Science
Tornado hits Selma, Alabama; 8 deaths reported
SELMA, Ala. Crews worked through the night searching for those stranded after a catastrophic storm unleashed tornadoes throughout the United States South sections, killing at least eight people and causing significant damage in Selma, Alabama.
Before the worst storms passed across Georgia on a track south of Atlanta, one tornado carved a 20-mile (32-kilometer) path through two rural Alabama villages.
According to Autauga County Coroner Buster Barber, searchers discovered a body after sunrise Friday while exploring an area near a home that was heavily damaged Thursday when the hurricane slammed central Alabama. Seven people have died in that part of the county, 64 kilometers northeast of Selma.
According to Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue, a passenger died in Georgia after a tree fell on a vehicle in Jackson. Officials said the storm looked to have thrown a freight train off its rails in the same area.
According to Ernie Baggett, Autauga County’s emergency management director, at least 12 individuals were seriously injured and brought to hospitals as rescuers cut through downed trees looking for more needy people.
Tornado Flings Mobile Homes Into The Air
According to him, over 40 residences were demolished or severely damaged, including numerous mobile homes that were catapulted into the air. “They weren’t just blown away. They were blown a long way.”
Authorities predicted a full picture of the destruction would emerge Friday as they search for more victims. The National Weather Service reported possible tornado damage in at least 14 Alabama counties and five Georgia counties late Thursday.
In Selma, the city council declared a state of emergency on a sidewalk using smartphone lights.
The hurricane hit Griffin, south of Atlanta, as mourners gathered at Peterson’s Funeral Home for a wake. When a large tree fell on the structure, about 20 individuals inside the building scrambled for cover in a lavatory and an office.
“We were in absolute shock when we came out,” said Sha-Meeka Peterson-Smith, the funeral home’s chief operating officer. “We heard everything, but we had no idea how horrible it was.”
Storms, Winds, And Tornadoes Wreak Havoc On The Southern States.
On Thursday, a powerful storm system churning up high winds and generating tornadoes ripped across the United States South, killing at least seven people in Georgia and Alabama. (January 13)
According to her, the uprooted tree smashed straight through the front of the business, demolishing a viewing room, a lounge, and a front office. No one was injured.
Griffin officials told local news sources that several individuals were trapped inside an apartment building after trees crashed. A Hobby Lobby store suffered roof damage, and firemen freed a man pinned for hours under a tree that had fallen on his house from 10 p.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Friday, the city imposed a curfew.
On Thursday, the weather service got reports of more than 40 tornadoes from all over the country. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, and North Carolina were all warned about tornadoes. Reports of tornadoes still need to be checked out, and some of the damage may turn out to be caused by wind.
Tornado Created Wide Path In Downtown Selma
The tornado that slammed into Selma carved a wide path across the downtown area, destroying brick buildings, uprooting oak trees, flipping cars, and leaving electricity lines dangling. Plumes of dense, black smoke from a fire ascended over the city; it was unclear whether the storm started the fire.
Selma’s mayor, James Perkins, says that no one has died, but that a lot of people have been seriously hurt. Friday morning, officials planned to gain an overhead glimpse of the city.
“There are a lot of downed power lines,” he explained. “The streets are really dangerous.”
Mattie Moore was among the Selma citizens who picked up boxed meals from a downtown charity.
“Thank God we’re still alive. “It’s like something out of a movie,” Moore said of the devastation.
Selma is an Alabama city with about 18,000 people. It is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Montgomery, the state capital. On March 7, 1965, state troopers severely beat Black protesters marching for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as part of the civil rights struggle.
Storm Got Darker And Darker
Malesha McVay captured video of the massive twister, which became dark as it swept away home after home.
A natural La Nina weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely due to climate change, and a decades-long eastward shift in tornado activity — combined to make Thursday’s tornado outbreak unusual and damaging, according to Victor Gensini, a tornado researcher at Northern Illinois University.
La Nina, a cooling of regions of the Pacific that affects weather around the world, played a factor in creating a wavy jet stream that brought a cold front through, according to Gensini. However, this is insufficient to cause a tornado outbreak. Moisture is the other component.
The air in the Southeast is normally rather dry this time of year, but the dew point was twice the average, presumably due to exceptionally warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is likely influenced by climate change, according to Gensini. That moisture met the cold front, resulting in devastating storms.
School Canceled For 90,000 Children
According to PowerOutage.us, which records outages nationwide, approximately 22,000 people in Alabama were without power early Friday. After the storm system ripped a path across a tier of counties immediately south of Atlanta, approximately 23,000 people in Georgia were still without power.
On Friday, school was canceled for 90,000 kids in at least six Georgia counties.
The meteorological office in Kentucky verified that an EF-1 tornado struck Mercer County and that personnel was evaluating the damage in a few more counties.
SOURCE – (AP)
Science
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – A spacecraft launched Monday to probe the site of a cosmic accident.
The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft launched on a two-year trip to the little, harmless asteroid slammed by NASA two years ago as a practice run for the day when a murderous space rock threatens Earth. It’s the second phase of a planetary defense experiment that could one day save the globe.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket vanished with Hera into the late morning clouds. An hour later, cheering erupted in the control center in Germany as the spacecraft split from the rocket’s upper stage and returned home. “It’s an amazing day,” the space agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said later.
