All posts tagged: anomaly

Bishops’ bench branded “undemocratic anomaly” in Lords debate

Bishops’ bench branded “undemocratic anomaly” in Lords debate

Published by skeptic

A House of Lords debate on a bill to increase female representation on the bishops’ bench has sparked fierce criticism of automatic seats for clerics in the legislature. The Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill would extend a law which prioritises female bishops joining the bishops’ bench. Twenty six Church of England bishops sit by right in the House of Lords, reflecting the Church’s established status. In yesterday’s debate on the bill, crossbench peer John Birt described reserved seats for Anglican bishops as a “feudal legacy” embedded “centuries before the notion of democracy gathered pace.” The bishops’ bench must be recognised as an “indefensible, undemocratic anomaly”, he said. He said the bishops’ presence was not “appropriate” in light of 2021 Census results which showed, for the first time, Christianity is a minority religion in England and Wales. Appointments to the Lords should be made on the basis of “individual merit”, he said, rather than right. Lib Dem peer Paul Scriven said “no religion or its leaders should have a privileged role” in a democratic …

TechCrunch Space: True Anomaly and Rocket Lab will make big moves on orbit (literally)

TechCrunch Space: True Anomaly and Rocket Lab will make big moves on orbit (literally)

Published by skeptic

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. I hope everyone had a great time at Space Symposium! Hopefully I’ll see you there next year. Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at [email protected] or send me a message on Signal at 512-937-3988. You also can send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at [email protected]. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop instructions and links to encrypted messaging apps. The Space Force has contracted out its next “responsive space” mission, and this one is a doozy. The two awardees, Rocket Lab and startup True Anomaly, will each build and launch spacecraft that will conduct rendezvous and proximity operations on orbit. In the Space Force’s words: “The vendors will exercise a realistic threat response scenario in an on-orbit space domain awareness demonstration called Victus Haze.” The two companies will have to operate under intentionally tight time frames, too — the first responsive space mission from Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space set new records in terms of launch readiness — so we’ll definitely follow this …

Leak Shows Alarm in Congress Over a Russian ‘Threat’ Is a Real Anomaly

Leak Shows Alarm in Congress Over a Russian ‘Threat’ Is a Real Anomaly

Published by skeptic

Turner’s press release notably went further than HPSCI’s letter, pressing US president Joe Biden to personally “declassify all information” concerning the threat. The next day, Turner issued a second statement declaring he’d worked closely “with the Biden administration” before notifying Congress. Naft, the HPSCI spokesperson, clarified by email that Turner had worked with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the language describing the threat contained in the Dear Colleague letter. (Naft stressed Turner had “NEVER” stated he’d cooperated with the White House.) Turner’s second statement added that HPSCI had voted 23–1 to make the disclosure. According to the committee’s own rules, a vote is not required to bring classified material to the attention of the chairmen and ranking members of other committees; only House-wide alerts require a vote. It is unclear which HPSCI member voted against the disclosure, as no official roll call was taken. A senior congressional source tells WIRED the Dear Colleague letter was always destined to cause panic. It is widely understood that the letters are not a secure …

Scientists Find Magnetic Anomaly in Lake Over Dormant Volcano

Scientists Find Magnetic Anomaly in Lake Over Dormant Volcano

Published by skeptic

“You finally put those glasses on, and you can see the fine print.” Magnetic Anomaly Today a serene and picturesque locale on New Zealand’s North Island, scientists believe Lake Rotorua was formed in the aftermath of an Earth-shattering eruption some 220,000 years ago. The volcano responsible, now dormant, lies beneath the lake. Its hydrothermal systems live on, but the extent of their involvement in the lake’s ecosystem was long unclear. Now, researchers at New Zealand’s GNS Science Institute have extensively mapped the bottom of Rotorua, revealing telltale signs of hydrothermal activity, including a host of small craters riddling the lakebed — as well as a curious “magnetic anomaly.” “You finally put those glasses on, and you can see the fine print,” Cornel de Ronde, a principal scientist at the GNS Science, told Live Science. Heat Check The researchers mapped a total of 21 square miles or about 68 percent of Rotorua. Their main approach was to use multibeam sonar to reveal the depth and shape, or bathymetry, of the lakebed. This revealed the first clue …

True Anomaly raises 0M to scale space security tech

True Anomaly raises $100M to scale space security tech

Published by skeptic

True Anomaly has closed $100 million in new funding, a strong signal that the appetite for startups operating at the intersection of space and defense is far from abating. The new round was led by Riot Ventures, with participation from Eclipse, ACME Capital, Menlo Ventures, Narya, 645 Ventures, Rocketship.vc, Champion Hill Ventures and FiveNine Ventures. The funds will be used to continue scaling all parts of the business, according to a press release. True Anomaly is looking to fill a critical gap in space situational awareness and defensive operations through software and hardware, including the line of autonomous reconnaissance and pursuit spacecraft called Jackal. These vehicles are equipped with a suite of sensors and cameras to track, surveil and collect data on objects in space. On the software side, the company has developed an integrated operating platform called Mosaic, which will eventually be able to work in tandem with on-orbit Jackals. In previous interviews with TechCrunch, True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers called out what he sees as a critical “information asymmetry” between the U.S. and its …

