dirty space news update

here are a few pieces of dirty space news that i've collected recently, all together in one happy place for your enjoyment.

from a paper simulating magnetic fields called "High Energy Neutrino Emission from Astrophysical Jets in the Galaxy."  i particularly like the last line of the abstract: "One of the main ingredients of the present work is the presence of a toroidal magnetic field that confines the jet flow and furthermore greatly affects the distribution of the high energy neutrinos." 

Caption from paper: A plot of the magnetic field magnitude roughly half way into the simulation. We can see the jet self-confinement due to magnetic forces resulting in a narrow beam.

Adrian Price-Whelan on twitter shared a graph he created for his research and wondered "maybe it's not that bad, just my inner 11 year old showing." i think we can all agree that it is that bad.  

helpfully, a fellow astronomer suggested that "if you switched x and y, it might not be quite so snigger-worthy." i'm not sure it helped... 

and finally, yet another space vehicle for our dirty space news entertainment - Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle completed its first developmental test flight.

there is even a viedo of the launch!