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In a Thursday interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, Dr. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, said that the novel coronavirus may never go away.Per Newsweek, which published a translation of the interview, Lipkin said that the public will have to adapt and learn how to “live the rest of our lives with this virus.”“It is going to be a recurring problem. I don’t think life will ever be completely normal again.”Lipkin said that it is likely future generations will be vaccinated against COVID-19, but noted that additional booster...

Earth Is a Whole Lot Closer to Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole Than We Thought MICHELLE STARR 27 NOVEMBER 2020 It seems that Earth has been misplaced. According to a new map of the Milky Way galaxy, the Solar System's position isn't where we thought it was. Not only is it closer to the galactic centre - and the supermassive hole therein, Sagittarius A* - it's orbiting at a faster clip. It's nothing to be concerned about; we're not actually moving closer to Sgr A*, and we're in no danger of being slurped up. Rather, our map of the Milky...

The U.S. has now seen more than 13 million coronavirus infections since the pandemic began earlier this year.Dr. Fauci recently said that the U.S. could see more than 400,000 cumulative coronavirus-related deaths if proper safety measures aren’t followed over the next few months.Coronavirus immunizations may begin as early as December 12.The U.S. is still trying to come to grips with a coronavirus pandemic that is getting distressingly worse with each passing day. Across the country, dozens of states are reporting a record number of new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. What’s more, a recent report from the Department of Health and...

[AIER Editor’s note: the article and video discussed below have been pulled by Johns Hopkins Newsletter. You can read the announcement here. An additional explanation is here. The claims made by the economics professor will clearly require more investigation, as the announcement says. That said, AIER is publishing this in the interest of objective science and open discussion.]Article originally published by AIER.At the time of this writing, the United States currently maintains the highest number of Covid-19 deaths and ranks 11th for the highest deaths per capita. There have been approximately 262,000 recorded Covid-19 deaths in the United States, which...

Explanation: This Long March-5 rocket blasted off from the Wenchang launch site in southernmost Hainan province on Tuesday November 24, at 4:30 am Beijing Time, carrying China's Chang'e-5 mission to the Moon. The lunar landing mission is named for the ancient Chinese goddess of the moon. Its goal is to collect about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of lunar material from the surface and return it to planet Earth, the first robotic sample return mission to the Moon since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976. The complex Chang'e-5 mission landing target is in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms)....

Places with highest daily reported cases per capitaSeven-day average of daily new reported cases per 100,000 residents

Just after sunset on the evening of December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in Earth’s night sky than they have been since the Middle Ages, offering people the world over a celestial treat to ring in the winter solstice. Jupiter and Saturn have been approaching one another in Earth’s sky since the summer. From December 16-25, the two will be separated by less than the diameter of a full moon. Though the best viewing conditions will be near the equator, the event will be observable anywhere on Earth, weather-permitting. Hartigan said the planetary duo will appear...

Places with highest daily reported cases per capitaSeven-day average of daily new reported cases per 100,000 residents

... it appears that the only time people can infect others is when they have the virus for the first time, and only when they are symptomatic. Lock downs and the use of masks by the healthy accomplish nothing. All you need to do is quarantine the symptomatic patient, as human societies have been doing for centuries and centuries. ... wearing masks if you are healthy and not sick protects no one. Social distancing if you are not sick protects no one. Shutting down businesses, such as reducing capacities at restaurants so they can’t make a profit, protects no one....

The first image below is pretty much the situation in the night sky now, Nov 25, 2020. Little by little, Jupiter, from our perspective, is inching closer and closer to Saturn. And by mid-December the two planets will appear to be practically on top of each other, I think both within the space of a full moon! The 2nd image below is the situation in mid-December (this is NOT a one-day, or even one week, thing).In fact the two planets are fairly close to each other right now, Nov 25 (first image below).But in reality, Saturn is actually something like...

