Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Thu 31 Mar 2022 03.44 AEDTLast modified on Thu 31 Mar 2022 04.56 AEDTThe most distant star ever seen has been captured by the Hubble space telescope in images that appear to give a remarkable glimpse into the ancient universe.
Light
from the star, named Earendel, has travelled an estimated 12.9bn years
to reach the Earth – a huge leap from the previous most distant star, which dates to nine billion years.
The observations were possible thanks to a rare cosmic alignment,
meaning that Earendel may be the only individual star from this epoch
that we will ever see.
“We
almost didn’t believe it at first, it was so much farther than the
previous most distant star,” said Brian Welch, an astronomy PhD student
from Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the paper. “Studying
Earendel will be a window into an era of the universe that we are
unfamiliar with, but that led to everything we know.”
Prof
Colin Norman, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, who was
not involved in the findings, said: “This is a remarkable pioneering
discovery that opens up a completely new region of discovery and enables
massive stars to be directly observed when the universe was young and
star formation was recently initiated.”
Diagram showing Earendel. Photograph: Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, B. Welch (JHU) and D.
Scientists
estimate that Earendel, whose name means “morning star” in Old English,
is at least 50 times the mass of the Sun and millions of times as
bright, placing it among the most massive stars known. But even such a
brilliant star would not normally be detectable. At such vast distances,
even an entire galaxy is just a smudge of light.
It
was only thanks to natural magnification by a huge galaxy cluster,
WHL0137-08, which sits between us and Earendel, that astronomers were
able to make the detection. The cluster’s gravitational pull is so
intense that light bends around it, creating a powerful cosmic
magnifying glass that amplifies light from distant objects lying behind
it.
Scientists
calculate that Earendel’s brightness is magnified by a factor of
thousands – a situation that may not be repeated with other ancient
stars within our lifetimes. “This might be the earliest star we will
ever see since the big bang,” said Dr Guillaume Mahler, an astronomer at
Durham University and co-author.
The star’s distance was estimated by its colour. Light is “red-shifted”
away from its original wavelength as it travels through the expanding
universe and so, although Earendel would have been blue if seen from
nearby, 12.9bn years ago, it appears a deep red in the Hubble images.
The
observations have been hailed as hugely significant and been
prioritised for the first cycle of observations using Nasa’s James Webb Space
Telescope, due to begin in June. This will allow scientists to
definitively confirm that they are looking at a single, very distant
star. An alternative possibility, deemed very unlikely, is that it is a
dim, nearby brown dwarf.
The planned
observations will also allow astronomers to measure the star’s
brightness and temperature and give insights into the composition of the
earliest generation of stars. These stars – the ancestors of those we
see in the sky today – formed before the universe was filled with the
heavy elements produced by successive generations of massive stars.
There are theoretical predictions, but no direct evidence, of an early
generation of stars made only of primordial hydrogen and helium.
“[These
stars] produce the first supernovae that enrich the galaxies with
metals and elements such as carbon and oxygen that are necessary for
life,” said Norman. “These stars are also responsible for injecting
energy into the turbulent medium from which stars and galaxies are
forming.”
NASA's InSight lander has officially detected more than 700 marsquakes since touching down in 2018.(Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
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Mars
seems to have more going on under its ruddy crust than we thought, with
a new study unveiling nearly 50 previously unknown marsquakes.
Key points:
The InSight Mars lander detects the minute vibrations made by the planet's inner workings, but the signal can be lost in noise
Two geophysicists reanalysed InSight data and reported finding nearly 50 previously unknown marsquakes
They say the repetitive nature of the marsquakes suggests they're driven by subsurface volcanic activity
A
pair of geophysicists found signs of 47 quakes in a year's worth of
data collected by NASA's InSight Mars Lander, which has been recording
the planet's internal gurgles and grumbles since 2019.
Study
co-author Hrvoje Tkalcic, from the Australian National University
(ANU), says if the new-found quakes are verified, this kind of work may
help the mostly manual current process of sifting through data for signs
of marsquakes, and give planetary scientists clues as to their origins.
"Their
repetitive nature is indicative of a volcanic process that has to do
with magma movement, or, as we speculate, some sort of deep
depressurisation that is known to happen on Earth as well," he said.
