Added today at https://efanzines.com are:
J.L. Farey’s JenZine #3
Octothorpe #73, a regular fannish podcast by John Coxon, Alison Scott and Liz Batty, is now on line
Opuntia #540, edited by Dale Speirs
Perry Middlemiss’s Perryscope #29
Ray Palm’s The Ray X X-rayer #169
—
Bill
From https://spaceweather.com/
HAARP IS PINGING AN ASTEROID TODAY: Researchers from NASA and the University of Alaska are about to perform an unusual radar experiment. They’re going to ping a near-Earth asteroid using shortwave radio. The target is a 500-ft-wide space rock named “2010 XC15.” When it passes by Earth on Tuesday, Dec. 27th, the HAARP array in Alaska will hit it with a long pulse of 9.6 MHz radio waves.
Radio astronomers ping asteroids all the time. What’s unusual about this experiment is the frequency: 9.6 MHz is hundreds of times lower than typical S-band and X-band frequencies used by other asteroid radars. The goal is to probe the asteroid’s interior.
Lead investigator Mark Haynes of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) explains: “The low frequencies we are using can penetrate the asteroid, unlike S-band or X-band frequencies which reflect mostly off of the surface. Ultimately the idea is to use echoes to form tomographic images of asteroid interiors.”
Knowing the internal structure of an asteroid could come in handy — especially if you need to destroy it. 2010 XC15 poses no threat 770,000 km from Earth. Tomorrow’s experiment is proof-of-concept for a scarier object: Asteroid Apophis, which will buzz Earth closer than many satellites on April 13, 2029. If shortwave asteroid radar works for 2010 XC15, it should work for Apophis, too, giving planetary defense experts key data about the asteroid’s vulnerabilities.
HAARP will transmit a continually chirping signal to asteroid 2010 XC15 at slightly above and below 9.6 MHz. The chirp will repeat at two-second intervals. The University of New Mexico Long Wavelength Array near Socorro, NM, and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory Long Wavelength Array near Bishop, CA, will receive the reflected signal.
“This will be the lowest frequency asteroid radar observation ever attempted,” notes Lance Benner, a co-investigator from JPL. If the experiment works it could mark a significant advance in asteroid radar. Stay tuned!
An international team of scientists have discovered new evidence of a dinosaur dining on ancient mammals.
The foot of a tiny mammal was inside the stomach of a microraptor — a small feathered dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous some 100 million years ago in temperate forests in what is now China.
It’s the first time a piece of a mammal was discovered inside a microraptor.
“Looking at interactions between animals, that’s much easier to tell in the modern biology in living animals because we can actually go out and make those observations,” said Caleb Brown, a curator of dinosaur systematics and evolution at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alta.
“Trying to make those inferences for fossils is more difficult because you don’t necessarily know exactly which animal ate which other animal, unless you have exceptional cases like this.”
This find alone will not change understanding of Cretaceous ecosystems and how they evolved, said Corwin Sullivan, a professor in the department of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, who was involved in the new discovery.
But the discovery will contribute to the accumulation of paleontological knowledge and allow to “build up a very general picture of how food webs functioned, to some degree, in the geological past, how these various species were behaving and interacting,” Sullivan said.
“It’s rare for a preserved fossil vertebrate to have any kind of gut contents, and certainly evidence of dinosaurs eating mammals is rare.
You’d feel it more than hear it – a deep, visceral throb, emerging from somewhere beyond the thick foliage. Like the rumble of a foghorn, it would thrum in your ribcage and bristle the hairs on your neck. In the dense forests of the Cretaceous period, it would have been terrifying.
We have few clues for what noises dinosaurs might have made while they ruled the Earth before being killed off 66 million years ago. The remarkable stony remains uncovered by palaeontologists offer evidence of the physical prowess of these creatures, but not a great deal about how they interacted and communicated. Sound doesn’t fossilise, of course.
From what we know about animal behaviour, however, dinosaurs were almost certainly not silent.
Now with the help of new, rare fossils and advanced analysis techniques, scientists are starting to piece together some of the clues about how dinosaurs might have sounded.
There is no single answer to this puzzle. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for around 179 million years and during that time, evolved into an enormous array of different shapes and sizes. Some were tiny, like the diminutive Albinykus, which weighed under a kilogram (2.2lbs) and was probably less than 2ft (60cm) long. Others were among the biggest animals to have ever lived on land, such as the titanosaur Patagotitan mayorum, which may have weighed up to 72 tonnes. They ran on two legs, or plodded on four. And along with these diverse body shapes, they would have produced an equally wide variety of noises.
Some dinosaurs had greatly elongated necks – up to 16m (52ft) long in the largest sauropods – which would have likely altered the sounds they produced (think about what happens when a trombone is extended). Others had bizarre skull structures that, much like wind instruments, could have amplified and altered the tone the animals produced. One such creature, a herbivorous hadrosaur named Parasaurolophus tubicen, would have been responsible for the fearsome calls described at the start of this article.
READ MORE https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221212-the-mysterious-song-of-the-dinosaurs
CHRISTMAS COMET ALERT: Newly-discovered Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) is approaching Earth for a close encounter next month. It’s already within range of backyard telescopes, and a New Moon makes Christmas weekend a good time to look. Full story @ Spaceweather.com
Instant solar flare alerts: Sign up for Space Weather Alerts to receive text messages when solar flares are underway.
![[]](https://mcusercontent.com/0c5fce34d5ca05f64a13d085d/images/76353f48-00cf-bae2-5d2f-1298a6c0fca9.jpg)
Above: Comet ZTF photographed by Michael Jaeger of Martinsberg, Austria, on Dec. 18, 2022
Never fails: I post a round up of zines received and the next day more arrive.
From Bill Burns:
Just missed yesterday’s update, but these new issues are now at https://efanzines.com
Taral Wayne’s The Baloobius #10
John Purcell’s Askance #54
—
Bill
This is the November 2022 issue of The N3F Review of Books. N3FReview202211
This is Guy Lillian’s review of zines: TZD56
From Israel, here is CyberCozen for December CCDecember-2022-v01
From Gail in South Africa: PROBE194X
Received via the N3F:
A busy week for fanzine production! Now at https://efanzines.com are:
Andy Hooper’s CAPTAIN FLASHBACK #48
Alexiad #122 edited by Lisa & Joseph Major
Leybl Botwinik’s CyberCozen – December 2022
David Grigg’s The Megaloscope #4
Archive issues of Heath Row’s Telegraphs & Tar Pits #39-43, Explosion Containment Umbrella #4, Faculae & Filigree #16
Opuntia #539, edited by Dale Speirs
Journey Planet #66, edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia et al
Octothorpe #72, a regular fannish podcast by John Coxon, Alison Scott and Liz Batty, is now on line
Bill
N3F: Origin and Fanactivity Gazette are attached. Happy Holidays!
From Garth Spencer: The Obdurate Eye 22
From the N3F: TNFF202212
Just added at https://efanzines.com:
Marc Ortlieb’s Knot a Fanzine #4
Garth Spencer’s The Obdurate Eye #22
Henry Grynnsten’s Wild Ideas #30
Christopher J. Garcia’s The Drink Tank #442
Journey Planet #67, edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia et al
—
Bill
