Tag: Scientists

Missing Scientists

Today is Star Wars Day….May the Fourth be with you.

In that vane I would like to tackle those missing scientists.

By now everyone has at least heard the stories of all those missing scientists….the problem is there is no common denominator for their disappearance or death….or is there?

It sounds like the plot for an episode of The X-Files: at least 10 scientists – and counting – who all supposedly had access to sensitive US government research are dead or missing under mysterious circumstances.

Four worked for Nasa; three of them were even on the same team. Two had worked together at the same national laboratory in New Mexico. Another – a former senior air force research engineer who left his home on Feb 27 and hasn’t been seen since – had been involved in UFO research after his retirement.

The nature of the researchers’ work – which spans nuclear science, astrophysics and aeronautics – has led to speculation in recent weeks that they might all be connected.

Conspiracy theories abound, mostly online, about the possible links between the cases, while others suggest it is a coincidence.

“We’re going to look for connections,” Kash Patel, the FBI director, conceded in an interview with Fox News, noting that the FBI would be looking at the scientists’ “access to classified information” and “foreign actors”.

“If there’s any connection that leads to nefarious conduct or conspiracy, this FBI will make the appropriate arrest,” he said.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/05/03/missing-dead-scientists-nasa-research/

Sorry but I would not trust that lush Patel with anything much less investigating these events.

I am sure by now everyone knows that there will be some sort of conspiracy to grow up around these incidents…..

First the project’s biggest funder died preposterously, of an infected wound from shaving. Soon death came for others linked to the inscrutable and important work — a visiting diplomat, the lead funder’s half-brother, and a string of scientists involved with the project. They died of suicide, of strange illnesses, in a gruesome murder. There were so many deaths that there was no way they could not be connected. Finally, the project’s lead scientist and most famous face died unexpectedly, years after the project’s completion.

Anyone following the news lately might think the above paragraphs are about the “disappearing scientists” story, alleging that a number of researchers and scientists connected to the defense industry or astrophysics have all died of unusual causes over the last year, with some vanishing while on walks and others horrifically murdered in seemingly random shootings.

This conspiracy theory has jumped from obscurity to global coverage in just weeks, with more names being added to the “death list” every day.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/whats-really-underpinning-the-missing-scientists-conspiracy-theory

I do not want to add to the conspiracy but there has got to be some sort of commonality in these incidents…..when they discover that they will most likely discover what the Hell is going on.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Dead Scientist Club

There is something strange going on in the scientific world….there has been at least 11 scientist that have either disappeared or died recently.

It is an usual occurrence…..

The mysterious trail of scientists who have gone missing in the past two years prompted a discussion after it was raised by a reporter at the White House. Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Karoline Leavitt if anyone was investigating the reports that “10 scientists” – with potential access to information related to nuclear weapons/research – had gone missing in less than two years.

https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/205102/four-missing-scientists-come-from-one-state

Number 11 is a 34 year old scientist from Huntsville, Alabama……where DARPA does a lot of tinkering….

A scientist experimenting with anti-gravity tech was found dead at 34 after warning that her life could be in danger, marking another mysterious case of deaths and disappearances in recent years.

Amy Eskridge was just 34 years old when she allegedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in Huntsville, Alabama on June 11, 2022. However, neither the police nor the medical examiners have publicly released any details of an investigation ever taking place.

Before her death, she was openly researching and trying to develop anti-gravity technology, a way to control or cancel out gravity, which could revolutionize space travel and energy production.

Anti-gravity propulsion has also been widely discussed by UFO researchers, who have claimed this advanced technology is what allows alien spacecraft to achieve impossible speeds.

Conspiracy theorists have also claimed the US military has been experimenting with this technology for years, but the government has denied that alien technology exists.

In 2020, Eskridge stated she was planning to present novel foundational work regarding antigravity but needed approval from NASA.

Since her passing, shocking details, including an unearthed interview with Eskridge herself and independent findings submitted to Congress have claimed that the death was not a suicide and was instead part of an elaborate ‘murder’ conspiracy.