2023 Cements Its Place in the History of Climate Change

Published by skeptic

We all just lived through our first 2-degree Celsius day November 20, 2023, 6:25 PM ET On Friday, November 17, 2023, the Earth appeared to have crossed a threshold into new climatic territory. That day was the first that the average air temperature near the surface of the Earth was 2 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels. Saturday was the second. The planet has been this hot before, but never in the era relevant to modern humanity.  For those two days, we were the furthest we have ever been from the average climate of 1850–1900, the time just before humans began industrializing in earnest and adding large quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We are now a large margin away from the climate in which nearly all of human history has played out. The news of the 2-degree Celsius days came first from Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which published the results from a model that uses observations to estimate global climate conditions in real time. The numbers …

Regulators close investigation into Blue Origin’s New Shepard anomaly

Regulators close investigation into Blue Origin’s New Shepard anomaly

Published by skeptic

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has closed the investigation into a mishap that occurred last September during a launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, with the regulator saying that Blue must implement 21 corrective actions before it can fly New Shepard again. New Shepard was grounded after a September 2022 launch ended with an abort about a minute after liftoff. The vehicle’s capsule, which was not filled with people, had to conduct an emergency parachute landing to clear the booster. It landed safely while the propulsion module was destroyed on impact with the ground. There were no injuries to Blue Origin personnel. In an emailed statement, a representative for the FAA said the anomaly was caused by a “structural failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher than expected engine operating temperatures.” Among the 21 corrective actions includes redesigning the engine and nozzle components as well as “organizational changes.” In response to TechCrunch’s inquiries into the corrective actions, a Blue Origin spokesperson simply said, “We’ve received the FAA’s letter and plan to fly soon.” The …

True Anomaly lands .4M contract from U.S. Space Force for space domain awareness tech

True Anomaly lands $17.4M contract from U.S. Space Force for space domain awareness tech

Published by skeptic

True Anomaly has landed a $17.4 million contract from the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command to help the warfighter make critical decisions in the space domain. The startup, which was founded less than two years ago, is tasked with developing a suite of space domain awareness (SDA) capabilities for the Space Force. The 48-month-long contract will be delivered via a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase 3 contract. While SDA technologies have traditionally focused on spacecraft traffic management and collision avoidance, there’s been a “mentality change” related to the establishment of Space Force itself, True Anomaly chief product officer Tom Nichols explained in a recent interview. “The stand up of U.S. Space Command and the stand up of the U.S. Space Force are all in line with the same thinking: that it’s not just tracking objects to make sure they don’t hit [each other], it’s also ensuring that we understand what people are doing in the domain and using that information to make decisions,” he said. Nichols should know: he joined the U.S. Air …

Russell Brand Wasn’t an Anomaly

Russell Brand Wasn’t an Anomaly

Published by skeptic

The former TV host and actor was a mascot, at best, for a media culture that routinely dehumanized and hypersexualized young women. Jemal Countess / Getty September 19, 2023, 10:29 AM ET In the summer of 1999, when I was 16 years old, I remember walking to a train station in West London from a babysitting job when a 40-something man in a Range Rover pulled up, told me he was on television, and then announced to his young son (also in the car) that I was “Daddy’s new girlfriend.” I don’t know who the man was; I didn’t get in the car, not because I was afraid but because I’d just bought Californication for my minidisc player and wanted to listen to the album on the way home. But what he did wasn’t abnormal for the time. This was two years before the 35-year-old TV presenter and radio host Chris Evans (not the actor) married the 18-year-old pop star Billie Piper in Las Vegas, after a months-long relationship that started when he gave the …

True Anomaly gets regulatory greenlight for first spacecraft reconnaissance mission

True Anomaly gets regulatory greenlight for first spacecraft reconnaissance mission

Published by skeptic

Defense-focused space technology startup True Anomaly has received key permits from regulators that will allow it to demonstrate imaging and rendezvous capabilities on-orbit for the first time. The two authorizations – from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – give the company the greenlight to perform non-Earth imaging and to demonstrate in-space rendezvous proximity operations, respectively. True Anomaly is planning on executing these capabilities using two of its “autonomous orbital vehicle” spacecraft, which the company calls Jackals, during a mission early next year. The 275-kilogram Jackal spacecraft will launch aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-10 rideshare mission, which is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than February 2024. True Anomaly had previously been targeting a ride on Transporter-9, which is launching in October, but CEO Even Rogers told TechCrunch that they decided to move to a slightly later launch date after experiencing some supply chain issues. “Sometimes there are pressures when you’re building new systems that you experience across the supply chain,” he said. “We were subjected to some of those …