Scientists May Have Found a ‘Super-Earth’ That Could Be an Ocean-Covered Water World

Posted on by September 17, 2022

An artistic impression of the surface of the candidate water world exoplanet TOI-1452b. (Benoit Gougeon/Université de Montréal)

ScienceAlert.com reports the discovery of an exoplanet just 100 light-years from Earth that appears to be the best candidate yet for a sloshy, water-covered ocean world.

It’s called TOI-1452b, and measurements of its size and mass suggest a density profile consistent with a global liquid ocean. Scientists believe that worlds like this are possible, but they haven’t yet conclusively found one.

“This paper reports the discovery and characterization of the transiting temperate exoplanet TOI-1452b,” writes a team of researchers led by astronomer Charles Cadieux of the University of Montreal in Canada in a paper published in The Astronomical Journal.

“The results of our interior modeling and the fact that the planet receives modest irradiation make TOI-1452b a good candidate water world.”

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Video of the Battleship USS Texas in Drydock

Posted on by September 16, 2022

Here are two videos of the 110-year-old battleship USS Texas in drydock at the Gulf Copper Shipyard in Galveston.  The Texas is the oldest remaining dreadnought battleship and only one of six surviving ships to have served in both World War I and World War II.

The first video is a 25-minute walk around the drydock floor led by Travis Davis, Vice President of Ship Operations at Battleship Texas Foundation. Travis explains the features of the hull as well as areas to be repaired during the current $35 million refurbishment. The video is a unique opportunity to stroll around under the hull of a more than one-hundred-year-old dreadnought without donning a hard hat, and a boiler suit, and without getting your boots wet.

The second video is under 2 minutes of drone footage that captures the entire battleship on the drydock.

First Walk Around The Dry Dock | Battleship Texas

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When the Frigate USS Stein Was Attacked by a Colossal Squid

Posted on by September 15, 2022

The legend of the Kraken, a giant cephalopod from Greek and Norse mythology that attacked ships and dragged sailors to their doom, is many hundreds of years old. Here is an unlikely, but apparently true, story of the US Navy frigate USS Stein, whose sonar dome was probably attacked by a colossal squid in 1978.

USS Stein was underway when her anti-submarine sonar gear suddenly stopped working. On returning to port and putting the ship in a drydock, engineers observed many deep scratches in the rubber “NOFOUL” coating of the sonar dome. In some areas, the coating was described as being shredded, with rips up to four feet long. Large claws were left embedded at the bottom of most of the scratches.

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Sailor Who Died on Battleship USS Oklahoma in Pearl Harbor Attack Finally Laid to Rest

Posted on by September 15, 2022

Herbert “Bert” Jacobson was 21 when he died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Over 80 years later, he was finally laid to rest yesterday in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. He was one of 429 sailors and Marines on the battleship USS Oklahoma, who were killed in the attack.

In the years following the attack, only 35 of the 429 crew who died on Oklahoma were identified. In 2015, the Department of Defense announced that the unidentified remains of the crew members of Oklahoma would be exhumed for DNA analysis, with the goal of returning identified remains to their families.

In 2019, Jacobson family was notified that Bert’s remains had been identified. Hoping the burial could take place the next year, they were forced to wait, in large part because the COVID-19 pandemic delayed most gatherings, funerals included.

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Losing “Fat Leonard” — More Major Blunders in Long-Running Navy Corruption Scandal

Posted on by September 13, 2022

On the morning of September 4, at 7:35 AM, Leonard Glenn Francis, known as “Fat Leonard,” cut his ankle bracelet monitor and fled house arrest in San Diego. “Fat Leonard,” the 350 pound Malaysian businessman at the center of the largest bribery scandal in US Navy history, had been under house arrest in San Diego since his guilty plea in 2015, undergoing treatment for cancer — and podcasting.

At last count, the long-running fraud and bribery investigation has resulted in federal criminal charges against 34 U.S. Navy officials, with 33 defendants convicted of various fraud and corruption offenses, while a federal jury failed to reach a verdict on charges brought against retired Rear Admiral Bruce Loveless.

Cutting the monitor immediately sent an alert to U.S. Pretrial Services, the federal agency in charge of monitoring his home confinement. Nevertheless, it was not until approximately 4 PM, or over 7 hours later, that members of the San Diego Fugitive Task Force went to Francis’ residence to locate him. Leonard Francis was long gone. 

