial in Helsinki on Jan. 24 for publicly stating the Bible’s teachings on sex and marriage. Longtime Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola defended in court their decision to write and publish, respectively, a pamphlet explaining Christian teachings about sex and marriage.

In the trial’s opening arguments, which will resume on Feb. 14, Finnish prosecutors described quotations from the Bible as “hate speech.” Finland’s top prosecutor’s office essentially put the Bible on trial, an unprecedented move for a secular court, said Paul Coleman, a human rights lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom International who is assisting in the Finns’ legal defense and was present during Monday’s trial.

“The prosecutor began the day by trying to explain that this case was not about beliefs and the Bible. She then, and I’m not kidding, she then proceeded to quote Old Testament Bible verses,” Coleman said in a phone interview with The Federalist after the trial concluded for the day. “Trial attorneys, Finnish trial attorneys who have been in and out of court every day for years, said they didn’t think the Bible had ever been read out like that in a prosecution.”

Never before has a Finnish court had to decide whether quoting the Bible is a crime. Human rights observers consider this case an important marker for whether Western governments’ persecution of citizens for their speech and beliefs increases. //

“The majority of the day was about the role of the Bible in society,” said Coleman, an Englishman who listened with the aid of translators. “The prosecutor on more than one occasion questioned whether we in Finland follow Finnish law or the Bible, as if these things are so inherently contradictory that you have to choose one.”

The long day in court concluded with the prosecutor cross-examining Pohjola about his theology, Coleman said, “asking his interpretation of the Bible, just straight-up theology.” The prosecutor even asked the bishop, apparently without awareness of the historical import of this question, “Does he follow God’s law or does he follow Finnish law?” Coleman noted with astonishment.

“I would characterize the day as a modern-day Inquisition or heresy trial,” Coleman concluded. “And the heresy was that Paivi and Bishop Juhana were on trial against the new sexual orthodoxy of the day.”

Malone discusses a controversial October 2020 email from National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins to Anthony Fauci in response to the Great Barrington Declaration. In it, Collins called three of the declaration’s authors “fringe” epidemiologists and demanded a “quick and devastating published take down of its premises”. I completely agree this was problematic.

As I have argued elsewhere, 2020 was a time of deep uncertainty about the science surrounding Covid-19 and the appropriate policy response to the pandemic. Collins is not an epidemiologist, and he has no standing to decide what counts as a “fringe” view within that field. As NIH director, his job is to foster dialogue among scientists and acknowledge uncertainty. Instead, he attempted to suppress legitimate debate with petty, ad hominem attacks.

The efforts to censor Malone and McCullough have massively backfired, with both men gaining prominence and publicity from the attempts to shut down their speech. More generally, I strongly disagree with efforts to censor scientists, even if they are incorrect, and no matter the implications of their words, as I believe the harms of censorship far exceed any short-term gains.

One problem, which has been on full display in this controversy, is that censorship may draw more attention to incorrect ideas. Another is that in the middle of any crisis, the answers to many scientific and policy questions will be uncertain. Disagreement on these questions is natural, and attempts to suffocate “harmful” speech run the risk of stifling critical debates, including by silencing third parties who may have important contributions but who fear the professional or reputational consequences of speaking up.

Perhaps the most serious objection to censorship is that the censors themselves are not fit for the task. Censors are unaccountable. They may be biased, misinformed or undereducated. They may lack perspective. In short, they are as fallible as the people they are trying censor. This is especially true in science, where, as history shows us, consensus views can turn out to be false, while controversial or heretical ideas can be vindicated.

Finally, in the modern world, where the censor is so often a giant technology company, there is tremendous potential for abuse. The same tools used to suppress scientific “misinformation” may someday be used to solidify political power and stifle dissent.

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Will green energy goals suffer as aging nuclear infrastructure is phased out? //

The French government is hoping a new kind of reactor could provide a boost for its nuclear efforts. French president Emmanuel Macron has announced a €30 billion ($35 billion) investment plan that includes funding for small modular reactors—lower-capacity plants would theoretically be faster and cheaper to build and could be placed in areas that are unsuitable for large plants. The UK government has also put £210 million ($286 million) behind the development of small modular reactors, but so far the only such reactors to have been connected to a grid anywhere in the world are two that make up a floating power plant docked in Pevek harbor, in the remote northeast of Russia.