Curtin
University planetary scientist Katarina Miljkovic, who is involved with
the InSight mission but not the new study, says it is "fantastic" to
see the scientific community's interest in marsquake data collected by
the lander.
"Different methods of signal processing
may yield different results and makes it a great place to expand on our
scientific understanding of the Martian subsurface."
How to take the pulse of a planet
The
InSight mission was designed to pick up faint vibrations generated by
the red planet's shifting innards, or by meteorites slamming into the
surface.
These vibrations or waves change as they
travel through each layer — outer solid crust, hot liquid mantle and the
innermost core — giving scientists a way to "see" the planet's internal structure.
InSight's marsquake
sensor, or seismometer, is like a stethoscope of sorts, listening to
Mars's (granted, irregular) geological pulse.
InSight
started collecting data in 2019, and has since picked up a few
decent-sized marsquakes, including three magnitude 4.1 and 4.2 quakes
over August and September last year.
These
were just a few of the more than 700 confirmed marsquakes so far found
by InSight, most of which were minuscule, and far smaller than could be
felt on Earth.
But we know they occurred because
the seismometer is incredibly sensitive — so much so that it can pick up
the jiggling of air molecules around it.
To get some quiet, it sits under a heavy protective dome.
The dome protects three exquisitely sensitive pendulums in the seismometer that detect the tiniest vibrations.(Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The
idea is if you minimise unwanted interference or "noise" as much as
possible, the minute shakes of quakes are more easily identified in the
data.
And while the dome makes for a pretty good shield, it's not perfect.
A
major source of noise comes from gusty winds, which pick up when the
Sun warms the atmosphere and die down again about an hour before the Sun
sets.
For this reason, most marsquakes have been
detected during the quieter night and pre-sunset time, when the minute
waveforms generated by small quakes aren't lost in the noise.
InSight's
data is beamed twice daily back to Earth, where seismologists in the
Marsquake Service manually pore over it as it comes in, searching for
telltale quake signatures, says John Clinton, who leads operations at
the Marsquake Service at ETH Zurich and was not involved in the study.
"We
learnt very early on that Mars data is exceedingly complex and noisy
— far more noisy and variable than data we would record on Earth, and
full of large spikes.
Any marsquakes verified by the Marsquake Service are added to the online catalogue.
Finding a quake in a noisy haystack
Last
year, Professor Tkalcic and Wenjia Sun, a geophysicist at the Chinese
Academy of Sciences, wondered if they could tease out
long marsquake waveforms, which go on rattling for 10s of minutes,
hidden in the noisy daytime data.
Their
idea was to use confirmed long-duration marsquakes, and the specific
wiggly wave patterns they generated, as templates to make "cookie
cutters" of sorts, Professor Tkalcic said.
"A match
means you've found a new marsquake in generally the same location as
your template and with generally the same physical mechanism,
which cause the wiggles to be the same."
In a year of InSight data, the pair detected 47 new marsquakes this way.
Almost all had wiggly waveforms that matched with two major confirmed marsquakes, magnitude 3.1 and 3.3, detected in March 2019.
These
quakes were thought to have originated in an area known as Cerberus
Fossae, roughly 1,700 kilometres east of the InSight lander.
The Cerberus Fossae system sports a range of features that point to recent geological action.
The Cerberus Fossae system on Mars includes fractures that cut through hills and craters, indicating their relative youth.(Supplied: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)
For
instance, there's a pair of parallel fissures — the "fossae" — running
almost 1,000 km across the geologically young 10-million-year-old
volcanic plains.
And there are what look like trails left behind by boulders that were shaken free by marsquakes and bounced down cliffs onto the sediment below.
Dr
Clinton says the Marsquake Service already uses the same cookie-cutter
technique to search for shorter-duration quakes, ones that only last 10s
of seconds, and are likely generated by the thermal expansion and
contraction of rocks.
They have not explored using
it for long-duration marsquakes, though, because those waveforms are so
susceptible to interference by, say, the wind.
"If
this technique [was] integrated at [the Marsquake Service], we would
need to integrate a check that there are no coincident bursts of
broadband energy from wind before confirming any of these detections as
new events," Dr Clinton said.
