JamesSavik

As literate, creative people we should be able to say **** in all sorts of interesting ways. Romance and drama would be pretty boring if there was only one word for ****. Granted, **** is a multi-function, multipurpose Swiss Army Knife of words. It can, depending on usage, be a noun, verb, adjective and even an adverb. The problem with **** is that it gets overused and loses its potency. There is definitely a time and a place for ****. We shouldn't dilute it or wear it out with overuse. Words like **** are supposed to have sharp edges. It's supposed to make you blink, raise and eyebrow or wrinkle your nose. The reason it doesn't anymore is that it has been overused to the point where it's shape edges are dulled. It is a word that is actually improved by its rarity. Seeing **** in a sentence should elicit a reaction other than -meh- or you are using it wrong. If you are really good at it, you can say **** and no one will even notice at all. The craft of writing isn't about the power of ****, it's about the power of the other words and ideas in that sentence.

As literate, creative people we should be able to say **** in all sorts of ways. Romance and drama would be pretty boring if there was only one word for ****. Granted, **** is a multi-function, multipurpose Swiss Army Knife of words. It can, depending on usage, be a noun, verb, adjective and even an adverb. The problem with **** is that it gets overused and loses its potency. There is definitely a time and a place for ****. We shouldn't dilute it or wear it out with overuse. Words like **** are supposed to have sharp edges. It's supposed to make you blink, raise and eyebrow or wrinkle your nose. The reason it doesn't anymore is that it has been overused to the point where it's shape edges are dulled. It is a word that is actually improved by its rarity. Seeing **** in a sentence should elicit a reaction other than -meh- or you are using it wrong. If you are really good at it, you can say **** and no one will even notice at all. The craft isn't about the power of ****, it's about the power of the other words and ideas in that sentence.

Let's face it: humans are petty, vindictive and just plain mean. As we trundle towards extinction with enormous problems that we don't have the economy, science, technology or will to face, the best thing for us would be a beneficent alien takeover. No- not the nuke your planet to radioactive slag and drive on alien encounter. Cool aliens that show up, take over, get the trains running on time and then teach us some of that alien voodoo. Fat chance of course but we can wish for it. We are a remarkably stupid race. We know that fossil fuels are bad for the planet yet we drill baby drill. We're scared shitless of nuclear energy, the only technology that has a zero carbon footprint and actually has the wattage to power our grids. Our political processes are so mired in incompetence and blatant corruption that many people don't vote simply because it's often just a choice between a criminal and a religious nut. It would sure be nice if some benevolent aliens showed up to lend us a hand. Maybe show us how to make fusion work and not blow up a few countries. Help us transition from the arms race which everyone but the billionaires lose to a science and technology race that the species wins. Instead of politically appointed bureaucrats running important things like the Dept of Energy or the Bureau of Land Management we have artificial intelligence oversight that won't put up with corruption. Can you imagine getting a galactic level education? Could you imagine what we could do with it? I can and it would never be allowed. No sane alien would ever trust a bunch of dumb ass primates like us with any technology more sophisticated with a zippo. I think that we as a species have reached a point to where we simply must grow the fuck up or go extinct. It's really that simple folks. We face our problems and handle them or they will end us. There is coming a point when we will kick the can down the road one more time and it will explode.