Dries thinks the share of nuclear power in Europe's energy mix will continue to decline, even if plans for proposed plants in the Czech Republic and Poland go ahead. “I think that the declining trend is stronger than the upward trend in Europe,” he says. The question is whether countries replace their aging plants with more renewables or lean on fossil fuels to plug the gap. Not every nation will take the same approach. As Akshat Rathi and Will Mathis note on Bloomberg, the same social and political forces that led to Germany turning its back on nuclear helped it become a powerhouse for renewable energy. The path to zero emissions, it turns out, does not necessarily run in a straight line.

Detailed Photos of Airliners Up Close

Up-close photos of the Boeing 727-100 series

I know the Boeing 777 and 787 run on Fly-By-Wire. I was wondering:

• Do they have the Alpha Floor or Flight Envelope protections Airbus aircraft have?
• Do they have force feedback/force feel? The 737, for example, is connected using physical cables that move the flight control surfaces, so you can feel the yoke trying to move and when there is turbulence, it will actually shake a bit. This can't be felt with an Airbus sidestick. Can you feel this in Boeing Fly-By-Wire aircraft?
• When banking (without any pitch input), will the aircraft start to descend, or does the system counteract it like in an Airbus? In non Fly-By-Wire aircraft, they will start to descend a bit when banking, but Airbus Fly-By-Wire counteracts it by adjusting stabilizer trim. //

1. Do they have the Alpha Floor or Flight Envelope protections Airbus aircraft have?

The Alpha Floor protection on an Airbus overwrites the thrust setting commanded with the thrust levers to TOGA. Boeing does not do this. The autothrottles (if armed) will engage to prevent a stall, but the computer never overwrites the actual thrust lever position in the cockpit: //

Essentially, the philosophy for the control authority differs:

• Airbus will not let you do control inputs that might get you killed.
• Boeing will stop you from accidentally making control inputs that might get you killed, but you can overwrite them. //

2. Do they have force feedback/force feel?

Yes, unlike an Airbus sidestick the Boeing 777 and 787 simulate the forces on the yoke and therefore provide force feedback:

In 1954, Christian musician Alfred B. Smith (1916-2001) was enlisted to lead the singing at the Founder’s Week Conference, at Moody Bible Institute, in Chicago. With some five thousand people gathered, many of them experienced singers, Smith said it was like leading one big choir.

At the close of one session, he had them sing Fanny Crosby’s song of faith, All the Way My Saviour Leads Me. What a thrill it was to all, as they sang together in four-part harmony, ending with “This my song through endless ages– Jesus led me all the way.” Smith himself was overwhelmed with that thought, and asked them to repeat the last line, softly, without the accompaniment of the great organ and the two grand pianos–

“Jesus led me all the way.”

God’s people can’t always see clearly how the Lord leads us along, but He does. Of the Israelites in the wilderness the Bible says, “You [Lord] in Your mercy have led forth the people whom You have redeemed” (Exod. 15:13). Through many trials–and repeated failures to trust the Lord–He brought them at last to the Promised Land.

The New Testament says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). It’s an identifying characteristic of the redeemed: “All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (NASB). And, “Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ” (II Cor. 2:14). Even when we go through times of difficulty and carry wearying burdens, we are on the winning side, and the Lord will lead us through to victory.

But, back to that conference session. It was broadcast over the radio, and listening in that day was another gospel musician, John Peterson. Shortly afterward, he met his friend Al Smith, and mentioned the great personal blessing the singing of Fanny Crosby’s hymn had been, with the repeating of “Jesus led me all the way.” To which Smith replied, “Why don’t you write a complete song, using Fanny’s last line as the title.” And he did.

1) Some day life’s journey will be o’er,
And I shall reach that distant shore;
I’ll sing, while ent’ring heaven’s door,
“Jesus led me all the way.”