Eskridge’s death marks the eleventh person with ties to America’s space or nuclear secrets who has died or mysteriously vanished in recent years, putting US national security experts on edge.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15738699/ufo-scientist-amy-eskridge-death-huntsville.html

All these deaths and disappearances has come to the attention of that idiot in the White House….

Our ‘stable genius’ will make a statement on these incidents (this oughta be good)…..

Shortly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration would consider investigating the mysterious disappearances and deaths of multiple U.S. scientists, President Donald Trump revealed that he expects to have an update in the coming week.

Asked by Fox News’ Peter Doocy during a media briefing at the White House on Wednesday, April 15, whether the Trump administration would investigate the vanishing of American researchers with access to classified material, Leavitt said she would speak to “our relevant agencies about it.”

“I will certainly do that, and we’ll get you an answer. If true, of course, that’s definitely something I think this government and administration would deem worth looking into. So let me do that for you,” she said.

On Thursday, a reporter asked Trump directly whether he believes there’s a connection between the scientists’ cases.

“Well I hope it’s random, but we’re going to know in the next week and a half. I just left a meeting on that subject,” he said, calling it “pretty serious stuff” and acknowledging that “some of them were very important people.”

He added that his administration is looking into it and guessed that “we’ll probably have a pretty good answer over the next week.”

https://people.com/trump-update-missing-dead-scientists-11951692

“A pretty good answer”?  I love the conviction at which he does everything.

Let me guess….the Democrats are “behind it”…..that will be the best that moron can come up with.

WE will find out for Donny has ordered an investigation….

President Trump says the White House is formally probing a rash of cases involving US-linked scientists who’ve died or vanished in recent years, amid weeks of online speculation and tabloid chatter. “I hope it’s random,” Trump told reporters, calling the situation “pretty serious stuff” and saying federal investigators will review the incidents “over the next short period,” reports the Hill. USA Today identified at least 10 deaths or disappearances that might fall under the review, though the people involved had varying and sometimes tenuous links to scientific research. CBS News also has a thorough look at the deaths, but the story sounds a note of skepticism about finding any link among them.

One of the most high-profile cases is that of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William “Neil” McCasland, 68, a former head of the Air Force Research Laboratory, who went missing in February in New Mexico and was the subject of a Silver Alert citing unspecified medical concerns. Authorities have said they see no sign of foul play in his case, and he remains missing. The list goes back to July 2023, with the death of NASA astrophysicist Michael David Hicks, per the Hill. No cause of death has been released in his case.

Other notable deaths: California Institute of Technology astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was fatally shot in February, and the body of Novartis researcher Jason Thomas was recovered from a lake in Massachusetts a few months after he went missing. The Department of Energy’s nuclear security arm is also reported to be looking into the incidents. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week the administration is coordinating with the FBI and other agencies and vowed “no stone will be unturned.”

Will we really learn anything from this ‘investigation’?

This will make a helluva made-for-TV movie.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–15Nov21

For decades scientists have been chasing the elusive power source known a nuclear fusion…..chasing and never seemingly close to a break through…..and then the Chinese release news that their scientists have made an astonishing discovery…..

Nuclear fusion is the holy grail of energy production. If cracked, the tech could provide us with unlimited clean and cheap energy. But cracking it has been hard to do so far. Many have announced breakthroughs in the field, there’s even a supposed race to crack nuclear fusion, and yet the field never seems to advance in a substantial way.

Now, Chinese scientists in Shanghai have been working on a project to replicate the sun’s energy process with a comparatively low-cost approach and, after a year of experiments, the technique has shown promise, according to the South China Morning Post.

“Our goal is to achieve sustainable fusion,” project lead Zhang Zhe from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics in Beijing said in a phone interview to SCMP.

What does this new process consist of? The scientists are firing powerful laser beam pulses at a tiny pair of gold cones with narrow ends which face each other and emit a plasma of hydrogen. The collision of these two hot gas streams achieved at precisely the right time and place, and in the right manner, could result in nuclear fusion.

How will this project be adapted for power generation? Well, according to Zhe “the cones can be mass-produced and loaded as bullets in a machine that will rotate and fire like a Gatling gun.”

Three relatively successful tests have been conducted thus far by Zhe’s team and another is scheduled for next month. And although the work has not been without its fair share of challenges, initial results indicate the theory works.