Take the pressure down
The
repetitive nature of the newly discovered marsquakes not only suggests
they're replicas of the two major "parent" marsquakes, Professor Tkalcic
says, but also gives clues to their origin.
"It
indicates that most likely their cause is volcanic. And that's what's
interesting — because when you have active volcanism, it implies that
the Martian mantle is mobile."
This type of
volcanism probably isn't the kind we mostly see on Earth, where red hot
magma oozes or spurts out and rolls along the surface as lava.
Quakes
generated by volcanism on Mars are likely produced as magma shuffles
around, or when gas dissolved in the hot magma is liberated, a process
called degassing.
But it's trapped under a thick later of rocky crust, and the gas can't escape to the atmosphere.
"Degassing
will increase pressure [under the crust], and when the pressure is high
enough, rocks can break or open fractures, and then you get a quake,"
Professor Tkalcic said.
This phenomenon can also be seen on Earth, where dormant or "quiescent" volcanoes such as Hawai'i's Mauna Kea occasionally rumble as their plumbing is reshaped.
Senator,
who has been relegated to an unwinnable spot on the Liberal party’s NSW
upper house ticket, says in parliament ‘the fish stinks from the head’
The
senator – who has recently been relegated to an unwinnable spot on the
Liberal party’s NSW Senate ticket – used a late-night speech in the
upper house on Tuesday to accuse the prime minister of destroying the Liberal party.
Fierravanti-Wells
told the Senate that Morrison was “not fit to be prime minister” and
claimed he had “destroyed the Liberal party” through recent
interventions in NSW branch preselections.
She also accused the immigration
minister, Alex Hawke – who is Morrison’s lieutenant and a key factional
player in NSW – of “corrupt antics” inside the Liberal party as she
complained of losing her spot on the ticket ahead of the May election.
“In
my public life, I have met ruthless people. Morrison tops the list
followed closely by Hawke,” she said. “Morrison is not interested in
rules-based order. It is his way or the highway. An autocrat, a bully
who has no moral compass.”
Fierravanti-Wells earlier this week accused the party of having its own “mean girl” culture and spoke about “the stress associated with factional warfare”.
On
Tuesday night, just hours after the federal budget was handed down, the
senator gave a speech in the upper house during which she stated:
“There is a very appropriate saying here – the fish stinks from the
head.”
Fierravanti-Wells said Morrison and Hawke had ruined the Liberal party in NSW by trampling its constitution.
The senator was heavily critical of the recent preselection process which had been long-delayed until the national executive took over the division allowing Morrison and Hawke to install favoured candidates including sitting members.
She claimed the process had led to “captain’s picks” which party members opposed.
“I
have received hundreds if not thousands of emails outlining their
disgust. They have lost faith in the party. They want to leave,”
Fierravanti-Wells said in the Senate.
“They
don’t like Morrison and they don’t trust him. They continue to despair
at our prospects at the next federal election. And they blame Morrison
for this. Our members do not want to help in the upcoming election.
Morrison is not fit to be prime minister. And Hawke certainly is not fit
to be a minister.”
Comment was sought from Morrison. A spokesperson for Hawke declined to comment.
The
2022 budget papers show climate spending is expected to fall from $2bn
next financial year to $1.9bn, $1.5bn and $1.3bn in the three years that
follow.
Tue 29 Mar 2022 19.48 AEDTLast modified on Tue 29 Mar 2022 20.25 AEDTOn
the climate crisis and the natural environment, the story of the
2022-23 budget is one of what isn’t there as much as what is.
The 2022-23 budget papers
show it is expected to fall from $2bn next financial year to $1.9bn,
$1.5bn and $1.3bn in the three years that follow. The fall represents a
35% annual cut over four years.
The figures
are spelled out in a section of the papers added under the former prime
minister Tony Abbott, who wanted people to be able to see how much total
climate spending – which he opposed – was contributing to government
debt.
The
diminishing sum is for spending across clean energy agencies expected
to do the heavy lifting under the Coalition’s much-vaunted “technology,
not taxes” approach to emissions reduction and other climate programs.
