Month: August 2019

A 19th-century aspiring meteorologist with a dream of predicting the weather hires a young female aeronaut to pilot a hot-air balloon for his experiments in the first trailer for The Aeronauts, a forthcoming original film from Amazon Studios. Per the official synopsis:

In 1862, daredevil balloon pilot Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) teams up with pioneering meteorologist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) to advance human knowledge of the weather and fly higher than anyone in history. While breaking records and advancing scientific discovery, their voyage to the very edge of existence helps the unlikely pair find their place in the world they have left far below them. But they face physical and emotional challenges in the thin air, as the ascent becomes a fight for survival.

James Glaisher is a historical figure well known to aviation history buffs, since he and his pilot, Henry Coxwell, made several balloon flights to measure the temperature and humidity of the upper atmosphere between 1862 and 1866. Armed with scientific instruments and bottles of brandy, Glaisher and Coxwell set a world-altitude record on their very first successful flight, reaching an estimated 38,999 feet (11,887 meters) on September 5, 1862. They were the first men to reach the atmospheric stratosphere, without the benefit of oxygen tanks, pressure suits, or a pressurized cabin.

The men released pigeons at various altitudes during their ascent to see how well they flew, recalling that those released above the three-mile mark "dropped like a stone." The men would have continued rising and likely died because the valving rope Coxwell needed to manipulate to begin their descent got tangled up with the balloon net. Coxwell had to climb out of the basket into the rigging to release the valve with his teeth—his hands were badly frost-bitten—in order to begin their descent. By then, Glaisher had passed out. Eventually, the men landed safely (if a bit roughly) about 20 miles from their original launch point.

Enlarge / 5pm ET Thursday official track forecast for Hurricane Dorian. (credit: National Hurricane Center)

Hurricane-track forecasting has gotten pretty good over the last couple of decades—so much so that some hurricane scientists believe we are close to reaching a limit on predictability. However, there are still outlier storms that are difficult to forecast, and Hurricane Dorian is definitely one of those cases.

This uncertainly is only going to amplify the misery of Floridians seeking to prepare for or evacuate from what is likely a major hurricane bearing down on the state. In this case, the problem may be further worsened by premature confidence in where Dorian will go: as of Thursday evening, the one thing we do know about this storm is that we don't know where it's going to go.

Spaghetti plots of forecast tracks are commonly shared online, both in news stories and on social media, and they're sometimes useful. With Dorian, a plot like the one below from Thursday evening, which shows the official forecast track from the National Hurricane Center (in black) as well as other models, is actually very deceiving.

Enlarge / Crown Sterling's presentation at Black Hat triggered cryptography experts. (credit: Crown Sterling)

Robert Grant is a reluctant cryptographer.

"The last thing I would've wanted to do is start another company," Grant, the CEO and founder of Crown Sterling, told Ars. "It's like my wife asking me if we can have another child... I have two. And I am not looking forward to another child."

But he and a collaborator believed that they had made a profound discovery, one that would fundamentally shake the core of modern encryption. "We thought, well, just out of a sense of responsibility, we should start a non-factor-based encryption technology," Grant said. "And that's what we did with Time AI."

Enlarge / Dexter might be a (fictional) serial killer, but he's also a leading expert in blood spatter pattern analysis. Two new papers could help real forensic scientists better analyze such patterns to solve crimes. (credit: YouTube/Showtime)

Physicists continue to contribute their unique insight into the forensic analysis of blood spatter patterns with two recent papers. The first, published in Physics of Fluids, offers a useful mathematical model of the relationship between the shape and speed of a bullet and the patterns produced by the resulting blood spatter. The second, published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, examines how gases propelled from a gun muzzle at firing can affect the distribution of blood spatter and gunshot residue (GSR).

The latter work in particular may have important implications for the famous Phil Spector murder case. The music producer was ultimately convicted in 2009 of shooting 40-year-old Lana Clarkson back in 2003. But his first trial, in 2007, ended with a hung jury in part because the forensic experts called by the prosecution and defense couldn't agree on how to interpret the blood spatter patterns on the clothing worn by Spector and Clarkson. Physics may help shed light on whether he was truly guilty or innocent.

Analysts at a bloody crime scene typically look for patterns relating to the size, shape, location, and distribution of blood stains. They interpret those patterns and use the data to reconstruct what happened as best they can. For example, it's possible to measure the direction and angle of blood stains to determine point of origin. Fans of the Showtime series Dexter—whose fictional central character was a serial killer/forensic technician with expertise in blood-stain analysis—may recall that this is often done with string, making it easier to trace the trajectory of individual drops.

Enlarge / In some cases, stray methane is burned to limit how much escapes into the atmosphere. (credit: Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

The Trump administration today announced a new proposal to reverse Obama-era regulations that limit how much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, the oil and natural gas industries are allowed to emit.

The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed amendments would "remove unnecessary regulatory duplication" put into place in 2016, according to a press release. The proposals made today are separate from and in addition to a 2018 proposed rule that eased methane reporting and monitoring requirements for oil- and gas-extraction businesses.

The proposed plan (PDF) would "rescind emissions limits for methane from the production and processing segments of the industry," the EPA says. The proposal would also remove parts of the transmission and storage segments of the oil and gas industry⁠—generally called the midstream business⁠—from being subject to regulation, by claiming the agency was out of line when it added sources such as transmission compressor stations, pneumatic controllers, and underground storage vessels to the rule.

Enlarge / Lasers help record the precise position of each artifact on the site. (credit: Loren Davis)

Evidence from the Cooper's Ferry archaeological site in western Idaho shows that people lived in the Columbia River Basin around 16,000 years ago. That's well before a corridor between ice sheets opened up, clearing an inland route south from the Bering land bridge. That suggests that people migrated south along the Pacific coast. Stone tools from the site suggest a possible connection between these first Americans and Northeast Asian hunter-gathers from the same period.

Route closed due to ice

A piece of charcoal unearthed in the lowest layer of sediment that contains artifacts is between 15,945 and 15,335 years old, according to radiocarbon dating. More charcoal, from the remains of an ancient hearth pit, dated to between 14,075 and 15,195 years old. A few other pieces of bone and charcoal returned radiocarbon dates in the 14,000- to 15,500-year-old range. In higher, more recent layers, archaeologists found bone and charcoal as recent as 8,000 years old, with a range of dates in between.

This makes clear that people had been using the Cooper's Ferry site for a very long time, but it's hard to say whether they stuck around or just kept coming back. "Because we did not excavate the entire site, it is difficult to know if people occupied the site continuously starting at 16,000 years ago," Oregon State University archaeologist Loren Davis told Ars. "I expect that this site was used on a seasonal basis, perhaps as a base camp for hunting, gathering, and fishing activities."