That Was 2017, That Was

With 2017 coming to a close, I can’t resist the urge to look back and see what happened from my point of view. I had plenty of time to contemplate because the first seven months were largely spent getting over various surgery. I had thought the recovery periods would be good for creativity. With nothing else to do, I could write and advance some of my theoretical work, but it did not work but like that. What I found was that painkillers also seemed to kill originality. However, I did manage one e-novel through the year (The Manganese Dilemma), which is about hacking, Russians and espionage. That was obviously initially inspired by the claims of Russian hacking in the Trump election, but I left that alone. It was clearly better to invent my own scenario than to go down that turgid path. Even though that is designed essentially as just a thriller, I did manage to insert a little scientific thinking into the background, and hopefully the interested potential reader will guess that from the “manganese” in the title.

On the space front, I am sort of pleased to report that there was nothing that contradicted my theory of planetary formation found in the literature, but of course that may be because there is a certain plasticity in it. The information on Pluto, apart from the images and the signs of geological action, were well in accord with what I had written, but that is not exactly a triumph because apart from those images, there was surprisingly little new information. Some of which might have previously been considered “probable” was confirmed, and details added, but that was all. The number of planets around TRAPPIST 1 was a little surprising, and there is limited evidence that some of them are indeed rocky. The theory I expounded would not predict that many, however the theory depended on temperatures, and for simplicity and generality, it considered the star as a point. That will work for system like ours, where the gravitational heating is the major source of heat during primary stellar accretion, and radiation for the star is most likely to be scattered by the intervening gas. Thus closer to our star than Mercury, much of the material, and even silicates, had reached temperatures where it formed a gas. That would not happen around a red dwarf because the gravitational heating necessary to do that is very near the surface of the star (because there is so much less falling more slowly into a far smaller gravitational field) so now the heat from the star becomes more relevant. My guess is the outer rocky planets here are made the same way our asteroids were, but with lower orbital velocities and slower infall, there was more time for them to grow, which is why they are bigger. The inner ones may even have formed closer to the star, and then moved out due to tidal interactions.

The more interesting question for me is, do any of these rocky planets in the habitable zone have an atmosphere? If so, what are the gases? I am reasonably certain I am not the only one waiting to get clues on this.

On another personal level, as some might know, I have published an ebook (Guidance Waves) that offers an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics that, like de Broglie and Bohm, assumes there is a wave, but there are two major differences, one of which is that the wave transmits energy (which is what all other waves do). The wave still reflects probability, because energy density is proportional to mass density, but it is not the cause. The advantage of this is that for the stationary state, such as in molecules, that the wave transmits energy means the bond properties of molecules should be able to be represented as stationary waves, and this greatly simplifies the calculations. The good news is, I have made what I consider good progress on expanding the concept to more complicated molecules than outlined in Guidance Waves and I expect to archive this sometime next year.

Apart from that, my view of the world scene has not got more optimistic. The US seems determined to try to tear itself apart, at least politically. ISIS has had severe defeats, which is good, but the political futures of the mid-east still remains unclear, and there is still plenty of room for that part of the world to fracture itself again. As far as global warming goes, the politicians have set ambitious goals for 2050, but have done nothing significant up to the end of 2017. A thirty-year target is silly, because it leaves the politicians with twenty years to do nothing, and then it would be too late anyway.

So this will be my last post for 2017, and because this is approaching the holiday season in New Zealand, I shall have a small holiday, and resume half-way through January. In the meantime, I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas, and a prosperous and healthy 2018.

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A Ball on Mars

In New Zealand we are approaching what the journalists say is “The Silly Season”, the reason being that what with Christmas and New Year, and with it being in the middle of summer, a lot of journalists take holidays, and the media, with a skeleton staff, have to find almost anything to fill in the spaces that the media makes available. So, in the spirit of getting off to an early start, I noticed an image from Mars that looks as if someone left a cannon ball lying around. (The image is easily found on the web, but details are not, so I am not sure where it was found.) So what is it?

