8chan/8kun QResearch Posts (3)
#22352978 at 2025-01-14 15:42:22 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #27336: Melania Tuesday, Hegseth On The Hot Seat Edition
https://science.nasa.gov/get-involved/citizen-science/newly-selected-citizen-science-proposals-a-peek-at-whats-next/
Newly Selected Citizen Science Proposals: A Peek at What's Next
Jan 13, 2025
Last year, the NASA citizen science community saw a prize from the White House and two prizes from professional societies: one from the Division of Planetary Sciences and one from the American Astronomical Society.
Our teams published two papers in the prestigious journal, Nature, one on a planetary crash and one about a distant world that seems to have auroras. 2024 was a year of 5000 comets, two solar eclipses and plenty of broken records.
But we're not stopping to rest on our laurels. In 2024, NASA selected 25 new citizen science proposals for funding that will lead to new projects and new results to look forward to in 2025 and beyond.
Here's a roundup of those selections and the principal investigators (PIs) of each team-a sneak peek at what's coming next in NASA citizen science!
Note that these investigations are research grants-some of them will result in new opportunities for the public, others will use results from earlier citizen science projects or develop new tools.
Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP)
The CSSFP aims to support scientists and other experts to develop citizen science projects and to expand the pool of scientists who use citizen science techniques in their science investigations.
Four divisions of NASA's Science Mission Directorate are participating in the CSSFP: the Astrophysics Division, the Biological and Physical Sciences Division, the Heliophysics Division, and the Planetary Science Division.
Nine new investigations were recently selected through this program:
Astrophysics Division
SuPerPiG Observing Grid, PI Rachel Huchmala, Boise State University. Use a small telescope to monitor exoplanets to improve our knowledge of their orbits.
Understanding the Nature of Clumpy Galaxies with Clump-Scout 2: a New Citizen-Science Project to Characterize Star-Forming Clumps in Nearby Galaxies. PI Claudia Scarlata, University of Minnesota. Label clumps of distant galaxies to help us understand Hubble Space Telescope data.
'Backyard Worlds: Binaries' – Discovering Benchmark Brown Dwarfs Through Citizen Science. PI Aaron Meisner, NSF's NOIRLab. Search for planet-like objects called brown dwarfs that orbit nearby stars.
Mobile Toolkits to Enable Transient Follow-up Observations by Amateur Astronomers. PI Michael Coughlin, University of Minnesota. Use your own telescope to observe supernovae, kilonovae and other massive explosions.
Planetary Science Division
A Citizen Scientist Approach to High Resolution Geologic Mapping of Intracrater Impact Melt Deposits as an input to Numerical Models, PI Kirby Runyon, Planetary Science Institute. Help map lunar craters so we can better understand how meteor impacts sculpt the moon's surface.
Identifying Active Asteroids in Public Datasets, PI Chad Trujillo, Northern Arizona University, Search for icy, comet-like bodies hiding in the asteroid belt using new data from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope.
Heliophysics Division
Enabling Magnetopause Observations With Informal Researchers (EMPOWR). PI Mo Wenil, Johns Hopkins University. Investigate plasma layers high above the Earth using data from NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission and the Zooniverse platform.
High-resolution Ionospheric Imaging using Dual-Frequency Smartphones. PI Josh Semeter, Boston University. Study the upper atmosphere using cell phone signals.
Large Scale Structures Originating from the Sun (LASSOS) multi-point catalog: A citizen project connecting operations to research. PI Cecelia Mac Cormack, Catholic University of America. Help build a catalog of structures on the Sun.
Comet Identification and Image Annotation Modernization for the Sungrazer Citizen Science Project. PI Oliver Gerland. Search for comets in data from ESA and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission using new web tools.
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#17854158 at 2022-11-30 16:26:26 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #21883: Release the Twitter APP Store (TAPP) Edition
>>17854079
>https://www.space.com/black-hole-eating-star-jet-points-earth
Most distant detection of a black hole swallowing a star
Earlier this year, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) was alerted after an unusual source of visible light had been detected by a survey telescope. The VLT, together with other telescopes, was swiftly repositioned towards the source: a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy that had devoured a star, expelling the leftovers in a jet. The VLT determined it to be the furthest example of such an event to have ever been observed. Because the jet is pointing almost towards us, this is also the first time it has been discovered with visible light, providing a new way of detecting these extreme events.
Stars that wander too close to a black hole are ripped apart by the incredible tidal forces of the black hole in what is known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). Approximately 1% of these cause jets of plasma and radiation to be ejected from the poles of the rotating black hole. In 1971, the black hole pioneer John Wheeler[1] introduced the concept of jetted-TDEs as "a tube of toothpaste gripped tight about its middle," causing the system to "squirt matter out of both ends."
"We have only seen a handful of these jetted-TDEs and they remain very exotic and poorly understood events," says Nial Tanvir from the University of Leicester in the UK, who led the observations to determine the object's distance with the VLT. Astronomers are thus constantly hunting for these extreme events to understand how the jets are actually created and why such a small fraction of TDEs produce them.