Jesus led me all the way,
Let me step by step each day;
I will tell the saints and angels
As I lay by burden down,
“Jesus led me all the way.”

2) If God should let me there review
The winding paths of earth I knew,
It would be proven, clear and true–
Jesus led me all the way.”

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Fentanyl overdoses have surged to the leading cause of death for adults between the ages of 18 and 45, according to an analysis of U.S. government data.

Between 2020 and 2021, nearly 79,000 people between 18 and 45 years old — 37,208 in 2020 and 41,587 in 2021 — died of fentanyl overdoses, the data analysis from opioid awareness organization Families Against Fentanyl shows.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that can be deadly even in very small amounts, and other drugs, including heroin, meth and marijuana, can be laced with the dangerous drug. Mexico and China are the primary sources for the flow of fentanyl into the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Comparatively, between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 15, 2021, there were more than 53,000 COVID-19 deaths among those between the ages of 18 and 49, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Scientists have developed a vitamin D pill to treat advanced prostate cancer.
Exposure to Vitamin D from sunlight is known to improve the prognosis of certain cancers.

US drug company Novacea has produced a pill which delivers a concentrated dose of the vitamin without running the risk of side-effects from an overdose.

Chemistry and Industry magazine reports that if clinical trials of the drug - Asentar (DN-101) - are successful it could be available by 2009 //

Data shows that rates of prostate cancer are higher in countries further away from the equator, where there is less exposure to sunlight.

Taking lots of multivitamins may increase the risk of deadly prostate cancer, say US researchers.
Their study showed taking multivitamins more than seven times a week was associated with an increased risk of advanced and fatal prostate cancer. //

Experts advised men to eat a healthy diet to reduce their risk of cancer.

The findings, based on data on nearly 300,000 men, indicated the risk of advanced prostate cancer is 32% higher in men who take multivitamins more than once a day than in those who do not take them at all.

Risk of fatal prostate cancer was almost double. //

In an accompanying editorial, European researchers said a high intake of fruit and vegetables has been shown to reduce the risk of cancer. //

There has been a lot of research into antioxidants such as vitamin C and E because it is believed they may protect cells against damage.

However, some analyses have suggested that beta-carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E supplements may shorten life rather than extend it. //

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. It kills one man every hour in the UK.

Vincent Pankoke ID'd Jewish Council member Arnold van den Bergh as most likely culprit.

UPDATE (Thu Jan 20): After the debacle on Tuesday, with the cancellation of 777 and 747-8 flights by multiple international airlines, it seems the FAA was embarrassed (or forced) into accelerating the issuance of AMOC approvals for additional altimeters, approving the 777 on Wednesday morning, and the number of altimeters approved and percentage of the US fleet covered has now grown very quickly:
Tuesday Jan 18: 2 altimeters and 45% of the US fleet
Wednesday Jan 19: 5 altimeters and 62% of the US fleet
Thursday Jan 20: 13 altimeters and 78% of the US fleet.

The result has been that most disruption has been avoided, although regional jets remain a concern, with some problems resulting from low visibility. However, the rapid pace of approvals, and the expectation from airlines that there won’t be “any material disruption going forward”, further discredits the FAA’s fearmongering over the weekend, not least because an AMOC has now been issued covering all 787 jets, which were supposedly the cause of greatest alarm. Suggestions that airlines would need to “swap out the altimeters” in a process lasting years and costing billions of dollars, also appear to be well wide of the mark. //

But the FAA’s statements appear to confirm that they are only issuing AMOCs approving altimeters to operate while the current 5G deployment restrictions remain in place: “The new safety buffer announced Tuesday around airports in the 5G deployment further expanded the number of airports available to planes with previously cleared altimeters to perform low-visibility landings.”

So it is perhaps no wonder Boeing is refusing to comment because they don’t want to get into a public shouting match with the FAA, despite the behind the scenes confrontation over the 777 at the beginning of this week outlined above. But you can be sure that many aviation interests are demanding that the restrictions continue permanently and the FAA is preparing for another showdown on July 5th, when the current six month period of restrictions is set to expire.