Prompt 633 ____________ The Machine Lt. Geiger's squad of Marines sat in their briefing room of the transport Quantico. In peace time, Alliance soldiers pulled all sorts of duties and this appeared to be no different. When there was something difficult, dangerous and probably deadly afoot, that is when they call the Marines. The twelve men of his squad were neatly arrayed in the chairs. The other five squads of the platoon were all sitting together, looking smart, perfectly on time and wondering what was going on. Geiger looked at his tablet computer and saw that Captain Gearing had sent a message to his squad leaders: "Civilians: what can you do?" Everyone seemed to get the message at the same time. There was a collective sigh. Marines began to do all manner of tasks on their tablet computers. Given a spare minute or two, they would use it for all it was worth. Seven minutes late, Captain Gearing entered the room followed by three other men in in the uniforms of the Alliance Scout Service. Geiger stifled a chuckle. Not all the Marines did. The Alliance Scout Service had an unfortunate acronym but, it suited them rather well in Geiger's experience. The few Scouts that he had met weren't that impressive. The Scouts, as they were more politely called, pulled long, deep missions into unexplored parts of the galaxy charting unexplored space. They were all science and tech types with limited social skills that made them loads of fun at parties. Their small science ships jumped from system to system cataloging, charting and mapping everything their sensors could light up. Gearing said, "Gentlemen, this is going to be a background briefing. This information is all classified. You'll soon discover why. We're about to pull some hazardous missions and you need to know where we're going and what we are going to do once we get there. To get us started, this is Master Scout Zimmerman." Zimmerman was an elderly gentleman wearing the white uniform of the Scout Service with four red pips on his shoulder. Gearing's eyebrows arched as that indicated the equivalent rank of a Rear Admiral in the Fleet. Zimmerman made a few key strokes on his computer pad and a holographic star display. He began, "For the last three years, the Scout service has been working its way core-ward along these four sectors: 921, 922, 923 and 924. We've cataloged something on the order of twelve thousand star systems. Our crews are professional and experienced and when we lose two of them in the same general area, we take notice. Here in sector 922 we began to find artifacts of an advanced civilization. As we went deeper into the sector, we have found the wreckage of another extinct civilization. This one is big, advanced and not nearly as old as the Sagitta ruins we discovered sixty years ago. From here am going to turn over the description of the civilization to Dr. Ives." An older female senior Scout traded places with Zimmerman and began speaking, "I am Specialist Sloan. I've been working on the ruins of the Empire for the last year and a half. I call it the Empire because from what I've seen, it appears to fit. This civilization appears to be related to humans." At that, almost everyone in the room was either speaking or stunned silent. Gearing knocked on the table and there was silence. Sloan touched her computer pad and the star map zoomed in. She continued, "We haven't penetrated very far into the Empire yet. We have only touched the fringe. Like we said, These ruins are only on the order of fifteen thousand years old. So far we've discovered that the Empire was destroyed in what we assume was a civil war. We aren't sure about that but, we know for certain that their machines still operate. Our scouts were destroyed in what appear to be minefields." "Here on the map you see one of Empires frontier systems: Gillette 637. We have been able to get in this system and we've discovered quite a lot about them. This outpost seems to have been an industrial colony.

Magician by RE Feist Book 1 of the The Riftwar Saga.

NASA VIDEO: "Supermoon Trilogy!" --Tonight's Moon Kicks Off a Series of Three Supermoons on December 3, 2017, January 1, 2018, and January 31, 2018 (WATCH Video) December 03, 2017 Source Link: Daily Galaxy Mark your calendars: on December 3, 2017, January 1, 2018, and January 31, 2018. A supermoon is a Moon that is full when it is also at or near its closest point in its orbit around Earth. Since the Moon’s orbit is elliptical, one side (apogee) is about 30,000 miles (50,000 km) farther from Earth than the other (perigee). Nearby perigee full Moons appear about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than full Moons that occur near apogee in the Moon's orbit. “The supermoons are a great opportunity for people to start looking at the Moon, not just that once but every chance they have!” says Noah Petro, a research scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. It’s hard for our eyes to distinguish these small changes in size when the Moon is high amidst the vastness of the night sky. But any time you catch a full Moon as it rises or sets, while it’s suspended low on the horizon beaming through the silhouettes of trees or buildings, its apparent size might make you do a double-take. You almost feel as though you could reach out, grab the glowing orb, and drop it into your coffee cup. Even more so if it’s a supermoon. If you can only catch one episode of the supermoon trilogy, catch the third one. It will be extra special. First of all, the January 31st supermoon will feature a total lunar eclipse, with totality viewable from western North America across the pacific to Eastern Asia. The Moon’s orbit around our planet is tilted so it usually falls above or below the shadow of the Earth. About twice each year, a full Moon lines up perfectly with the Earth and Sun such that Earth’s shadow totally blocks the Sun’s light, which would normally reflect off the Moon. “The lunar eclipse on January 31 will be visible during moonset. Folks in the Eastern United States, where the eclipse will be partial, will have to get up in the morning to see it,” notes Petro. “But it’s another great chance to watch the Moon.” The Moon will lose its brightness and take on an eerie, fainter-than-normal glow from the scant sunlight that makes its way through Earth’s atmosphere. Often cast in a reddish hue because of the way the atmosphere bends the light, totally eclipsed Moons are sometimes called ‘blood Moons.’ “We’re seeing all of the Earth’s sunrises and sunsets at that moment reflected from the surface of the Moon,” says Sarah Noble, a Program Scientist at NASA headquarters. The January 31st supermoon will also be the second full Moon of the month. Some people call the second full Moon in a month a Blue Moon, that makes it a super ‘blue Moon.’ Blue Moons happen every two and a half years, on average. With the total eclipse, it’ll be a royal spectacle indeed: a ‘super blue blood’ Moon. Sometimes the celestial rhythms sync up just right to wow us. Heed your calendar reminders. On the three dates marked, step out into the moonset or moonrise and look up for a trilogy of sky watching treats! The Daily Galaxy via Moon/NASA

