[PHOTO] "Cat, guarding its domain"

Sighted in the front yard of a house on Salem Avenue, this cat knew what was what, and whose it was.

[LINK] "Sanctions Have Crippled Iran’s Economy, But They’re Not Working "

British journalist Christopher de Bellaigue's essay in The New Republic makes the case that the sanctions currently being imposed on Iran for its government's nuclear endeavours is not only causing significant harm to Iranians at large, but that the sanctions may not even work.

de Bellaigue is right to note that Iran's government isn't exactly responsible to its citizens/subjects, and that Iran's government can be plausibly skeptical that this isn't a segue to an effort at regime change. Inasmuch as sanctions seem to be the only alternative to a military strike that could lead to war, mind, this might be a case of the least bad option being exerted. (Might.)

[Iran's] leaders now admit that sanctions are having an effect; the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called them “savage.” Oil production has dropped sharply for want of buyers and this year, according to the IMF, the economy is expected to shrink for the first time in two decades. In the autumn, the rial lost almost half its value against the dollar on fears that the government is unwilling or unable to prop it up. Inflation is thought to be running at well over the official rate of 25 percent; unemployment is also rising as consumer spending falls and import-dependent businesses go to the wall.

A cloud of pessimism has settled over Iran, with unaffordable rents, empty butchers’ shops and everybody scrounging money off the next man. The brash, frenetically consumerist Tehran that I had grown accustomed to in recent years has disappeared. To be sure, Iran is not yet in the condition of post-Gulf War Iraq. The country is still finding buyers for a lot of oil, and the IMF predicts that the economy will return to modest growth in 2013. The various sets of sanctions are far from being a comprehensive blockade.

But nor are those sanctions as “smart” as America and its allies like to insist. Yes, Iran is at liberty to purchase food, medicine and humanitarian items. But cutting Iran off from the international banking system is a sure way of denying people access to foreign commodities, as is deliberately bringing about the collapse of the rial. Already, there are signs of a humanitarian crisis. According to the New York Times, one of the last western media outlets with a resident correspondent in Tehran, Iranians suffering from cancer, haemophilia, thalassemia and kidney problems are finding it increasingly hard to get the foreign-made medicines they need. A charity chief quoted by the paper said that hospital machines are breaking down from a lack of spare parts and that pharmaceutical companies are running out of imported raw materials.

And the sanctions are set to only get harder—more “crippling,” in the brutal lexicon now being employed on both sides of the Atlantic. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars in fines have been levied against Standard and Chartered and the Dutch bank IMG for moving Iranian money through the U.S. financial system. In the spring, the electronic transfer giant SWIFT ended transactions with Iran’s banking sector. The European Union, which used to buy 20 percent of Iran’s oil, has recently imposed an embargo. A new congressional report details how the foreign subsidiaries of several U.S. firms have decided “voluntarily” to stop doing business with Iran. The same report notes that some U.S. lawmakers believe that pressure should increase still “further and faster.”

[. . .]

The assumption is that the more Iranians suffer, the more their leaders will feel the pressure and either change course or be overthrown in a popular uprising. And yet, there is no evidence to suggest that this is probable, and the Iraqi case suggests the opposite. During the U.N. blockade, Saddam was able to blame foreigners for the nation’s suffering, and ordinary Iraqis—those who might have been expected to show discontent at his misrule—grew more and more dependent on the rations he distributed. Furthermore, America’s insistence that an end to sanctions was conditional on Saddam’s departure removed any incentive he might have had to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. In 1997, he stopped doing so, with the results we all know.

Thoughts?

[BRIEF NOTE] On rogue planet CFBDSIR 2149-0403

The inelegantly-named rogue planet CFBDSIR 2149-0403 ("full designation CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9", Wikipedia adds) is a remarkable body, more-or-less 130 light years from Earth travelling with the AB Doradus moving group, a collection of stars that from Earth seem to be travelling through the southern hemisphere constellation of Dorado, the dolphinfish. The importance of the discovery of this planet, estimated to be between four and seven times as massive as Jupiter, is noted at the National Post.

Scientists have a hard time figuring out just how common rogue planets, that is planets without stars, are because the primary way to see extra-solar bodies is from the light that their suns reflect off of them.

However now that the planet has been found, the absence of a star actually allows scientists to examine the planet more closely, as it no longer is overwhelmed by the light from a sun.

