Lighthouse of the Week, November 24-30, 2024: Porthcawl Breakwater Lighthouse, Wales, UK

 

This lighthouse isn't particular tall or architecturally outstanding. It's a small one, on a breakwater in Wales, and its exact location is found here. It's fairly near Swansea and a little farther away from Cardiff.

What it does have is waves.  Big, monstrous, foamy, crashing waves.  As you will see.

First, though, you will see the short notes from the Lighthouse Directory.

"1860. Active; focal plane 10 m (34 ft); continuous light, white over the entrance channel and red or green to the sides. 9 m (30 ft) hexagonal cast iron tower with domed lantern, painted white with a black band around the base. ... This is one of the only two surviving cast-iron lighthouses in Wales. Long powered by gas, the little lighthouse was not converted to electric power until 1997. Located at the end of the breakwater on Porthcawl Point in Porthcawl, at the eastern entrance to Swansea Bay."

See, I told you it was near Swansea.

Now, about those waves:

More waves, and a couple of pictures of the lighthouse itself, appear below.

The first one accompanied this article:  Remembering the days Wales' iconic Porthcawl Lighthouse was kept lit by coins fed into a meter

Surf's up. 

Can't ever pass this up

 

This Daily Mail article has several pictures of Michelle Keegan wearing fashionable clothes.

Of course I pay attention to an important news article like this.

As you may know, or if not, you will now, she does fashion lines with Very UK.  These pictures show off some of the glamorous looks, which look particularly fashionable on glamorous Michelle.

Michelle Keegan puts on a leggy display in black strapless gown with a daring thigh-split as she marks a major career milestone

I checked out the Very UK website and found a couple of intriguing views of Michelle posing in the line items that bear her name branding.  There's a lot of appealing shots where she smiles, which she does well. But in the picture below, she injected some personality. 

And this picture is about as close to nightwear as I've seen. Of course, she's done some great swimwear shots, too. But this has a certain appeal beyond the obvious.

This happened

 

Not long ago, I commented on the marriage of Ed Westwick and lovely Amy Jackson.

Well, it appears that they've been doing what comes naturally. She does have experience in this endeavor; she had a baby with her previous boyfriend.

Amy Jackson is pregnant! Actress, 32, reveals her bump for the first time as she announces she's expecting first child with husband Ed Westwick, 37 - two months after lavish wedding

And as I have done with other lovely women, here's a lovely picture of Amy.

A new place to see

 

I probably won't be able to visit this place anytime soon. But maybe, if I'm in the area, I'll remember to swing by. It's a "moderately challenging" hike to get to them. 

Here's a picture:

So how did they get that way?   This article covers that question.

Mystery of Crowley Lake Columns Solved

"In describing the formation of the columns, researchers believe that falling snow melted on top of the tuff rock deposits left after the eruption. This still-heated porous material caused the melted snow to boil, which created the even spaces between the columns that exist today."

Cement without the CO2 release?

If you didn't know, and if you want to read this article in its entirety, making cement gives off a lot of greenhouse gas CO2.  Nice quote from the article I'm about to link:

"If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon, behind China and the United States."

So, here's the article:

Reinventing the world’s favorite building material

The idea is to use an industrial byproduct -- slag -- as a substitute for the limestone that is used to make cement in the traditional process. Because limestone is CaCO3, the process releases CO2.  A lot, as the quote above demonstrates.

So is this alternative feasible?

Perhaps.  As the article alludes to, at commercial scale, a lot of slag would be necessary. And I'm not sure how the amount of available slag compares to the amount of available limestone.

But if it could, it would probably be a significant improvement on the current situation., 

"The inventors at Material Evolution are using slag to make their cement because it has been already been super-heated and contains silica and alumina, materials that were transformed and are now “chemically activated,” ready to add strength to the concrete when water is added."

If you're curious, here's how cement is made:

It's been a (short) while

 

I have frequently noted, with a connoisseur's eye, the remarkable perfection of supermodel Izabel Goulart's prime posterior (such as here).  It is not difficult to find pictures of this fundamental feature online as well. But it hasn't been featured recently, until the Daily Mail provided another rear view. 

Izabel Goulart puts on a cheeky display in barely-there bikini while flaunting her incredible figure

This is where they hid it

 

A couple of weeks ago, there was a major theft in Britain.

The thieves (actually, scammers) purloined 24 tons of prime British artisanal cheddar.

Who stole 24 tons of cheddar? ‘Sophisticated’ cheese heist sparks police hunt.

"The stolen cheeses — Hafod Welsh Organic cheddar, Westcombe cheddar, and Pitchfork cheddar — are among “the most sought-after artisan cheeses” in the United Kingdom, the company said."

There was an arrest a couple of days later, but I don't know if there has been progress since then.