It
includes funding to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the
Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena), the “direct action”
emissions reduction fund, programs to develop a “clean” hydrogen
industry and resilience programs to protect the Great Barrier Reef, which is currently suffering through its fourth mass bleaching event in six years.
The
government says it is spending $22bn on low-emissions technology, but
that commitment is over a period beyond the life of most governments –
about a decade. Most, but not all, of that funding has been promised to
top up funding for the CEFC and Arena, which were created a decade ago
under a deal between Labor, the Greens and independents.
The
Coalition initially tried to abolish them. More recently it has
embraced them and tried to broaden their role to also fund gas power,
“clean” hydrogen made with gas and carbon capture and storage, but been
blocked in parliament.
Taylor
says the budget includes $1.3bn of spending on energy and emissions
reduction, not all of it to be spent over the next four years.
It
focuses on hydrogen and includes projects that will add to the
greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. There is $300m to support
new liquefied natural gas and “clean” hydrogen production in Darwin,
another $247m to help companies investing in low-emissions technologies
including hydrogen and $50.3m for gas infrastructure.
The
latter was announced by Taylor earlier this month as part of the
Coalition’s promised “gas-fired recovery”. Oddly, given the government’s
zeal for gas as an energy source, it did not rate a mention in Josh
Frydenberg’s budget speech. He did mention another commitment that was
consistent with the budget’s focus on regional Australia: $148.6m for
community solar and wind microgrids in areas too remote to have access
to the power grid.
On
the natural environment, there was little beyond what had already been
flagged. It included $1bn for the reef spread over nine years, mostly to
help clean up agricultural run-off affecting water quality, and $804m for Antarctic research and strategic capability over a decade.
They read like big sums, and the Antarctic funding has been applauded,
but the reef money in particular is diluted by the extended timeframe –
it is really just a continuation of existing funding and, experts say, a
fraction of what is required. As the government acknowledges, the
climate crisis remains the biggest threat facing the 2,300km reef
system.
The
government also announced $636.4m over six years to boost the number of
indigenous rangers working on land and sea management by up to 1,089,
though most of the funding was not due until after 2025.
Sussan
Ley, the environment minister, pledged $60m for plastic recycling, a
$100m extension of an existing community-focused environment restoration
fund and $128.5m as part of its promise to change how the environmental
impact of development proposals are assessed.
The
latter, also announced earlier this month, includes a commitment to set
up “bioregional plans” so projects in nominated areas do not need
individual federal assessments.
Little detail
has been released. It is possible it could help address a major flaw
with the current system – its failure to factor in the cumulative impact
of different projects that destroy habitat and affect threatened
species and ecosystems. But conservation groups are concerned it could
further water down Australia’s environment protection laws, which
everyone agrees are failing.
A once-a-decade
government review by the former competition watchdog Graeme Samuel last
year found Australia was on a “trajectory of environmental decline”. The
bottom line is there is nothing in this budget on the scale needed to
start to address that.
‘Given
that this budget is very obviously political, and in Coalition terms,
measurably transactional, Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison will insist
they are about more than surviving an election contest.’
The
opening flourishes of Josh Frydenberg’s budget night speech certainly
convey the gravity of our times. “Tonight, as we gather, war rages in
Europe,” the treasurer told parliament. “The global pandemic is not
over. Devastating floods have battered our communities.”
“We live in uncertain times.”
Indeed, we do.
But
if we move from Frydenberg’s rhetoric to content, we discover this
budget isn’t a serious plan for the future crafted by serious people in
serious times.
This is a plan for the next few months.
This is a budget with one central objective: the re-election of the Morrison government in May.
With
wages stagnant and consumer prices on the march, the Coalition’s
primary pre-election gift to voters is cash for Australia’s
low-and-middle income earners.
As well as cash,
the government will cut the fuel excise in half in the hope a price cut
at the bowser isn’t swallowed immediately by another adverse shift in
the global oil price or an interest rate rise between now and September,
when the excise is supposed to revert to its full rate.
This
“temporary” assistance assumes there is some future benign political
universe where either the current government, or a newly elected Labor
one, can give Australians relief at the petrol pump, then take it away
without incurring massive political pain – which has to be the working
definition of the triumph of hope over experience.