As part of this quest many telescopes, including the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in the US, repeatedly survey the sky for signs of short-lived, often extreme, events that could then be studied in much greater detail by telescopes such as ESO's VLT in Chile. "We developed an open-source data pipeline to store and mine important information from the ZTF survey and alert us about atypical events in real time," explains Igor Andreoni, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in the US who co-led the paper published today in Nature together with Michael Coughlin from the University of Minnesota.
In February of this year the ZTF detected a new source of visible light. The event, named AT2022cmc, was reminiscent of a gamma ray burst - the most powerful source of light in the Universe. The prospect of witnessing this rare phenomenon prompted astronomers to trigger several telescopes from across the globe to observe the mystery source in more detail. This included ESO's VLT, which quickly observed this new event with the X-shooter instrument. The VLT data placed the source at an unprecedented distance for these events: the light produced from AT2022cmc began its journey when the universe was about one third of its current age.
A wide variety of light, from high energy gamma rays to radio waves, was collected by 21 telescopes around the world. The team compared these data with different kinds of known events, from collapsing stars to kilonovae. But the only scenario that matched the data was a rare jetted-TDE pointing towards us. Giorgos Leloudas, an astronomer at DTU Space in Denmark and co-author of this study, explains that "because the relativistic jet is pointing at us, it makes the event much brighter than it would otherwise appear, and visible over a broader span of the electromagnetic spectrum."
The VLT distance measurement found AT2022cmc to be the most distant TDE to have ever been discovered, but this is not the only record-breaking aspect of this object. "Until now, the small number of jetted-TDEs that are known were initially detected using high energy gamma-ray and X-ray telescopes, but this was the first discovery of one during an optical survey," says Daniel Perley, an astronomer at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and co-author of the study. This demonstrates a new way of detecting jetted-TDEs, allowing further study of these rare events and probing of the extreme environments surrounding black holes.
#8674450 at 2020-04-03 18:55:47 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #11107: Jacked Up Freaky Friday Bredz Edition
Cop Kills Unarmed Teen After Mistaking Fellow Cop's Gunfire as the Teen's
After fatally shooting a teenager nearly four years ago, two Chicago Police officers have finally been fired. The officers were the subject of intensive criticism over the years for the shooting death of 18-year-old Paul O'Neal. After the release of a series of body and dash cam videos showing a number of procedural errors - and a startling lack of coordination - including firing at a fleeing vehicle and an astounding admission by the cop who fired the fatal shot that he did not know if O'Neal was even armed, a small bit of accountability has happened.
The NY Times reports that in an 8-0 decision, the Chicago Police Board found that the officers, Michael Coughlin and Jose Torres, had violated the department's safety rules by firing at a moving car and endangering the lives of other officers. Both men were discharged from their positions, according to a decision issued by the board in March.
"I think their actions, as the department said, were ridiculous, totally out of line and improper," Michael Oppenheimer, a lawyer for Mr. O'Neal's family, said. "I would even call them criminal. Because what happened was those actions helped to result in Paul O'Neal's death."
The admission by police at the time of the shooting appears to indicate that cops perceived crossfire shots from the other officers on scene had been fired by O'Neal, when in fact the teen did not have a weapon at all. In direct violation of departmental policy, officers fired at the vehicle they believed O'Neal had stolen - worse, that gunfire directly endangered not only the suspected car thief, but other officers and everyone in the neighborhood.
The staggering lack of coordination in officers firing their weapons likely inadvertently led to O'Neal's death as cops believed gunfire was emanating from the suspect instead of each other.
In the series of nine videos, one officer accuses the suspect of firing at them, while another expressed doubt, saying:
"They shot at us too, right?"
Another says the suspect "almost hit my partner. I f**king shot at him."
Torres can be heard lamenting that he's going to be on "desk duty for 30 f**king days now" - as if what amounts to a paid vacation for taking someone's life is something to be concerned about in the immediate aftermath. Well, now he's been fired.
Officers in the footage clearly aren't certain who is firing on whom - indicating that none of them should have been doing so.
According to the Times:
By repeatedly firing his weapon at a moving stolen vehicle, Mr. Coughlin broke Police Department rules, the board wrote, and "endangered the lives of everyone around him, including his own partner and fellow officers as well at the occupants of the stolen vehicle." The board called his use of force "unreasonable and unjustified at all points it occurred."
Like Mr. Coughlin, Mr. Torres endangered the lives of other officers on the scene and the occupants of the car by firing his weapon, the board found. He also violated basic traffic safety requirements, the decision said.
Police claim the body camera of the officer, Officer Jose Diaz, who fatally shot the teen in the back as he fled was not operational at the time. Authorities theorized the impact of the stolen Jaguar hitting the patrol vehicle - which deployed its airbags - accidentally forced the camera to begin recording. They point to the fact the camera began recording immediately after the shooting as evidence the officer thought he'd actually recorded the shooting and then shut the power off.
"We don't believe there was any intentional misconduct with body cameras," asserted police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi at the time.
While the department claims there was no intentional misconduct in the lack of body camera footage, it conveniently kept from public light, the actual fatal shot, fired by Officer Diaz - after O'Neil crashed the car, got out, and was running away.
An autopsy would later reveal that the shot that killed O'Neil was fired into his back.
Though he was suspended at the time of the teen's killing, Diaz was not fired.
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/shooting-death-cops-fired-oneil/