“We are making progress one step at a time,” Zhe concluded. Could his team actually be the one who wins the nuclear reaction race? Only time will tell.

The team’s results thus far have been published in the domestic peer-reviewed journal Acta Physica Sinica.

(Interesting Engineering)

If fact then they deserve a huge ‘atta boy’…..

If true what will it do to power generation and the profits made?

Any Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Sunday Space News

It is that time again…..I report on all the news about space…..news that no one can use……

The world’s largest telescope is underwater…..

Russian scientists on Saturday launched one of the world’s biggest underwater space telescopes to peer deep into the Universe from the pristine waters of Lake Baikal.

The deep underwater telescope, which has been under construction since 2015, is designed to observe neutrinos, the smallest particles currently known.

Dubbed Baikal-GVD, the telescope was submerged to a depth of 750-1,300 meters (2,500-4,300 feet), around four kilometers from the lake’s shore.

Neutrinos are very hard to detect and water is an effective medium for doing so.

The floating observatory consists of strings with spherical glass and stainless steel modules attached to them.

https://www.sciencealert.com/russian-scientists-deploy-a-floating-observatory-in-lake-baikal

“Take us to warp 4″….a captain aboard the Enterprise….that might sound like a line from a movie but it may not be so far fetched…..

The speed of light is a big constraint when it comes to space exploration. It’s the rate at which light travels in a vacuum, precisely 186,282 miles per second (29,9792,458 metres, or 300,000 kilometers, per second). It’s unchangeable, and as far as we currently know, nothing can exceed that speed. That may seem pretty fast, but compared to the sheer size of space, it’s like trudging through molasses. 

For scale, the moon is approximately 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from Earth; It takes about 2.51 seconds for light to make a round trip from the Earth and back. Mars is 3 minutes and 2 seconds for a one-way trip, or six minutes and four seconds both ways. It would take 4.6 hours for light to reach Pluto, and another 4.6 hours to bounce back. Finally, it would take us 4.24 years traveling at the speed of light to reach Alpha Centauri Bb—the closest exoplanet from Earth. That’s traveling at top speed.

https://interestingengineering.com/direct-fusion-drives-flying-across-space-blink-of-an-eye

 

Top Science Anniversaries For 2020

The weekend and I search for anything not related to the silliness that demanded our attention in the news for the last week…..and 2020 is still very young so how about looking back at some of the great scientific anniversaries?

2020, the International Year of Good Vision, is also a good year for scientific anniversaries.

As usual, there are the birthday anniversaries, offering an opportunity to recognize some of the great scientists of the past for their contributions to humankind’s collective knowledge. And there are the anniversaries of accomplishments, discoveries or events that left the world a different place than it had been before. There’s even an Einstein anniversary, which there almost always is.

What’s more, by selecting the Top 10 anniversaries carefully, you can illustrate how often key scientific concepts are intertwined — neutrons with bombs, for example, or magnetism with X-rays with DNA. So here, without any deep meaning to the order of presentation, are the Top 10 Science Anniversaries in 2020:

10. Roger Bacon, 800th birthday

Nobody knows for sure exactly when Bacon was born, but a passage in his writings suggests that it was around 1220. He was among the premier natural philosophers of his day; he studied first at Oxford and then lectured at the University of Paris. He became a Franciscan monk but often got in trouble for breaking the order’s rules.

Top 10 science anniversaries in 2020

A Closing thought for this weekend…..I am an old fart and social networking just does not mean the same to me it does to techno geeks……my social networking was easy…..

MoMo is giving me that “where is my walk? Look…..

Image

Got go rain or shine…..she demands her walk……and I need the exercise……

Peace Out!

“lego ergo scribo”

Stephen Hawking–R.I.P.

Sad news Stephen Hawking has died at age 76……

One of the world’s greatest scientific minds has now left this dimension. British cosmologist and physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76, some 55 years after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21 and given two years to live. Family members say Hawking died peacefully early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England, the BBC reports. “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” children Lucy, Robert, and Tim said in a statement, per Sky. “He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love’. We will miss him forever.”