Mount Agung on Bali Erupts! Mount Agung on Wikipedia London Express live coverage

I have a theory about banned books list. I think if a book is put on it, that is probably good for another million readers. If I ever heard that a book was "banned", I had to read it to see what all the noise was about.

What's not to love about cats?

It sounds to me as if someone is thinking in terms of black&white when a spectrum is really more appropriate. Sure- when you pick up a comic book you aren't going to get Tolstoy. On the other hand, when you pick up Tolstoy, you aren't looking for the comic book experience. It depends on what you are looking for. Batman or Anna Karenina? Judge Dredd or Pierre Bezukhov? We don't read things for the same reasons. God knows why anyone that's not held at gunpoint would read Tolstoy. It's a screaming, eye watering bore. Some people, obvious gluttons for punishment. actually do suffer through it. Maybe they are looking for a historical perspective on Czarist Russia. Although there is some brilliant Russian literature, I would rather be flogged than to try to read it. Now we're back to the comic books and graphic novels but, if there is anything we've learned from that genre, there's more depth to it than we give it credit for. People have and do read comic books and graphic novels for a whole spectra of reasons. Like the alienation of the X-Men and redemption through community. Like the destruction of the nameless man and his recovery of self in V for Vendetta. Like the Punisher's quest for justice. No- it's not War and Peace but it is dealing with more complex themes and ideas that the genre gets credit for. If it did not deal with the human condition, it wouldn't keep drawing people back in. Science Fiction has been defined by some as speculative fiction. It asks the child's question what if... What if we colonize other worlds? What if we develop radical new technologies? What if we meet alien civilizations that have very little in common with us? These are worthy areas of exploration. If we do colonize other worlds, will we repeat the mistakes of imperialism and colonialism? If we develop radical new technologies, how will they effect us? If we meet alien civilizations how will they see us? The same can be said for science fiction- while some of it is obvious fluff, some of it asks some pretty deep questions. While it is easy to dismiss a great deal of it, some of it can't be. The best of it has a rare capacity of being both worthy and readable. Herbert's Dune can stand next to anything in terms of complexity, richness of plot and the questions it raises. Heinlein's Starship Troopers is another example of a book that is geared towards a young adult audience but addresses serious political and moral questions about civic responsibility. Yes- when it comes to science fiction some people will read, relax and enjoy- feet up, brain off. If they are reading the right stuff, perhaps completely by accident, they will be exposed to ideas and questions that really do matter.