Needless to say there were some loopy suggestions from “the fringe”, but while it is easy to scoff, it is not so easy to try to guess what it is. The idea of a cannon ball and nothing else borders on the totally bizarre. So what can we see from the image? The remarkable point about this object is it seems to be lying on the surface, which suggest it did not strike it, as otherwise there would be indentations, or, if it were a meteorite, there would be a crater. There clearly isn’t. Equally, however, it looks smooth, which suggests it has been fused, which means it did not arise there. Some have suggested it is a haematite spherule, but that, to me is not that likely, in part because it is so large (the so-called “blueberries” were quite small) and also because there seems to be only one of it, while what created the “blueberries” created a lot of them. In my opinion, it is probably an iron meteorite, and the reason there is no impact crater is that it landed somewhere else, and rolled to this spot.

So maybe time to get a little more serious, and think about iron meteorites. What can we say about them? The Curiosity rover has also found “Egg rock”, which is an iron meteorite about the size of a golf ball. The Rover found iron, nickel and phosphorus as significant constituents, and the phosphorus is present as iron phosphide. There are two important issues here: how did the iron/nickel ball form separately from everything else, and equally important, how did iron phosphide form? That last question may need explanation, because phosphorus does not normally occur as a phosphide, and phosphides only form under highly reducing conditions. (Reducing conditions are usually in the presence of hydrogen and or an active metal at higher temperatures. The opposite, oxidising conditions, occurs when there is oxygen or water present, but not enough hydrogen or metal to scavenge the oxygen.)

Iron phosphide is known to occur in certain iron meteorites, but such meteorites can always be attributed to having formed at a little more than 1 A.U. from, or closer to the star. Chondrites that formed further out, such as in the asteroid belt, always have their phosphorus in the form of phosphate, which is a very stable, oxidised, phosphorus compound. The point about 1 A.U. (the distance of Earth from the sun) is that was where the temperatures were hot enough to melt iron, and the phosphide would form by the molten iron reacting with phosphate to form the phosphide and iron oxide.

Now for the reason for going on about this. One of the JPL team explained that iron meteorites originated from the cores of asteroids. The premise here is that during initial accretion, the dust assembled into an asteroid-sized object, the object got sufficiently hot and the iron and nickel melted and sunk to the core. Later, there was a massive collision and the asteroid’s core shattered, and the meteorites we see are the fragments from the shattering. (Note, the same people argue planets formed by asteroid sized bodies, and bigger, colliding and everything stick together. Here is having your cake and eating it in action.) The first question is, why did the rock melt? One possibility is radioactive isotopes, so it is possible, nevertheless for the explanation to work the asteroid had to melt hot enough to melt iron, and to hold those temperatures for long enough for the iron to work its way to the centre through the very viscous silicates in a very weak gravitational field. A further problem is that the phosphate would dissolve in the silicates, in which case it would not form iron phosphide because the iron would not get there. Calcium phosphate has a density of about 3, very similar to many of the silicates, so it might be difficult for iron phosphide to form in such an asteroid. Only a very few asteroids, and Vesta is one, have iron cores, and there are some reasons to believe Vesta formed somewhere else and moved.

The reason for my interest is that in my ebook, “Planetary Formation and Biogenesis” I argue that the first way accretion started was for the dust in the accretion disk to get hot enough to get sticky, or to form something that could later act like a cement. When the temperatures got up to about 1550 degrees Centigrade, iron melts and in the disk would form globules that would grow to a certain degree. Many of these would also find molten silicates to coat them, so the separation occurred through the temperature generated by the accreting star. Provided these could separate themselves from the gas flow (and there is at least a plausible mechanism) then these would become the raw materials for rocky planets to form. That is why (at least in my opinion) Earth, Venus and Mercury have large iron cores, but Mars does not.

