Lighthouse of the Week, November 3 - 9, 2024: Horsburgh Lighthouse (Pulau Batu Puteh), Singapore

 

I looked at several candidate countries and lighthouses before choosing one for this week. It's owned by Singapore, and has an interesting look to it.

It's called the Horsburgh lighthouse, and it's located here.  Right smack in the middle of the entrance to the Singapore Strait, on the eastern side. It's on an island named Pedra Blanca ("white rock"), which apparently in Portuguese can also be Pedra Branca -- I checked -- and that's what Google Maps has.

There's some history here, according to the Lighthouse Directory.

"1851 (John Turnbull Thomson). Active; focal plane 31 m (102 ft); white flash every 10 s. 34 m (112 ft) round granite tower with lantern and gallery, attached to a 2-story concrete keeper's complex. Lighthouse painted with black and white horizontal bands. ... This lighthouse, Singapore's oldest, was named for James Horsburgh (1762-1836), the hydrographer of the East India Company who charted the seaways around Singapore. Following his death in 1836 British merchants in China quickly proposed that a memorial lighthouse be built at the Straits, but a decade passed before the site was selected and construction was authorized. The lighthouse stands on a notorious rock outcrop, long called Pedra Blanca ("white rock," batu puteh in Malay) by European navigators. The islet is about 40 km (25 mi) east of any other Singapore territory. In the late 1900s Malaysia maintained a claim to Pulau Batu Puteh on the grounds that the islet was historically under the control of the Sultan of Johor (Johor is now a state of Malaysia). Malaysia did not object to Singapore's continued operation of the lighthouse but sought sovereignty over the island. In 2003 Malaysia and Singapore agreed to refer their territorial dispute to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands. The case was argued in November 2007 and in May 2008 the court ruled in favor of Singapore."

 It's not gorgeous, because there are a lot of structures on that rock outcrop. See below.

When is "soon"?

 

Soon for this?

2 years? 

10 years?

This century?

Just curious.  (Oh yeah -- how much is it going to cost to fly on this thing?)

London to New York in 1 hour? Hypersonic jet dubbed Stargazer could soon transport passengers across the Atlantic at dizzying speeds of up to 4,600mph - three times faster than Concorde

"A Texas aerospace company called Venus Aerospace is working on a jet plane called Stargazer, along with the engine that will power it."

"When ready, VDR2 [the engine] will power high-speed drones as well as Stargazer, which the company has raised $33 million to build."

About that "soon" thing -- the article doesn't say. But Boom Supersonic is shooting for 2027.

I'll believe it when I see it.

The Supreme Court did this?

 

The Supreme Court of the United States (the current version) actually did something in the interests of the people of the United States.

What? 

Well, we can be amazed briefly.

Supreme Court clears way for Biden limits on methane and mercury pollution

"The Supreme Court on Friday refused to block new Biden administration rules requiring fossil-fuel-fired power plants to slash emissions of mercury and other toxic substances and oil and gas firms to curb methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from their operations.

The issues were two of three playing out on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket over a suite of Biden administration plans to clean up fossil fuels. Together, those plans represent some of the president’s most ambitious efforts to address climate change and reduce pollution."

By the way, the opposition in the case was mainly two dozen Republican-led states.

Of course it was.

Lighthouse of the Week, October 27 - November 2, 2024: Sidero Lighthouse, Corfu, Greece

 

For some reason, when I was thinking of a lighthouse for this week, the island of Corfu came to my mind. I didn't know if Corfu had a lighthouse, but being a Greek island, I suspected it did.

In fact, it does. It's an active lighthouse, but it isn't in the greatest shape. It's part of an old fortress that overlooks Corfu city. This time, I've got a zoomed-out map that shows where it is on Corfu, and a zoomed-in map that shows where the fortress is.

The Lighthouse Directory provides this information (and also says it is endangered due to poor maintenance, a state to which the pictures attest):

"1828 (British). Active; focal plane 78 m (256 ft); two white flashes every 6 s. 8 m (26 ft) round stone tower with lantern and gallery, attached to a small 1-story stone keeper's cottage. The lighthouse is unpainted; the lantern roof is green. ... The lighthouse was built by the British to light the way to their principal naval base in the Ionian Islands. It stands at the east end of the town of Kérkyra within the Venetian citadel, which withstood repeated sieges by the Turks."

 Four pictures are below.

 

Bacteria can eat plastic

 

This might be one way out of the plastic crisis. 

Plastic-eating bacteria could combat pollution problems, scientists hope 

A bacteria commonly found in wastewater can break down plastic to turn it into a food source, a new study finds. Scientists hope it is a pollution solution.

"In a study published Thursday [October 3]  in Environmental Science and Technology, scientists laid out their examination of Comamonas testosteroni, a bacteria that grows on polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, a plastic commonly found in single-use food packaging and water bottles. PET makes up about 12 percent of global solid waste and 90 million tons of the plastic produced each year."