Let’s believe the fuel excise reversion when we see it.
And the cost of “please like me”?
More than $8bn over the next two years.
The
treasurer and the finance minister will say the following in their
defence: most of the pre-election cash splash in this budget washes
through. The spending isn’t baked in and much of the revenue uplift from
Australia’s burgeoning post-pandemic economic recovery has been banked
rather than spent.
Both of these observations are true.
Also
true: had the Coalition done nothing in this budget to ease escalating
cost-of-living pressures, they would have been belted politically.
The
government insists its cash splash won’t feed inflationary pressures,
which is obviously a significant risk to manage. But a pre-election
handout north of $8bn is still a hefty price tag, however you look,
however you measure.
Speaking of hefty price tags, this budget also finally squares the accounts between Scott Morrison,
a prime minister who last year needed to land a commitment to net zero
emissions by 2050, and Barnaby Joyce, a Nationals leader who wasn’t
inclined to sign up unless the terms were favourable.
For
graciously declining to humiliate Morrison at the Glasgow climate
summit last year, Joyce has been rewarded with “transformational
investments” (read many, many billions) for dams, roads and regional
communications infrastructure.
“Thank you,
Barnaby” includes about $3bn for inland rail, as well as $7.1bn over 11
years to “turbocharge the economies of four regional hubs across
Australia”.
It’s probably a coincidence (yes,
that is irony) that these hubs are located in the Northern Territory
(two marginal seats there), north and central Queensland (Labor has its
eye particularly on the electorate of Flynn), the Hunter in New South
Wales (where the Nationals would very much like to snatch a seat from
Labor) and the Pilbara in Western Australia.
This
regional spend is north of $20bn over the medium term. I think the
technical term for that is happy days on the Wombat Trail.
Given
that this budget is very obviously political, and in Coalition terms,
measurably transactional, Frydenberg and Morrison will insist they are
about more than surviving an election contest.
I
feel certain Exhibit A for future focus will be the national security
spend – the magnificently named Redspice, which is (to quote the
treasurer) “a $9.9bn investment in Australia’s offensive and defensive
cyber capabilities” and “the biggest ever investment in Australia’s
cyber-preparedness”.
The government says this
initiative is all about meeting the challenges associated with the
darkening geostrategic environment – which is very obviously a serious
problem.
But take a moment to read the fine
print. You’ll discover the investment to deal with this serious problem
is loaded largely outside the forward estimates. The budget papers also
make clear the expenditure will be “partly offset from the Defence
Integrated Investment Program”.
In
net terms, the outlay on Redspice over the next four years is actually
$588.7m, not $9.9bn. Do remember that over the coming weeks, when Peter
Dutton breaks out his loudhailer and throws down tests of patriotism out
on the hustings.
Speaking of loudhailers, the
2022 election contest is now in sight. It could be days away. It could
be a couple of weeks away. But it is close enough now to be real.
If
we cast our minds back to 2007, when Labor was attempting to plot a
pathway to government against an ageing Coalition government in
whatever-it-takes mode, Kevin Rudd’s cut-through political riposte was
“this reckless spending must stop”.
Back then,
Rudd savaged John Howard’s “irresponsible spending spree” as a
“desperate attempt” to buy a fifth term in government. Back then, the
Reserve Bank was warning about government spending fuelling inflationary
pressures and interest rate rises.
Audacious
and supremely self-confident, Rudd backed himself to weaponise fiscal
profligacy against Howard – to make the trinkets and tricks a symbol of a
prime minister who cared more about the present than the future.
That effort succeeded.
But Anthony Albanese, ahead in the polls, and in small target mode, seems unlikely to adopt the Rudd playbook.
Given that Australians are struggling with rising prices – this is probably safe politics.
Safe, yes, but not entirely risk free.
Given
that there is palpable disenchantment out in voter land, and given that
the prime minister is working around the clock to convince people to
stick with the devil they know in uncertain times, safe politics does
raise one question.
Will Albanese present as sufficiently different from Morrison to be trusted by voters to chart a new course for Australia?
