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CSUSB professor shares her team’s work on centaurs, icy bodies flying through space
Cosmos
Nov. 4, 2020

An article about icy bodies flying through space called centaurs included findings of a team led by Laura Woodney of California State University, San Bernardino. That team has found another active centaur on the verge of becoming a true comet.

This object, known as P/2019 LD2, has been determined to be in a “gateway orbit” from which it is poised to be launched into the inner Solar System by gravitational interactions with Jupiter in 2063, Woodney said at the recent American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences annual meeting.

“This is the first time we’ve discovered an object that we know is going to become a comet within [at least] the lifetime of our graduate students, so we can watch this transition process,” she says.

That’s important, Woodney adds, because up until now her team is “reasonably certain” that P/2019 LD2 has never before passed close enough to the Sun for solar heat to vaporize its water and produce the type of dramatic tail most of us identify with comets.

Read the complete article at “Unusual centaur emitting gas and dust.”

Read more about the Woodney-led team’s work at “CSUSB professor presents research on ‘Centaurs’ at American Astronomical Society meeting.”

Actions, not campaign rhetoric, will be the gauge for whoever wins U.S. presidential election, CSUSB professor says
Press TV
Nov. 3, 2020

David Yaghoubian, CSUSB professor of history, was interviewed for a segment on comments by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who told CBS News that his country’s leadership “would prefer Joe Biden win the U.S. election. It was a first for a country that has been reluctant to tip its hand.” Zarif also said that actions, rather than words, would be more important than what either Biden or President Donald Trump said during the campaign.

Yaghoubian agreed. “It’s purely going to be their actions, not their words and their euphemisms and their promises on the campaign trail. And, of course, he (Zarif) is completely accurate.”

He was critical of the Obama administration that preceded Trump, saying that it, too, had made promises during the 2008 campaign that were not kept, especially in regards to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multi-national agreement to regulate Iran’s nuclear development program, from which Trump pulled the U.S. in May 2018. Trump said he wanted a stronger deal, and imposed economic sanctions to get Iran to the negotiation table, which has further soured relations between the two countries.

“Actions are going to speak infinitely louder than words from the American executive,” Yaghoubian said.

Watch the segment at “Iran FM: It's not what new US admin. says that counts, but what it does in office.”

These news clips and others may be viewed at “In the Headlines.”