If you might be interested in the cheddar cheese that the cheese thieves chose, Pitchfork cheddar was one of the three stolen varieties.

Life all over

 

The Mars rovers, both working now and defunct, are looking for geological indications that life might have existed on Mars at one time. They won't necessarily find signs of life that unmistakably indicate it was alive; they are searching for indications that there could have been conditions when life was possible.

But this article refers to a study that suggests there could be real living life on Mars now.

Life on Mars? Researchers say mid-latitude ice could support life

"If the dusty mid-latitude ice on Mars melts below the surface for part of the year, then, like on Earth, microbes such as cyanobacteria could take advantage of the nutrients in the Martian dust mixed with the ice. They could use small amounts of melt water while living in a ‘radiatively habitable zone’ below the surface, where the temperature is just right for liquid water to be present."

This is the actual study:

Potential for photosynthesis on Mars within snow and ice

There aren't any pictures of Mars or Martians in this paper.  So here's a nice one.

This is from the Curiosity rover, and here's the article it appears in:

NASA's Curiosity rover captures 360-degree view of Mars — and finds strange sulfur stones

The mine vs. the flower

 

Short note:

Lithium is really, really important to the global economy due to its use in batteries. So more lithium from the U.S. would be a great thing, right?

Well, not for an endangered flower. And I'm torn. We need the lithium. And we need the biodiversity of the environment.

So, what to do, what to do?

U.S. approves massive lithium mine in Nevada, overriding protests

"In a final permit issued Thursday afternoon, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management found that the mine would not jeopardize the survival of Tiehm’s buckwheat, a rare, cream-colored wildflower that grows only on lithium- and boron-rich soil in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The agency noted that Australia-based Ioneer, the company behind the project, plans to protect roughly 719 acres designated as critical habitat for the wildflower."

However, it's not over yet.

"But Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the conservation group plans to challenge the final permit in court. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited mining as the greatest threat to the survival of Tiehm’s buckwheat when the agency listed it under the Endangered Species Act in 2022; Donnelly said the suit will argue that the BLM violated the law in allowing the mining operation to move forward.

“There’s this real question of how our bedrock environmental laws are going to hold up under the pressure of the energy transition,” Donnelly said. “The Endangered Species Act does not have carve-outs if we really, really want the minerals that are going to drive a species extinct.”

It's not too far away from California's Mono Lake, but I don't think that's a consideration.

Marvin Gaye wrote this by himself

 

One of the great songs of the 1970s, which was very prescient, was written entirely by the gifted Marvin Gaye. It was the third song by Gaye to win a "Grammy Hall of Fame" award.

It's full title was "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)".  The song was featured on the album "What's Going On".  

You can hear it here on YouTube.

Here are the full lyrics. In part, it's a prayer; I wonder if we still have one.

[Verse 1]
Woah-oh, oh, mercy, mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the North and South and East


[Verse 2]
(Father) Woah-oh, mercy, mercy me (Ah, mercy)
Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no (Have mercy, Father)
Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas (Have mercy, please have mercy, Father)
Fish full of mercury (Please have mercy, Father)

[Verse 3]
Oh, oh, oh mercy, mercy me (Help us, Father, have mercy, please help us, Father)
Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no (Have mercy, you oughta help us, Father)
Radiation underground and in the sky (Please have mercy, ah, help us, Father)
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying (Oh, please help us, Father, Father, help us, Father)

[Verse 4]
Oh, mercy, mercy me (Have mercy, mmm, mercy, Father)
Oh, things ain't what they used to be (Please have mercy, ah, mercy, Father)
What about this overcrowded land? (Have mercy, Father, oh, have mercy, Father)
How much more abuse from man can she stand? (Please have mercy, mmm)

[Outro]
Ooh, ooh, oh, no, no, na, na, na, na
My sweet Lord, na, na, na
My, my Lord, my sweet Lord
Breathe

Road trips that are going to take some time

 

A few years ago, I spent some time using Google StreetView to go from the southern end of U.S. Highway 41 (in Miami) to the northern end (in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, at the end of the Keweenaw Peninsula).  All of these posts are still on the blog;  I have been meaning to organize the links to them by state for awhile, but I need a lot more time than I currently have to do that.

In any case, Highway 41 might be pretty long, but it's not as long as the roads in this article from the Daily Passport folks:

Cruise Down 10 of the World's Longest Highways

Here's one example:

Interstate 90:
"Beating Interstate 80 by just 121 miles to the top spot on the list of longest interstate highways is the 3,020-mile-long Interstate 90. It crosses 13 states in the northern part of the country, traveling between Boston and Seattle. From the shorelines of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan (two of the Great Lakes) to the Great Plains of South Dakota and the Rocky Mountains, the highway passes through many areas of breathtaking natural beauty. Due to its northerly location, temporary closures of the route are common in the winter following heavy snowfalls. A few highlights along the route include Minnesota’s 55-foot-tall Jolly Green Giant Statue, Mount Rushmore National Monument, and Garnet Ghost Town in Montana.