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Boat Capsize in NZ That Killed Five May Have Been Caused by Whale

Posted on by September 12, 2022

The BBC reports that five people died in New Zealand after a birdwatching boat capsized, possibly after colliding with a whale. Eleven people, mostly from the birdwatching group, were onboard when the boat capsized on Saturday in Goose Bay near the town of Kaikōura.

Police declined to speculate on what had caused the accident, merely confirming the collision. But Craig Mackle, the mayor of Kaikōura, told reporters he believed the boat had hit a surfacing whale.

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On the 21st Anniversary of 9/11, Remembering the Great New York Boatlift

Posted on by September 11, 2022

An updated repost. There is a line from a Paul Simon song, “these are the days of miracle and wonder.” One might not think to apply that lyric to the events of 9/11, 21 years ago today. Yet for at least part of that strange and horrible day, they fit. The great New York boatlift was part of the “miracle and wonder.” The wholly unplanned boatlift was the spontaneous maritime evacuation of an estimated 500,000 people trapped in Lower Manhattan in less than 10 hours. The boatlift has been under-reported by the media, which is all the more reason to remember the mariners of New York who stepped up to perform what has been called the largest sea rescue in history.

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Megamax Container Cranes Arrive in New York Harbor on BigLift Baffin

Posted on by September 10, 2022

BigLift Baffin sailing from Cobh, Ireland

Three megamax container cranes have arrived in the Port of New York and New Jersey on the Netherlands-flagged heavy-lift ship BigLift Baffin. They will be offloaded and installed at the Maher Terminals in Elizabeth, New Jersey. 

The new cranes, built by the Liebherr Group in Killarney, Ireland, are among the largest in the world. With a height of 150 meters, an outreach of above 53 meters, and a lift height of over 40 meters, the cranes each have a safe lifting load of 40-50 tonnes in single operations, 65 tonnes in twin operations, and 100 tonnes in tandem.

In addition to their impressive capacity, these cranes are designed to be lighter, relatively, which reduces power consumption. Also, the cranes generate electricity during the lowering process, which they then return to the grid.

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From Carp to Copi — Renaming an Invasive Species to Make it More Palatable

Posted on by August 28, 2022

If you can’t beat them, eat them. That is the idea at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources as one approach to managing the ongoing invasion of invasive carp in the Mississippi and connecting rivers. They even propose renaming the carp and marketing the fish as copi, to make the invasive species more palatable on restaurant menus and in store refrigerator displays.

The department has even created copi recipes to persuade restaurants to serve mouth-watering dishes such as “copi fresh fish tacos, a copi firehouse fish burger, and copi smoked fish dip.”

In the 1960s and ‘70s, four species of carp were introduced into the United States from Asia. The bighead, black, grass and silver carp were imported to eat algae in wastewater treatment plants and aquaculture ponds, as well as to serve as a source of food.

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More Navy Corruption — MSC Director Convicted of Bribery in Korea

Posted on by August 26, 2022

In a case with distinct echoes of the Navy’s almost decade-long “Fat Leonard” scandal, a former U.S. Navy director was convicted for his role in a bribery conspiracy and for lying to federal officials, according to authorities.

Stars and Stripes reports that Fernando Xavier Monroy, who worked as the director of operations of the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command Office in Busan, South Korea, was convicted of engaging in a conspiracy to commit bribery with a South Korea-based company, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

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Breaking News : Fat Leonard Escapes House Arrest

Posted on by September 6, 2022

“Fat Leonard” Francis

When it appeared that the decade-long US Navy corruption scandal focused on Leonard Glenn Francis, known as “Fat Leonard,” was winding down, the saga takes a new turn. The Malaysian businessman, who confessed to directing a massive bribery scandal of US Navy officers, has cut off his ankle bracelet and fled from his San Diego home and is now reportedly on the run.

It comes three weeks before he was due for sentencing.

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African Penguins Endangered by Shipping Noise in Algoa Bay

Posted on by August 26, 2022

REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham/File Photo

A disturbing report from Reuters: 

The already endangered African penguin is being driven away from its natural habitat off the east coast of South Africa due to noise from ship refueling, a scientific study has found.

The number of African penguins on St Croix island in Algoa Bay, once the world’s largest breeding colony of the birds, has plummeted since South Africa started to allow ships in the area to refuel at sea, a process known as bunkering, six years ago, the study found.

Situated in a busy shipping lane along South Africa’s east coast, Algoa Bay is rich in marine and bird life where southern right whales roam in its sheltered waters.