The discovery came from an international team of scientists with the Canada France Hawaii Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. The report was also co-authoured by a Canadian, Etienne Artigau, from the University of Montreal.

[. . .]

“This object was discovered during a scan that covered the equivalent of
1,000 times the [area] of the full moon,” said Artigau told the BBC.

The key way that the team determined that the object is a planet and not a brown dwarf is that they estimate that its temperature is lower than 400C and its size as somewhere between four and seven times that of Jupiter, which, while massive, is far below what would be classified as a star.

Universe Today's Nancy Atkinson notes that the planet's association with a well-defined moving group makes it possible to nail down its characteristics that much more precisely. Plus, it raises interesting prospects: how many of these worlds are there? Potentially lots.

Moving star systems are equally intriguing. The AB Doradus Moving Group is the closest such group to our Solar System, and the stars drift through space together in a pack. They are thought to have formed at the same time. If the new rogue planet actually is associated with this moving group, astronomers say it will be possible to deduce much more about it, including its temperature, mass, and what its atmosphere is made of. There remains a small probability that the association with the moving group is by chance.

The link between the new object and the moving group is the vital clue that allows astronomers to find the age of the newly discovered object. Without knowing its age, it’s not possible to know whether it is really a planet, or a brown dwarf, a “failed” star that lack the bulk to trigger the reactions that make stars shine.

[. . .]

Free-floating objects like CFBDSIR2149 are thought to form either as normal planets that have been booted out of their home systems, or as lone objects like the smallest stars or brown dwarfs. In either case these objects are intriguing — either as planets without stars, or as the tiniest possible objects in a range spanning from the most massive stars to the smallest brown dwarfs.

“These objects are important, as they can either help us understand more about how planets may be ejected from planetary systems, or how very light objects can arise from the star formation process,” says Philippe Delorme. “If this little object is a planet that has been ejected from its native system, it conjures up the striking image of orphaned worlds, drifting in the emptiness of space.”

[LINK] "On Super-Earths and Alpha Centauri"

Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster considers, in light of the recent discovery of rocky and close-orbiting exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb, new models of planetary formation. Our solar system, with its well-spaced rocky planets orbiting close to the sun and gas and ice giants orbiting more distantly, really is an anomaly. One pair of astronomers' explanation for this anomaly has interesting implications for potential Earth-like worlds, at Alpha Centauri and elsewhere.

Maybe the reason exoplanets so often surprise us is that we base our thinking on our own Solar System, and the minimum-mass Solar nebula from which it grew, considering this a template. The rest of the galaxy may have other ideas. Consider that close-in super-Earths are common. Planets like these, showing up in abundance in Kepler data and Doppler velocity surveys, are a challenge to explain. Laughlin and Chiang say that more than half, if not nearly all Sun-like stars have planets with radii between 2 and 5 times that of Earth and orbital periods of less than 100 days.

[. . .]

The problem, then, is that our Solar System has no planets inside Mercury’s 88-day orbit. Is it possible our Solar System did not undergo the same kind of formation history that may be the dominant mode in the galaxy? To explore this, the researchers look at migration issues, for it is commonly thought that short-period planets formed several AU out from their stars and then migrated to their present location. But disk migration is poorly understood, and while it may be necessary to explain hot Jupiters, Laughlin and Chiang say it may not be the mechanism to explain the majority of planetary systems with super-Earths in inner orbits.

The alternative: Forget orbital migration and consider the possibility that super-Earths form right where they are, in circumstellar disks that extend inward from 0.5 AU.

[. . .]

Hot young stars should lack close-in super-Earths because they would be too hot for planetesimal-building dust to survive. Brown dwarfs and M dwarfs should have close-in super-Earths and Earths orbiting them. Close-in planets grown from close circumstellar disks should also have orbital planes aligned with the equatorial planes of their host stars. I’ll send you to the paper to go through the entire list of predictions, all of which should allow these ideas to be probed, but I do want to mention one last prediction having a bearing on Centauri B b. For if Laughlin and Chiang are right, then binary systems offer a good test.

After all, close binary systems should make planetary migration extremely difficult. The close companion would disrupt planet formation at large distances from the star. Planets orbiting Centauri B inside the 0.5 AU boundary would be incompatible with migration, and of course, we now have such a planet, along with the likelihood of finding more. Here I drop back to the Science News article, which quotes Laughlin on Centauri B: “I think that the odds that there’s an interesting planet, a truly interesting planet in the system, are very high, given that this one is there.” And if he’s right, that interesting, potentially habitable world may serve as further evidence for the theory that such planets formed right where they are found.