And Wall Drug (as the picture in the article indicates), a bit to the east of the Black Hills, where Mount Rushmore stands.

So that's where it went

 

After 15 years, scientists have found the crater that was formed by crashing a rocket fuel tank into the Moon.

Fifteen Years Later, Scientists Locate a Lunar Impact Site

"In 2009, NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into the Moon and used a small trailing spacecraft to observe the results: The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was designed to search for frozen lunar water and other volatiles in the lunar regolith by knocking them off the Moon. Volatiles are materials that readily vaporize, or shift from liquid to gas. The LCROSS impact kicked up a cloud of regolith containing plenty of water (5.6% by mass), along with small amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, methane, and ammonia. But it did so in a permanently shadowed area of the Moon, leaving scientists unable to directly observe the crater after its formation.

Now, new research has located the crater the LCROSS mission left behind, allowing scientists to better contextualize the mission’s results and informing future efforts to locate and use resources on the Moon."

The figure below is from the paper about the discovery, entitled "The LCROSS Impact Crater as Seen by ShadowCam and Mini-RF: Size, Context, and Excavation of Copernican Volatiles"; read it for the full details.

Figure 1. Mini-RF S1 (total backscattered power) (a) before (lsz_00455_87s324) and after (lsz_03391_85s318) for the LCROSS centaur impact location, overlaid on LOLA hillshade (Barker et al., 2023). The D ∼ 900 m fresh crater near the LCROSS impact site has radar-bright rays that cross where the LCROSS impact occurred (also noted by Neish et al., 2011). (c) and (d) are zoom ins. Both the before and after collects were averaged to 7.5 m/px, 3 × 3 Kuan speckle filtered (Kuan et al., 1985), and stretched to a 0.1%–99% range, and gamma corrected (γ = 0.25). The spatial extent of (c) and (d) are the same as Figure 2 (a) and (b) below. Data are in south polar stereographic projection."

Lighthouse of the Week, November 17-23, 2024: North Queensferry Lighthouse, Scotland

 

I came across this lighthouse by accident, and was immediately intrigued by the statement that it was the world's shortest traditional tower lighthouse. I would have thought that Rhode Island's somewhat famous Castle Hill lighthouse, which I've been to in person, held that title. Castle Hill is 34 feet (10 meters) tall.

This week's featured lighthouse, the North Queensferry lighthouse in, well, North Queensferry, is 17 feet (5 meters) tall. So it's clearly shorter than Castle Hill.  For location, you can see where it is on the map (it's officially called the Forth Bridges Lighthouse Museum, it appears), and note that it is north across the water from Queensferry -- which makes sense -- and Queensferry is northwest of Edinburgh. By the way, the water body to the east of the lighthouse and the bridge next to it is the Firth of Forth.

So now the Lighthouse Directory can fill us in on this diminutive but brave example of lighthousery.

"1817 (John Rennie). Reactivated (inactive 1964-2010), now unofficial; focal plane about 7 m (23 ft); light character unknown. 5 m (17 ft) hexagonal stone tower with the original lantern but no gallery; unpainted. ... In November 2006 plans were announced for a restoration of the lighthouse. After a number of delays the restoration was carried out in the spring of 2009-10 and the light was relit by Princess Anne on 22 June. Located at the foot of Main Street, between the Forth Road and Railroad bridges, near the Deep Sea World aquarium in North Queensferry."

The Daily Mail had an article about it, but they said it was six feet taller than the Lighthouse Directory's listing.

Inside the world's smallest working lighthouse: How a 23ft tower once powered by whale oil still shines for up to three miles

And I've got pictures below this line, and also a short amateur video.

The northernmost plant

 

National Geographic went to the ends of the Earth.

Again (they've been there before). 

The last flower at the top of the world—and the perilous journey to reach it

"Here, above the Arctic Circle, the planet is warming four times faster than anywhere else on Earth. Changes here will have ripple effects across the globe, which is why the team braved harsh conditions to find what lives on the edge."

If you want to know where it is, I found it on Google Maps.  The satellite photography isn't even good.

Read the article if you want to see the last flower.  Here's the species, the Arctic poppy.

There's a tomb in Petra

 

Petra is the famous city of stone in Jordan. It's been in movies (notably, as the article below reiterates, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), and numerous scenic pictures. 

Inside the most famous of the buildings (?) in Petra, called the Treasury, archaeologists found a tomb. I don't think that they were expecting that, even though there are other tombs around.