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Waveline Magnet — Prototype Undulating Wave Energy Converter

Posted on by August 27, 2022

Sea Wave Energy Ltd, a Cyprus and UK-based R&D startup, has been working for the last decade to develop the world’s most efficient, low-cost wave energy converter. 

Earlier this year, the company unveiled the prototype called the Waveline Magnet, which is fabricated from a series of floating platforms linked to each other that generate energy by undulating in ocean waves.

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Kayaking With Dolphins in the Hudson River

Posted on by August 23, 2022

Seeing dolphins may not seem exceptional to non-New Yorkers. Nevertheless, the only thing I recall in the Hudson River when I arrived in New York some 40 years ago were the “Hudson River whitefish” that I saw that appeared to swim in the currents off the Battery. (The “white fish” were the condoms flushed down city toilets and dumped with raw sewage directly in the river.) 

The return of dolphins to the river is indeed a hopeful sign.

Dolphins Swimming In The Hudson River Delight Kayakers

The Mysteries of the Lost City — Mid-Atlantic Hydrothermal Field

Posted on by August 27, 2022

Over two thousand feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic, on the seamount Atlantis Massif, at the intersection between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Atlantis Transform Fault, a jagged landscape of towers rises from the deep ocean gloom. Discovered in 2000, the Lost City Hydrothermal Field, often referred to simply as the Lost City, is an area of marine alkaline hydrothermal vents. It is the longest-lived venting environment known in the ocean. Nothing else like it has ever been found.

ScienceAlert.com notes that for at least 120,000 years and maybe longer, the upthrusting mantle in this part of the world has reacted with seawater to puff hydrogen, methane, and other dissolved gases out into the ocean. In the cracks and crevices of the field’s vents, hydrocarbons feed novel microbial communities even without the presence of oxygen.

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Zumwalt Class Stealth Destroyers First US Navy Ships to Have Hypersonic Missiles Installed

Posted on by August 27, 2022

The Zumwalt Class stealth destroyers will be the first US warship to have long-range hypersonic weapons installed. USNI News reports that the new weapons will be installed on the destroyers USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) and USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) during an upcoming repair period at Ingalls Shipbuilding.

For the last six years, USS Zumwalt has been a destroyer without a primary weapons system. Commissioned in 2016, the ship was the latest and greatest, most high-tech destroyer in the fleet. At a cost of around $4 billion dollars, it is also the most expensive destroyer ever built.

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USS Albuquerque’s Sail to Serve as Monument in Namesake City

Posted on by August 26, 2022

In its 34 years of service, the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Albuquerque never visited its namesake city. Albuquerque, New Mexico sits in the high desert almost one thousand miles from the nearest ocean. Now, however, as the 362-foot-long submarine is being dismantled at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state, the U.S. Navy is making the sail from the submarine available to Albuquerque, said Thomas Tozier, the city’s liaison for military and veterans affairs. The sail, referred to as a fin by the British, is the towerlike structure rising from the topside of a submarine.

Tozier said that three flatbed trucks would be needed to carry the pieces of the sail into the city. The sail is 19-foot-tall (5.7 meters), and weighs 52 tons, while the horizontal “wings” called fairwater planes span over 33 feet (10 meters). The city has allocated an initial $800,000 in its fiscal year 2023 budget for the project.

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John Konrad on Why UN’s Ukraine Grain Deal is Likely to Fail

Posted on by August 28, 2022

At the end of July, Ukraine and Russia signed “mirror” deals that allowed Kyiv to resume exports of grain through the Black Sea. The agreement was purported to allow millions of tonnes of grain, currently trapped in Ukraine by the war, to be exported. 

The blockade of Ukraine’s grain has caused a global food crisis with wheat-based products like bread and pasta becoming more expensive and cooking oils and fertilizer also increasing in price.

Will the deal work? Here is a gCaptain video in which John Konrad discusses the agreement made with Russia, Turkey, and the United Nations.


Will The UN’s Ukraine Grain Deal Fail?

A Video for a Monday Morning — 40 Meter Yacht Sinks Off Southern Italy

Posted on by August 27, 2022

How’s your Monday going so far? Odds are, it is probably better than the 40-meter superyacht MY Saga that sank rather dramatically last week off the coast of Catanzaro Marina, in southern Italy.  Fortunately, the Italian Coast Guard rescued nine people from the yacht before she sank.

Thanks to Larry Witmer for contributing to this post.