White dwarf stars in globular cluster NGC 6397. (NASA, ESA, and H. Richer/University of British Columbia) SPACE ====================================================================== When stars like the Sun reach the end of their lives, the object that remains is a white dwarf. This is the star's shrunken, naked core, no longer capable of nuclear fusion. It shines, but only with residual heat, slowly cooling over billions of years until it's completely cold and dark. But not all white dwarfs cool the same way. Last year, astronomers found a certain type of massive white dwarf stars cool more slowly than others, as though they have...

The Wow! signal represented as "6EQUJ5". Credit: Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO) ====================================================================== Amateur astronomer and YouTuber Alberto Caballero, one of the founders of The Exoplanets Channel, has found a small amount of evidence for a source of the notorious Wow! signal. In his paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, Caballero describes searching the Gaia database for possible sun-like stars that might host an exoplanet capable of supporting intelligent life. Back in 1977, astronomers working with the Big Ear Radio Telescope—at the time, situated in Delaware, Ohio—recorded a unique signal from somewhere in space....

Places with highest daily reported cases per capita Seven-day average of daily new reported cases per 100,000 residents

Explanation: Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards...

2020: Another Oddity. Wildlife officials in Utah were in a remote area counting sheep from a helicopter when they discovered a shiny metal monolith that looks straight out of a Stanley Kubrick film. It is estimated to be about 10 to 12 feet high, and its glistening surface is in sharp contrast to the large red rocks that surround it. Wednesday’s discovery appears to have been firmly planted in the soil, and not dropped from above. On Instagram, Utah’s highway patrol shared a picture of the bizarre finding with a caption reading: “Counting big horn sheep with DWR this week....

Artist’s conception of the dust and gas surrounding a new planetary system. Credit: NASA ========================================================================= A long time ago — roughly 4.5 billion years — our sun and solar system formed over the short time span of 200,000 years. That is the conclusion of a group of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists after looking at isotopes of the element molybdenum found on meteorites. The material that makes up the sun and the rest of the solar system came from the collapse of a large cloud of gas and dust about 4.5 billion years ago. By observing other stellar systems...

Explanation: Why do colorful cloud bands encircle Jupiter? Jupiter's top atmospheric layer is divided into light zones and dark belts that go all the way around the giant planet. It is high horizontal winds -- in excess of 300 kilometers per hour -- that cause the zones to spread out planet-wide. What causes these strong winds remains a topic of research. Replenished by upwelling gas, zonal bands are thought to include relatively opaque clouds of ammonia and water that block light from lower and darker atmospheric levels. One light-colored zone is shown in great detail in the featured vista taken...

Lockdowns are back on in Europe and are making a quick comeback in the US as well. Spain, the UK, Belgium, and France are back in full lockdown mode, although a multitude of restrictions on movement within each country remained in place even when full lockdowns were ended over the summer. In France, for instance, one now “need[s] a certificate to move around,” yet in spite of long maintaining some of the continent’s most stringent lockdown and social distancing measures, total deaths per million are rapidly accelerating, to the point that France is likely to soon join other countries with...

Last week, in her MSNBC show, Deadline, Nicolle Wallace said "right wing media" like Fox are creating an "alternate reality" for their viewers. Wallace said, "You now have a true, a true alternate reality[.] ... I mean, they are pumping flagrant lies into millions of viewers. They're interviewing lunatics." Wallace's guest, Al Sharpton (of Tawana Brawley hoax fame), said, "We're now in a nation where facts don't matter. You make up facts. And not only do you have an alternative reality — how do you debate someone that is dealing with a totally fictitious premise?" This talk of the alternate,...

Full title: TWO MILLION Americans ignored CDC guidelines to travel by plane on Friday and Saturday: Dr Fauci urges nation to do 'risk-benefit assessment' before Thanksgiving travel as crowds keep flooding airports Two million people traveled by plane in the United States on Friday and Saturday despite the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) issuing new guidelines last week...With the coronavirus surging out of control, the nation's top public health agency pleaded with Americans on Thursday not to travel for Thanksgiving and not to spend the holiday with people from outside their household. Despite those warnings, 1,019,836 passengers flew...