Astronomers Observe Strange, Exotic Behavior at Titan's Polar Regions November 21, 2017 Source Link A new study led by a University of Bristol earth scientist has shown that recently reported unexpected behavior on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and is the only moon in our solar system to have a substantial atmosphere, is due to its unique atmospheric chemistry. Titan's polar atmosphere recently experiences and unexpected and significant cooling, contrary to all model predictions and differing from the behavior of all other terrestrial planets in our solar system. "This effect is so far unique in the solar system and is only possible because of Titan's exotic atmospheric chemistry, said Lead author Nick Teanby from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences,. "A similar effect could also be occurring in many exoplanet atmospheres having implications for cloud formation and atmospheric dynamics." Usually, the high altitude polar atmosphere in a planet's winter hemisphere is warm because of sinking air being compressed and heated - similar to what happens in a bicycle pump. Puzzlingly, Titan's atmospheric polar vortex (south polar vortex above) seems to be extremely cold instead. Before its fiery demise in Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, the Cassini spacecraft obtained a long series of observations of Titan's polar atmosphere covering nearly half of Titan's 29.5 earth-year long year using the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) instrument. The Cassini/CIRS observations showed that while the excepted polar hot spot did begin to develop at the start of winter in 2009, this soon developed into a cold spot in 2012, with temperatures as low as 120 K being observed until late 2015. Only in the most recent 2016 and 2017 observations has the expected hot-spot returned. "For the Earth, Venus, and Mars, the main atmospheric cooling mechanism is infrared radiation emitted by the trace gas CO2 and because CO2 has a long atmospheric lifetime it is well mixed at all atmospheric levels and is hardly affected by atmospheric circulation," said Tenby. "However, on Titan, exotic photochemical reactions in the atmosphere produce hydrocarbons such as ethane and acetylene, and nitriles including hydrogen cyanide and cyanoacetylene, which provide the bulk of the cooling." These gases are produced high in the atmosphere, so have a steep vertical gradient, meaning that their abundances can be significantly modified by even modest vertical atmospheric circulations. Therefore, winter polar subsidence led to massive enrichments of these radiatively active gases over the southern winter pole. Researchers used the temperature and gas abundances measured with Cassini, coupled with a numerical radiative balance model of heating and cool rates, to show that trace gas enrichment was large enough to cause significant cooling and extremely cold atmospheric temperatures. This explains earlier observations of strange hydrogen cyanide ice clouds that were observed over the pole in 2014 with Cassini's cameras. The Daily Galaxy via University of Bristol