Unlike most other bacteria, which thrive on sugar, C. testosteroni has a more refined palate, including chemically complex materials from plants and plastics that take longer to decompose."

 It's a very special bacteria.

A reference on Authoritarianism

 

The link to this page was in a Washington Post op-ed by the esteemed and remarkable Jennifer Rubin, entitled "How JD Vance underlined Trump's worst vulnerabilities". 

Authoritarianism, explained

It's very good. Now, I'm not sure how I can spread this more widely, because my blog is not widely read (if it's read at all), but if I could spread it more in the mediasphere, I would.

What caught my eye was the quote that Rubin used:

“The goal is not always to sell a lie, but instead to undermine the notion that anything in particular is true.”

If you're wondering, here's the seven tactics of authoritarians:

1. Politicizing independent institutions
2. Spreading disinformation
3. Aggrandizing executive power
4. Quashing dissent
5. Scapegoating vulnerable communities
6. Corrupting elections
7. Stoking violence

Remind you of anyone?

Let's hope America goes the right way.

Lost ice, new borders

 

Italy and Switzerland are redrawing a small section of their border in the Alps because the glaciers are melting and changing the landscape.

Italy and Switzerland to redraw Alpine border due to melting glaciers

Melting glaciers changed the topography of a roughly 330-foot-long segment of the border between Italy and Switzerland.

"The change, which impacts an approximately 330-foot-long segment of the border, is happening near one of Europe’s most popular skiing destinations, Zermatt, and the iconic Matterhorn mountain. One of the biggest glaciers near Matterhorn, the Theodul Glacier, retreated almost 1,000 feet between 1990 to 2015.

The melting, which has been attributed to climate change, revealed new topographical details that raised new questions about the dimensions of the border between the two countries. In 2022, the jurisdiction of a glacial Italian mountain lodge there came under question when melting ice revealed the refuge was actually straddling the border.

“Significant sections of the border are defined by the watershed or ridge lines of glaciers, firn or perpetual snow,” the Swiss government said in a statement obtained by Bloomberg. “These formations are changing due to the melting of glaciers.”

There's a really good graphic image showing why this is happening here, but I can't download it without an account.  

So I'll just use this one below, which is from the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo.

Voyager 1 keeps hanging on

 

Voyager 1 is way, way, way, way, way out in space. And it's old. And it's cold. And it's radioactive isotope heaters are running out of radioactivity. And it's running with a computer that requires weeks to reprogram.

Yet still it persists.  And what's more, when they ask something on it to work, it still does.

NASA built this one right.

47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft just fired up thrusters it hasn’t used in decades

The basic story is that the elderly spacecraft has three sets of thrusters, and only needs one to keep it aligned and communicating with Earth. But as the thrusters are used, they get clogged (somewhat like arteries). One set got so clogged that they decided they had to switch to a different set of thrusters. But that required some extra effort, as described here:

"As Voyager 1 and its twin probe, Voyager 2, have aged, the mission team has slowly turned off nonessential systems on both spacecraft to conserve power, including heaters. As a result, components on Voyager 1 are colder now, and the team knew it couldn’t just send a command to Voyager 1 to switch immediately to one of the attitude propulsion thrusters without doing something to warm them up.

But Voyager 1 doesn’t have enough power to switch any heaters back on without turning something else off, and its scientific instruments are too valuable to shut off in case they don’t come back on, the team said.

After going back to the drawing board, the team realized it could shut off one of the spacecraft’s main heaters for about an hour, which would enable engineers to turn on the thruster heaters and safely make the switch.

This plan worked, and by August 27, Voyager 1 was back to relying on one of its original thruster sets to stay in touch with Earth."

At this time, Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles from Earth, and Voyager 2 is 12 billion miles away. 

Keep in touch a couple more years, V1.

Is this feasible?

 

When I read this, the first thing I thought was:  where are all the resources (raw materials, fuel, people to control the ships) coming from?

The second thing I thought was -- what happens when they get there? Are they just going to crash them into the surface?  If so, that seems both wasteful and arrogant.

Elon Musk, despite all of his flaws and misconceptions and biases (which are substantial) and misguidedness, dreams big. And at times, those dreams have become a useful reality (SpaceX, Tesla). But he also misses the mark a lot (X, formerly Twitter; support for Donald Trump). 

So we'll see if this happens in any form.

SpaceX to launch five uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years, says Musk

"If the uncrewed mission lands successfully [just one of them?], crewed missions could happen in four years, Musk said. However, if any challenges arise, then the crewed mission will be postponed by another two years, he added."

...

"However, Musk said SpaceX will increase the number of spaceships traveling to Mars exponentially with every transit opportunity, adding that eventually there will be thousands of Starships going to Mars."

That's a lot of resources.

That's the idea, anyway

T