Hawking, born in 1942, was known for his groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe. Books like best-seller A Brief History of Time made him what the AP calls “one of science’s biggest celebrities since Albert Einstein,” appearing on shows including The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Signs of his illness—also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease—appeared during his first year of graduate school. He lost what remained of his voice in 1985. “I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years,” he told the Guardian in a 2010 interview. “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.”

He will be missed……..

A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On

The cold snap has left us Southerners with a bit of a shiver……normally we in the Deep South do not suffer from the bone chilling weather that most the country has to endure…..and we do not suffer quietly.

My garden is only a memory from the summer…..at least the wide array of birds are still visiting and makes it seem like Spring…..

Sorry I was babbling on but it is Sunday and what better day to go on aimlessly?

Now we get to the good stuff……..

Sunday and I have some sad news for the world……looks like that next year, 2018, is going to be a bad year for earthquakes……17 to 20 major quakes of 7.0 or higher magnitude……

Two geologists may have spotted a surprisingly simple correlation that can help predict earthquakes—and if they’re correct, the Earth is on track for an uptick in major quakes next year. The pair pored over a century’s worth of a data on earthquakes and detected a pattern: When the Earth’s rotation slows, as it does periodically, the slowdown is followed by an increase in quakes with a magnitude of 7 or greater, reports the Guardian. Their research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has been well-received in the field, and it will be put to the test soon. The rotational slowdowns typically happen over five years, and the last began four years ago. Meaning, we can expect to see two to five more major earthquakes than normal in 2018, or 17 to 20, reports Science.

“The Earth offers us a five-years’ heads up on future earthquakes, which is remarkable,” says Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado, who detected the correlation with Rebecca Bendick of the University of Montana. Exactly where the quakes will take place is fuzzier, but typically the increase shows up in regions along the Equator. The researchers aren’t sure how to explain all this, but one theory is that it involves nearly imperceptible changes in the flow of molten iron in the Earth’s core. That might be enough to slow down the Earth’s spin a millisecond or two, a difference that can be measured by atomic clocks, and perhaps result in the release of vast amounts of energy underground. The cycle seems to take place about every three decades, writes geologist Trevor Nace at Forbes. (LA residents won’t like this San Andreas prediction.)

WE do not need more major disasters for our president has NO idea how to handle these disasters…..Puerto Rico proved that all to shamefully.  We can only pray that Arizona will not become beach front property.

Sunday is over and I will withdraw to my room and read and write……

 

Operation Paperclip

At the end of World War 2 the US ran all over Germany snapping up German scientists, most of whom would be tried for crimes against humanity but their expertise was needed so Operation paperclip protected these criminals and moved most of them to the US under the protection of the government.

More about Operation paperclip here…..

Operation Paperclip, named after the use of the ordinary paperclip attached to the personnel files of select German scientists, was a special operation of breathtaking scope. Instead of highly trained teams tasked for important combat missions, these teams were hunters and gatherers sifting and searching through the wreckage and ruin of a devastated Germany. Theirs was a high-stakes contest against an equally determined Russia and other less malevolent former allies. German scientists and technologies were the pawns, and the prize was nothing less than national security and preeminence as a world power. When it was concluded, hundreds of German scientists and their families, tons of documents, hardware, weapon systems, and technologies would be transferred from Germany to the United States.

Officially, Operation Paperclip concluded on Sept. 30, 1947. In a public statement, the Army announced that the operation had brought into the United States 457 scientists and 453 dependents. But a closed-door decision was made to allow Operation Paperclip to continue, this time as a top secret program. To justify the continuation, the Air Force stated that the 209 German scientists working for it had substantially advanced the development of weapons systems and the scientists were “superlative specialists … the best available in the world today.” They were saving the Air Force millions of dollars and an estimated 10 years in cost and development. The Navy added its praise, stating that German mathematicians, aerodynamicists, and experts in heat transfer had proven that “their professional education and training [were]superior to that of any U.S. personnel available.”

https://argunners.com/operation-paperclip-saving-german-scientists/

Some of the research that America used in their space program was testing done on Jewish prisoners that resulted in a horrific death and yet we decided that it was somehow okay to use this research if it put us a head of the Russians.