Astronomers Hunt for Oldest Stars in Our Solar Neighborhood --"May Harbor Planets with Ancient Civilizations" November 20, 2017 Source Link: Daily Galaxy "Finding old stars could also lead to the discovery of new planets. Maybe we can find some ancient civilizations around these old stars," said Dr. Wei-Chun Jao, lead author of a new study and research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State. "Maybe these stars have some planets around them that we don't know about." The Milky Way is nearly 14 billion years old, and its oldest stars developed in the early stage of the galaxy's formation, making them about six to nine billion years old. They're found in the halo, a roughly spherical component of the galaxy that formed first, in which old stars move in orbits that are highly elongated and tilted. Younger stars in the Milky Way rotate together along the galaxy's disc in roughly circular orbits, much like horses on a merry-go-round. Just like humans, stars have a life span: birth, youth, adulthood, senior and death. This study focused on old or "senior citizen" stars, also known as cool subdwarfs, that are much older and cooler in temperature than the sun. In a new study, published in the November 2017 edition of The Astronomical Journal, astronomers conducted a census of our solar neighborhood to identify how many young, adult and old stars are present. They targeted stars out to a distance of 200 light years, which is relatively nearby considering the galaxy is more than 100,000 light years across. A light year is how far light can travel in one year. This is farther than the traditional horizon for the region of space that is referred to as "the solar neighborhood," which is about 80 light years in radius. "The reason my horizon is more distant is that there are not a lot of senior citizens (old stars) in our solar neighborhood," said Jao. "There are plenty of adult stars in our solar neighborhood, but there's not a lot of senior citizens, so we have to reach farther away in the galaxy to find them." The astronomers first observed the stars over many years with the 0.9 meter telescope at the United State's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. They used a technique called astrometry to measure the stars' positions and were able to determine the stars' motions across the sky, their distances and whether or not each star had a hidden companion orbiting it. The team's work increased the known population of old stars in our solar neighborhood by 25 percent. Among the new subdwarfs, the researchers discovered two old binary stars, even though older stars are typically found to be alone, rather than in pairs. "I identified two new possible double stars, called binaries," Jao said. "It's rare for senior citizens to have companions. Old folks tend to live by themselves. I then used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to detect both stars in one of the binaries and measured the separation between them, which will allow us to measure their masses." Jao also outlined two methods to identify these rare old stars. One method uses stars' locations on a fundamental map of stellar astronomy known as the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram. This is a classic technique that places the old stars below the sequence of dwarf stars such as the sun on the H-R diagram, hence the name "subdwarfs." The authors then took a careful look at one particular characteristic of known subdwarf stars -- how fast they move across the sky. "Every star moves across the sky," Jao said. "They don't stay still. They move in three dimensions, with a few stars moving directly toward or away from us, but most moving tangentially across the sky. In my research, I've found that if a star has a tangential velocity faster than 200 kilometers per second, it has to be old. So, based on their movements in our galaxy, I can evaluate whether a star is an old subdwarf or not. In general, the older a star is, the faster it moves." They applied the tangential velocity cutoff and compared stars in the subdwarf region of the H-R diagram to other existing star databases to identify an additional 29 previously unidentified old star candidates. In 2018, results from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which is measuring accurate positions and distances for millions of stars in the Milky Way, will make finding older stars much easier for astronomers. Determining the distance of stars is now very labor intensive and requires a lot of telescope time and patience. Because the Gaia mission will provide a much larger sample size, Jao says the limited sample of subdwarfs will grow, and the rarest of these rare stars -- binary subdwarfs -- will be revealed. The image at the top of the page is from the movie Prometheus, set in the late 21st century and centers on the crew of the spaceship Prometheus as it follows a star map discovered among the artifacts of several ancient Earth cultures. Seeking the origins of humanity, the crew arrives on a distant world and discovers a threat that could cause the extinction of the human species. The Daily Galaxy via Georgia State University -------- May also harbor ruins of past civs or advanced fungi with a grudge since we like mushroom gravy