That, of course, has got a little away from the “Martian cannonball” but part of forming a scientific theory is to let the mind wander, to check that a number of other aspects of the problem are consistent with the propositions. In my view, the presence of iron phosphide in an iron meteorite is most unlikely to have come from the core of an asteroid that got smashed up. I still like my theory, but then again, I suppose I am biased.

Flynn Pleads Guilty

Earlier in the year I wrote about Michael Flynn being fired by President Trump. Now the story continues, as he has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Now, if I were writing about this in a novel, it would be important to construct the plot so that there was a reason why Flynn would plead guilty, but in real life, why would that be?

In a novel, one reason might be the noble acceptance that he knows he lied, so he will take what follows on the chin. Strictly speaking, we do not know that this is not what has happened, but the media seems to think he has done a deal with Mueller, and will tell all that will bring down the current administration. That may be wishful thinking, even if Flynn has done a deal, the reason being that while Flynn may have lied, the truth would have had to be sufficiently serious to bring down the administration then.

Another reason may be that he is going to tell what he knows, but given what he has admitted to already, what could that be that will not get him into deeper trouble. Of course Mueller could have dealt immunity, on the basis he tells all and truthfully. That raises the question of what is all Flynn knows?

So, what will happen to Flynn? A detailed account of the Plea Agreement is at https://www.justice.gov/file/1015121/… . As it stands, the sentencing guidelines are estimated as imprisonment for between zero and six months, and if a fine is imposed, that fine will be between $500 and $9,500. As to what Flynn is accused of doing:

(a) On January 24, 2017, Flynn made materially false statements and omissions during an interview with FBI agents who were investigating whether the Russian government interfered with the 2016 Presidential election. These false statements included that following President Obama’s executive order announcing sanctions against Russia, he initially denied receiving a question from the Russian ambassador (Kislyak) relating to Trump’s policy (recall he had campaigned about getting better relations with Russia), then he omitted to mention that he spoke with the Presidential Transition Team (PTT) about this, and received the response that they did not want Russia to escalate the situation by making counter moves. Flynn then passed this request on to Kislyak, and subsequently reported back to the PTT the substance of the conversation. Then, about December 30, Putin announced he would not take retaliatory action.

(b) Flynn made false statements to the effect he did not make specific requests regarding an Egyptian resolution to the United Nations Security Council regarding Israeli settlements. A senior member of the PTT directed Flynn to learn where each government stood on the resolution, and to try to delay the vote or defeat the resolution. Flynn informed the Russian ambassador that the incoming administration opposed the resolution. The Russians responded by telling Flynn that Russia would accommodate the new administration.

(c) When he filed for his company in accord with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, his company did not know the extent to which the government of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project, a project focused on improving US business opportunities in Turkey, and omitted mentioning that officials from Turkey provided supervision and direction over the Turkey project.

My personal view is that Flynn was wrong to lie, but he would have good cause to believe that details of the future policy of the US government is not something to be disclosed to FBI agents. Simply saying, “That is classified,” would have been preferable. Both (a) and (b) are merely acts where he tried to make things easier for the new administration. After all, was it all that bad to ask Russia not to impose some sort of counter punishment on US companies? How is that working against US interests? More to the point, Obama had plenty of time to impose sanctions before the election, but he did not. If that was to make things easier for Clinton, and then he imposed them to undermine Trump, that in my view is just plain wrong. Similarly, the actions to try to improve things for US business in Turkey can hardly be crime of the century. The filing errors were naughty, but this is low-level stuff really. So why did Flynn plead guilty? My guess is he knew there was incontrovertible evidence that he was guilty of some things, including false filing and fibbing, and while he might have been able to defend these to some extent, it would be a lot cheaper to plead guilty, save the legal fees, and most importantly wipe the slate clean.

My guess is also that when this is over for Flynn, he can recover most of his costs by writing a book. I am sure he would get a good deal. So he can’t write? No worries; I am sure a lot of writers would be only too willing to provide their services. Name recognition alone would justify it.