the mellow tigger's musings

Last night, I sat down in front of the tv to watch the afternoon news. Near the end of the local news and before the beginning of the national news, the feed switched to cover the Artemis II launch by NASA. I started watching about 7 minutes before ignition. I watched that historic event as it happened, humans once again heading to the moon. Well, more precisely it's going around the moon before returning to Earth.

How did I not know beforehand? I like astronomy. I usually keep up with astronomy sites. I would have rearranged my schedule to be sure I was at my television during the launch. At the beginning of the news coverage, though, I felt like I had switched to some alternate universe and was seeing their different sequence of historical events. I think maybe I saw something about it many months ago, but I noticed exactly zero news articles recently that would remind me of it happening yesterday.

I'm just tired. Still.

Winter solstice is just a few days away, so I thought it would be a good week to share some of the fascinating recent news from astronomy.

A study was published in Science, summarized in a few news sites. Here is the least advertising-heavy version that I could find. It talks about how diverse life on a planet may be slow or unlikely to form, unless rich hydrocarbons are delivered to it from the outer edges of a solar system. Near the forming star, for example, the temperature is too hot for these gases to condense along with the planet, so they get blown by the solar wind and condense farther out. The hypothesized body Theia is what crashed into Earth (forming our moon afterward) and also delivered hydrocarbons and water. It's an interesting idea, and it makes Earth a little more special in the galaxy. That also makes it a factor in the Drake equation about the chances of finding intelligent life. I'm not sure how this theory squares with Venus, which is theorized to originally have had lots of water on it too.

Voyager 1 is almost 1 light-day away from Earth. This very anthropocentric "turning of the odometer" milestone will occur next year in November 2026. This article in Popular Science talks about it. I follow Voyager 2 on Mastodon, where there are automated reminders about the distance of both probes.

I don't know if Logan (aka loganbeary aka Dodecadude) is still alive. He left both Dreamwidth and Livejournal around the same time, but I thought his cancer treatment was going okay. He might appreciate this story in Scientific American about the magnetic sun. Scientists have a theory for predicting the solar cycle that is so effective that they're now forming a company to sell predictions based on the model. They don't know yet why the theory works, just that it's an effective model.

According to McIntosh, the Hale cycle and the sunspot cycle are both ruled by magnetic bands that wrap around the sun like rings. Near the maximum of the traditional solar cycle, two new bands appear at high latitudes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres; they have opposite polarities. As the cycle continues, they gradually migrate toward the equator, and new bands again appear at high latitudes—picture the arrangement as kind of like a conveyor belt. A terminator happens when the older magnetic bands finally collide at the equator. That meet-cute isn’t actually cute: it annihilates both old bands because their opposition zeroes them out. McIntosh’s model suggests the annihilation is the definitive end of a solar cycle.

There's plenty more astronomy news. It's an exciting time to be alive! Someday, I might even go study this stuff formally. I hear the Powerball lottery jackpot is up to 1 billion dollars. That's nothing to sniff at.

Last year for Christmas, I got several books as gifts. One was from a coworker who sent me a bestseller that I knew nothing about, "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. He's the same author behind the hit movie "The Martian" starring Matt Damon. This new book turned out to be a very enjoyable read for me.

I learned yesterday that there's now a movie based on this book, expected to arrive 2026 March 20. This movie will star Ryan Gosling, a casting choice that I enthusiastically approve for the main character. The theme behind the book is not really apparent in the unnecessarily suspense-heavy official trailer video that came out a few days ago. The plot requires understanding that our civilization on Earth is in danger because the energy output from our sun is diminishing. In fact, all of the stars around us are diminishing their output... except for one nearby star. The plot takes our main character to that solar system to investigate the issue, as a last minute effort (hence the term, "Hail Mary" in the title of the book and movie) to save humanity. The movie trailer barely shows us a glimpse of the alien character, but we'll have to see a lot more of it for the movie to match the tale in the book.

What the story is really about, however, is friendship. A human and an alien find themselves in the same strange solar system, trying together to unravel the mystery of dimming stars, before each of their civilizations collapses. They have obvious cultural and biological differences, yet they have a shared imperative with little time for research. Neither of them is the perfect representative of their species to do this particular task alone. Research together, however, they do because they must. I think that the psychological trait "openness to experience" is something that we could use a lot more of from societies that seem to be swinging towards authoritarianism. I hope this movie presents an effective motivation for strangers of that perspective to try it.

There's another plot twist involving our main character that carries from the beginning to the end of the story, so I won't go into details. But besides friendship, the story is also about redemption. After reading it many months ago, I put aside the book while feeling almost Star Trek levels of hope for humanity as a species.

I am very eager to see this film. Whichever service hosts it online will definitely receive my subscription to watch it. Sorry, but I'm still not doing theaters, not even with a mask.