Nov. 2, 2017- NASA/JPL press release Warm Air Helped Make 2017 Ozone Hole Smallest Since 1988 Measurements from satellites this year showed the hole in Earth’s ozone layer that forms over Antarctica each September was the smallest observed since 1988, scientists from NASA and NOAA announced today. This year’s ozone hole was similar in area to the hole in 1988, about 1 million miles smaller than in 2016. Although scientists predict the ozone hole will continue to shrink, this year’s smaller ozone hole had more to do with weather conditions than human intervention. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Kathryn Mersmann Scientific Visualization Studio According to NASA, the ozone hole reached its peak extent on Sept. 11, covering an area about two and a half times the size of the United States – 7.6 million square miles in extent - and then declined through the remainder of September and into October. NOAA ground- and balloon-based measurements also showed the least amount of ozone depletion above the continent during the peak of the ozone depletion cycle since 1988. NOAA and NASA collaborate to monitor the growth and recovery of the ozone hole every year. “The Antarctic ozone hole was exceptionally weak this year,” said Paul A. Newman, chief scientist for Earth Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This is what we would expect to see given the weather conditions in the Antarctic stratosphere.” The smaller ozone hole in 2017 was strongly influenced by an unstable and warmer Antarctic vortex – the stratospheric low pressure system that rotates clockwise in the atmosphere above Antarctica. This helped minimize polar stratospheric cloud formation in the lower stratosphere. The formation and persistence of these clouds are important first steps leading to the chlorine- and bromine-catalyzed reactions that destroy ozone, scientists said. These Antarctic conditions resemble those found in the Arctic, where ozone depletion is much less severe. Ozone depletion occurs in cold temperatures, so the ozone hole reaches its annual maximum in September or October, at the end of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Credits: NASA/NASA Ozone Watch/Katy Mersmann In 2016, warmer stratospheric temperatures also constrained the growth of the ozone hole. Last year, the ozone hole reached a maximum 8.9 million square miles, 2 million square miles less than in 2015. The average area of these daily ozone hole maximums observed since 1991 has been roughly 10 million square miles. Although warmer-than-average stratospheric weather conditions have reduced ozone depletion during the past two years, the current ozone hole area is still large because levels of ozone-depleting substances like chlorine and bromine remain high enough to produce significant ozone loss. Scientists said the smaller ozone hole extent in 2016 and 2017 is due to natural variability and not a signal of rapid healing. First detected in 1985, the Antarctic ozone hole forms during the Southern Hemisphere’s late winter as the returning sun’s rays catalyze reactions involving man-made, chemically active forms of chlorine and bromine. These reactions destroy ozone molecules. Thirty years ago, the international community signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer and began regulating ozone-depleting compounds. The ozone hole over Antarctica is expected to gradually become less severe as chlorofluorocarbons—chlorine-containing synthetic compounds once frequently used as refrigerants – continue to decline. Scientists expect the Antarctic ozone hole to recover back to 1980 levels around 2070. Ozone is a molecule comprised of three oxygen atoms that occurs naturally in small amounts. In the stratosphere, roughly 7 to 25 miles above Earth’s surface, the ozone layer acts like sunscreen, shielding the planet from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts, suppress immune systems and also damage plants. Closer to the ground, ozone can also be created by photochemical reactions between the sun and pollution from vehicle emissions and other sources, forming harmful smog. Although warmer-than-average stratospheric weather conditions have reduced ozone depletion during the past two years, the current ozone hole area is still large compared to the 1980s, when the depletion of the ozone layer above Antarctica was first detected. This is because levels of ozone-depleting substances like chlorine and bromine remain high enough to produce significant ozone loss. At its peak on Sept. 11, 2017, the ozone hole extended across an area nearly two and a half times the size of the continental United States. The purple and blue colors are areas with the least ozone. Credits: NASA/NASA Ozone Watch/Katy Mersmann NASA and NOAA monitor the ozone hole via three complementary instrumental methods. Satellites, like NASA’s Aura satellite and NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite measure ozone from space. The Aura satellite’s Microwave Limb Sounder also measures certain chlorine-containing gases, providing estimates of total chlorine levels. NOAA scientists monitor the thickness of the ozone layer and its vertical distribution above the South Pole station by regularly releasing weather balloons carrying ozone-measuring “sondes” up to 21 miles in altitude, and with a ground-based instrument called a Dobson spectrophotometer. The Dobson spectrophotometer measures the total amount of ozone in a column extending from Earth’s surface to the edge of space in Dobson Units, defined as the number of ozone molecules that would be required to create a layer of pure ozone 0.01 millimeters thick at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit at an atmospheric pressure equivalent to Earth’s surface. This year, the ozone concentration reached a minimum over the South Pole of 136 Dobson Units on September 25— the highest minimum seen since 1988. During the 1960s, before the Antarctic ozone hole occurred, average ozone concentrations above the South Pole ranged from 250 to 350 Dobson units. Earth's ozone layer averages 300 to 500 Dobson units, which is equivalent to about 3 millimeters, or about the same as two pennies stacked one on top of the other. "In the past, we've always seen ozone at some stratospheric altitudes go to zero by the end of September," said Bryan Johnson, NOAA atmospheric chemist. "This year our balloon measurements showed the ozone loss rate stalled by the middle of September and ozone levels never reached zero." Katy Mersmann NASA's Earth Science News Team Theo Stein NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Co. Last Updated: Nov. 3, 2017 Editor: Sara Blumberg _____________________________ I have to wonder if there is some linkage to the solar minimum (that brought us 3 very ugly hurricanes) and our planets geomagnetic field. The evidence is statistical at this point but as yet no causative agent is apparent. This is where science happens- on the edge of what is understood and mysteries that nature still holds.