[URBAN NOTE] On my support for the nuclear fuel plant at 1025 Lansdowne Avenue, Toronto

I learned last week via the front page of the Toronto Star that there's a nuclear fuel pellet manufacturing plant at most a dozen minutes' walk to my west, in the General Electric plant on 1025 Lansdowne Avenue, on Lansdowne Avenue just north of my own Dupont Street.

West-end residents are looking for answers after they discovered that an unassuming building on Lansdowne Ave. is actually a nuclear facility licensed to produce nearly 2,000 tonnes of radioactive uranium dioxide pellets each year.

The General Electric-Hitachi plant has been processing natural uranium powder into centimetre-long pellets that are assembled into fuel bundles elsewhere for Canada’s nuclear reactors since 1965.

“The shocking thing is that they can be there for so long and keep things so quiet,” said area resident Dawn Withers.

GE Canada spokeswoman Kim Warburton said the plant handles only natural uranium which is “not dangerous” compared to its enriched counterpart. She said the company’s sign is clearly visible. “GE-Hitachi is a nuclear business . . . it’s on our website.”

Withers, a mother of four who lives about a five-minute drive from the facility, has helped organize a Nov. 15 community meeting to raise awareness.

She said she and others were caught completely off-guard when an anti-nuclear activist arrived in Toronto several weeks ago to warn them about the plant.

There were earlier hints, looking back, most notably Saul Chernos' NOW Toronto article

I’ve known for a while that the four-storey grey GE building at 1025 Lansdowne harboured some process tied to our waste-oblivious nuclear industry, but it’s stayed off my radar – just as it seems to have for other enviros.

But recently I learned that an activist fresh from a drawn-out battle against a similar GE facility in Peterborough had relocated to T.O. and was starting to campaign.

I figured I’d better learn more. So one afternoon earlier this month, I joined Zach Ruiter of Safe and Green Energy Peterborough as he went door to door informing locals of something it appears they didn’t know: the GE Hitachi plant north of Dupont has been processing uranium into fuel pellets for the province’s CANDU reactors for the last 50 years.

Invariably, it hit those living across the street like a bombshell. Ruiter explained that uranium dioxide powder supplied by Cameco Corp. in Port Hope is processed in the plant into hard ceramic pellets that are then transported to GE Hitachi in Peterborough, where they’re slipped into rods and fuel bundles for reactors.

And it looks like the operation will continue for another 10 years. In early 2011, both the Lansdowne facility and the Peterborough one received a joint licence renewal following Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission hearings in Ottawa.

The fact that something radioactive is going on in the neighbourhood is greeted with astonishment and scepticism. “That sounds weird. I don’t believe it,” said a man walking a yellow lab on Brandon.

I admit I also felt seriously underwhelmed. There are no visible markers on the building and fence indicating the presence of radioactive or dangerous materials. Just signs warning about video surveillance.

[. . .]

A few days after my tour, I drop into a Dupont Improvement Group meeting and talk to member Richard Mongiat, who’s lived three blocks from the plant for a decade. It has “always been a mysterious building,” he tells me. “I knew it was attached to GE, but I’ve never really known what’s been going on there.

“There were a ton of toxic plants,” Mongiat says, referring to the area’s industrial past, and contrasting several ongoing brownfield cleanups with quiet, unobtrusive, neatly manicured 1025 Lansdowne.

Since then, the plant is going to be the subject of two public meetings, while yesterday the plant was opened to a media tour.

Two points.

1. I'm surprised by this, but I've no reason to be surprised. People who live in the area of the plant have far less grounds. Yes, the nature of the plant is described on the company's own website, while a Googling reveals (via profilecanada.com) that 1025 Lansdowne Avenue hosts "GE Canada Inc., Nuclear Products", and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's site identifies a General Electric plant in Toronto as one of five pellet manufacturers in Canada, even if it doesn't locate the plant at a specific address within Toronto. Anyone who was curious about what was going on at that plant had only to enter its address into an Internet search engine to find out.

2. Not only am I fine with the safety procedures at the plant, I'd suggest that making the plant move will only contribute to the deindustrialization of downtown Toronto and the consequent displacement of well-paying jobs from the downtown core. This is not a process that should be encouraged in any urban setting, least not one like Toronto that has fared relatively well compared to many of its North American peers.