I personally have a problem with this type of program….a war criminal is a war criminal and should face the same judgements that others had to face.

Thoughts?

Climate Change Debate

One last note on this…my day of climate change……

There is a debate, believe it or not, going on about the issue of climate change or if you care global warming…..the problem to my thinking is that the debate is seldom cared on at the same time.  Yes we have conflicting points of view and they are very vocal in their positions….the real problem is that the debate is never done face to face.  Instead the discussion is done in 30 second sound bites or 3-5 minute segments on the media we call news…….and then it is usually not the opposing sides but rather one side or the other making their points and NO one challenges their findings, instead the moderator just feeds the position taken, basically soft ball questions….nothing in opposition.

We all have our opinion on the subject……me?  I think man would f*ck up a wet dream……but then it is my opinion and we know what they say about opinions, don’t we?  There is scholarly research done on both sides of the argument……however there are those that are paid by business and industry to come up with a position paper and they use mercenary scientists that will do whatever it takes to earn a buck.

Let me illustrate for you……we will look at a simple statement of what conservs feel and those of liberals…….

Liberal
Global warming is caused by an increased production of carbon dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas).  The U.S. is a major contributor to global warming because it produces 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide.  Proposed laws to reduce carbon emissions in the U.S. are urgently needed and should be enacted immediately to save the planet.  Many reputable scientists support this theory.
Conservative
Change in global temperature is natural over long periods of time.  Science has not shown that humans can affect permanent change to the earth’s temperature.  Proposed laws to reduce carbon emissions will do nothing to help the environment and will cause significant price increases for all.  Many reputable scientists support this theory.
There you go…….if you want to debate the subject……pick a side and then build your case around that belief……….
There will Never be a deciding debate on this issue until the players stop acting like cowards and debate one another face to face…..and there will NEVER be a solution one way or the other until the voter learns to listen and understand all sides of an issue……basically, what I am saying is that we will NEVER have a solution of this issue in my life time…….Americans just do not have it in them.  And that is the truly sad part of this situation.

How Close Is A Jurassic Park?

It is the weekend and I do love me some sciencey stuff.  I know you have seen Jurassic Park 1-33 or ever how many spinoffs there have been but just how possible is the premise of the movie?

I found this and thought I was just too cool to ignore…….

In 1983, a genuine freak of nature was lost to science. The gastric-brooding frog – Rheobatrachus silus – was native to the rainforests of Queensland, Australia and best known for giving birth through its mouth, having incubated its offspring in its stomach. But habitat loss and disease saw the species officially declared extinct.

Until now. Scientists in Australia have announced that they have brought the frog’s genome “back to life”. Employing a cloning technology called somatic cell nuclear transfer, they used tissue obtained from samples of a frog kept in a freezer since the 1970s to implant a “dead” cell nucleus into a fresh egg from a similar species.

None of the embryos created survived for more than a few days, but the “Lazarus Project” team believe their work is a landmark moment for the new science of “de-extinction” – the artificial recreation of lost species that featured fictionally in the Jurassic Park films. “Now we have fresh cryo-preserved cells of the extinct frog to use in future cloning experiments,” says team leader Professor Mike Archer of the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. “We’re increasingly confident that the hurdles ahead are technological and not biological, and that we will succeed. Importantly, we’ve demonstrated already the great promise this technology has as a conservation tool when hundreds of the world’s amphibian species are in catastrophic decline.”

Last week, scientists and conservationists met in Washington DC to thrash out the ethical, moral and technical questions of, as they admit, “playing God”. A central question is whether such cloning techniques “bring back” an extinct species, or just create a new one that looks exactly like the old one.

“That remains to be seen,” said the conference organisers. “It is one reason to do the research: is the genome the species? The answer will vary from species to species. De-extincted plants should flourish as if they’d never left, if suitable pollinators are still around. But if California condors had gone extinct, it’s unclear if they could be brought back fully, because the young rely on parental training.”

Archer says his focus is now on cloning the extinct Australian thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. However, at the conference talk was already moving on to targeting other extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth and dodo.

Okay, I know someone has got to have something to say about this……thoughts?