‘Stunning’ hidden tomb found at Petra site featured in ‘Indiana Jones’

Underneath the Treasury in Petra, Jordan, archaeologists found remains and a ceramic vessel some said looked similar to the “Holy Grail” depicted in “Indiana Jones.”

OK, they must have been important to be buried there. Who were they?

In general, they know.  But who the individuals buried in the Treasury were, not so much.

"But many questions about the Nabataeans and their city still remain. “There is so much that we have yet to learn about the Treasury, said Creasman in the Warner Bros. news release. One major remaining unanswered question: “When was this remarkable structure built, and why?”

I know, why? 

A view of the Treasury:

A great review of a terrible (yet fascinating) science fiction movie

 

I'll admit to watching The Chronicles of Riddick a few times. Hated every minute. And kept watching every minute of it. I can recite dialogue from it. 

Science-fictionally, it's ridiculous. It's a space opera and all that entails. Of particular awful fascination is the impossible planet of Crematoria.  There is literally no way this planet works. Yet it's ideal for the action in the movie.

Crematoria, artist's conception, because it's certainly not real:

And if you loved and hated it, somewhat like I do, the good news/bad news is that there is going to be a sequel!  Yay/ugh!

Read more. He agrees with me (but offers more insight).

The World Wasn’t Ready For Vin Diesel’s Sci-Fi Epic

This looks watchable

 

It's only in theaters, so I have to find the theaters.  Lord of the Rings fans might like this one. I hope I do, too.

The War of the Rohirrim

Zendaya channels Cher

 

I don't know if you saw this from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony this year, but Zendaya paid tribute to Cher by looking amazingly like her, in a dress very similar to one Cher wore years ago.

Zendaya leaves very little to the imagination as she channels Cher in a daring gold cut out gown at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony

The coat she wore there was pretty cool, too.

If you missed the show (which I did), here's the full list of 2024 inductees.

Performer Category: 

• Mary J. Blige 
• Cher 
• Dave Matthews Band 
• Foreigner 
• Peter Frampton 
• Kool & The Gang 
• Ozzy Osbourne 
• A Tribe Called Quest 

Musical Influence Award: 

• Alexis Korner 
• John Mayall 
• Big Mama Thornton 

Musical Excellence Award: 

• Jimmy Buffett 
• MC5 
• Dionne Warwick 
• Norman Whitfield 

Lighthouse of the Week, November 10 - 16, 2024: Farol de Câmara de Lobos, Madeira, Portugal

 

If you don't know exactly where the Portuguese island of Madeira is, that's OK. Because while it's not real far from Portugal, it's considerably closer to Morocco, sitting in the Atlantic Ocean and fairly isolated.

This week's lighthouse, the name of which you can garner from the title of the post, is located here on Madeira. If you want to know where Madeira is, zoom out. I also recommend the pictures. 

The Lighthouse Directory says this much about it, and in this case, there's not much to say.

"1937 (station established 1920s?). Active; focal plane 23 m (75 ft); red light, 4 s on, 2 s off. 5 m (17 ft) square concrete equipment room with gallery; the light is displayed from a short mast on the roof. Building painted white; the mast has a red horizontal band. ... Located atop a vertical volcanic dike adjacent to the main pier at Câmara de Lobos, a village about 8 km (5 mi) west of Funchal on the south coast of the island."

All that's left to do, then, is show the pictures.

It's all we need

 

In this era of uncertainty and doubt and distress and anger,

let's just take a break and watch Shakira dance and sing and party with beautiful friends.

We need more nukies

 

"Nukies" = nuclear submarines. 

One of the demonstrative examples of how well modular nuclear reactors could work is that the Navy has nuclear-powered submarines and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The Navy has had these for a long time. So why can't they be scaled up just a bit, mass-produced, and all this energy/power/electricity can be used to get humanity to a lower-CO2, higher energy future?

I don't know why that hasn't happened. Part of the reason it hasn't happened is that the concerns which should have motivated the development of the modular nuclear reactor revolution were derailed by the misinformation spread by the oil and gas interests of the fossil fuel industry. 

But that's secondary to the subject of this post, based on the Washington Post op-ed from George Will, which is that the Navy doesn't have enough nuclear submarines.

Nuclear submarines, crucial for U.S. defense and in short supply

"The most recent figures are that the U.S. submarine fleet now numbers 68, only 50 of which are of the hunter-killer “fast attack” category. And 20 of those are, Hendrix says, “in drydocks or tied to piers” because of the Navy’s three-year maintenance backlog. So, “the Navy is currently short three drydocks and the workforce that goes with them.” No entirely new shipyard has been built in a century."

The solution is to train more workers, build more, repair what are waiting, and get the fleet back up to the numbers it needs. Yes, I know it will cost money. So don't pass tax cuts, ye stoopid Republicans.  Let's get our priorities in order.

They work and we need more of them

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