The 2022 crash of NASA’s Dart spacecraft reduced Dimorphos’ orbit around its larger companion, indicating that if a harmful rock was heading our way, it might be pushed off course with adequate warning.
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
Scientists are eager to analyze the aftermath of the impact up close to determine how effective Dart was and what improvements may be required to protect Earth in the future.
“The more detail we can glean the better as it may be important for planning a future deflection mission should one be needed,” University of Maryland astronomer Derek Richardson stated before launch.
Researchers want to know if Dart (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test) created a crater or changed the 500-foot (150-meter) asteroid more dramatically. It seemed to be a flying saucer before Dart’s blow and may now resemble a kidney bean, according to Richardson, who participated in the Dart mission and is assisting Hera.
Dart’s wallop sent rubble and boulders hurtling off Dimorphos, adding to the impact’s momentum. For months, the debris track extended thousands of miles (almost 10,000 kilometers) into space.
According to flight director Ignacio Tanco, some rocks and debris may still be hovering about the asteroid, posing a threat to Hera.
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
“We don’t really know very well the environment in which we are going to operate,” Tanco informed me. “But that’s the whole point of the mission is to go there and find out.”
European authorities refer to the $400 million (363 million euros) effort as a “crash scene investigation.”
“Hera is going back to the crime scene and getting all the scientific and technical information,” said project manager Ian Carnelli.
Carrying a dozen science instruments, the compact car-sized Hera must swing past Mars in 2025 for a gravitational boost before landing at Dimorphos by the end of 2026. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, the Greek word for twin, a five-times larger asteroid that spins quickly. At that point, the asteroids will be 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) from Earth.
Hera will attempt to enter orbit around the rocky duo, progressively reducing flyby distances from 18 miles (30 kilometers) to a half-mile (1 kilometer). The spacecraft will examine the moonlet for at least six months to determine its mass, shape, composition, and orbit around Didymos.
Before the crash, Dimorphos circled its larger partner from three-quarters of a mile (1,189 meters) away. Scientists believe the orbit has become tighter and more oval-shaped, and that the moonlet may be tumbling.
Two shoebox-sized Cubesats will launch from Hera for even closer drone-like examinations, with one employing radar to peek beneath the moonlet’s boulder-strewn surface. Scientists believe Dimorphos was produced from particles shed by Didymos. The radar measurements should assist in determining whether Didymos is the small moon’s parent.
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
After their survey, the CubeSats will attempt to land on the moonlet. If the moonlet tumbles, the situation will become more complicated. Hera may potentially conclude its mission with a perilous touchdown but on the bigger Didymos.
Asteroids, which are remnants of the solar system’s origin 4.6 billion years ago, circle the sun principally between Mars and Jupiter in what is known as the main asteroid belt, where millions of them live. When they fall from the belt and land in our area, they become near-Earth objects.
NASA now has around 36,000 near-Earth objects, the majority of which are asteroids, although there are also some comets. More than 2,400 of them are deemed potentially dangerous to the Earth.
SOURCE | AP
Science
A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October
NEW YORK — Prepare to spot a rare and dazzling comet.
The space rock is hurling toward Earth from the far reaches of the solar system and will make its closest approach on Saturday. It should be visible through the end of October, assuming clear skies.
A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October
Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should be visible to the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will provide a clearer view.
“It’ll be this fuzzy circle with a long tail stretching away from it,” explained Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum in Minnesota.
What is a comet?
They are frozen remains from billions of years ago when the solar system was formed. They heat up as they swing toward the sun, revealing their distinctive streaming tails.
In 2023, a green one that had last visited Earth 50,000 years ago flew past again. Other significant flybys were Neowise in 2020 and Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.
Where did Tsuchinshan-Atlas come from?
Also known as C/2023 A3, was found last year and named after the observatories in China and South Africa that spotted it.
It originated in the Oort Cloud, which extends far beyond Pluto. After making its closest approach to Earth at 44 million miles (71 million kilometers), it will not return for another 80,000 years, provided it survives the journey.
A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October
Every year, several comets are detected, but many of them burn up near the sun or are too far away to be observed without special equipment, according to Larry Denneau, a key researcher with the Atlas telescope that helped discover it.
How to View
Those seeking to see Tsuchinshan-Atlas should go outside about an hour after sunset on a clear night and look to the west.
The comet should be visible from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
SOURCE | AP
Science
NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power
NEW YORK — To save power, NASA turned off another scientific equipment on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.
NASA Switches Off Instrument On the Spacecraft To Save Power
The space agency announced on Tuesday that 2’s plasma science instrument, meant to study the movement of charged atoms, was turned off in late September to allow the spacecraft to continue exploring for as long as possible, which is estimated to be into the 2030s.
NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, after exploring the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space or the region between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working years ago and was finally shut off in 2007.
The remaining four instruments on 2 will continue to collect data on magnetic fields and particles. Its mission is to investigate the regions of space beyond the sun’s protective sphere.
NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power
It launched in 1977, is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. It is now more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) beyond Earth.
SOURCE | AP
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