Alien Object from a Distant Star System Invades Our Solar System --"Like Nothing We've Ever Seen" November 20, 2017 Source Link: Daily Galaxy "What a fascinating discovery this is!" said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's a strange visitor from a faraway star system, shaped like nothing we've ever seen in our own solar system neighborhood." Astronomers recently scrambled to observe an intriguing asteroid that zipped through the solar system on a steep trajectory from interstellar space-the first confirmed object from another star. Now, new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The asteroid, named 'Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated-perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed. The observations and analyses were funded in part by NASA and appear in the Nov. 20 issue of the journal Nature. They suggest this unusual object had been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. "For decades we've theorized that such interstellar objects are out there, and now - for the first time - we have direct evidence they exist," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "This history-making discovery is opening a new window to study formation of solar systems beyond our own." Immediately after its discovery, telescopes around the world, including ESO'sVery Large Telescopein Chile, were called into action to measure the object's orbit, brightness and color. Urgency for viewing from ground-based telescopes was vital to get the best data. Combining the images from theFORS instrumenton the ESO telescope using four different filters with those of other large telescopes, a team of astronomers led by Karen Meech of the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii found that 'Oumuamua varies in brightness by a factor of 10 as it spins on its axis every 7.3 hours. No known asteroid or comet from our solar system varies so widely in brightness, with such a large ratio between length and width. The most elongated objects we have seen to date are no more than three times longer than they are wide. "This unusually big variation in brightness means that the object is highly elongated: about ten times as long as it is wide, with a complex, convoluted shape," said Meech. "We also found that it had a reddish color, similar to objects in the outer solar system, and confirmed that it is completely inert, without the faintest hint of dust around it." These properties suggest that 'Oumuamua is dense, composed of rock and possibly metals, has no water or ice, and that its surface was reddened due to the effects of irradiation from cosmic rays over hundreds of millions of years. A few large ground-based telescopes continue to track the asteroid, though it's rapidly fading as it recedes from our planet. Two of NASA's space telescopes (HubbleandSpitzer) are tracking the object the week of Nov. 20. As of Nov. 20, 'Oumuamua is travelling about 85,700 miles per hour (38.3 kilometers per second) relative to the Sun. Its location is approximately 124 million miles (200 million kilometers) from Earth -- the distance between Mars and Jupiter - though its outbound path is about 20 degrees above the plane of planets that orbit the Sun. The object passed Mars's orbit around Nov. 1 and will pass Jupiter's orbit in May of 2018. It will travel beyond Saturn's orbit in January 2019; as it leaves our solar system, 'Oumuamua will head for the constellation Pegasus. Observations from large ground-based telescopes will continue until the object becomes too faint to be detected, sometime after mid-December. NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) continues to take all available tracking measurements to refine the trajectory of 1I/2017 U1 as it exits our solar system. This remarkable object was discovered Oct. 19by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope, funded by NASA'sNear-Earth Object Observations(NEOO) Program, which finds and tracks asteroids and comets in Earth's neighborhood. NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said, "We are fortunate that our sky survey telescope was looking in the right place at the right time to capture this historic moment. This serendipitous discovery is bonus science enabled by NASA's efforts to find, track and characterize near-Earth objects that could potentially pose a threat to our planet." Preliminary orbital calculations suggest that the object came from the approximate direction of the bright star Vega, in the northern constellation of Lyra. However, it took so long for the interstellar object to make the journey - even at the speed of about 59,000 miles per hour (26.4 kilometers per second) -- that Vega was not near that position when the asteroid was there about 300,000 years ago. While originally classified as a comet, observations from ESO and elsewhere revealed no signs of cometary activity after it slingshotted past the Sun on Sept. 9 at a blistering speed of 196,000 miles per hour (87.3 kilometers per second). The object has since beenreclassified as interstellar asteroid1I/2017 U1 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is responsible for granting official names to bodies in the solar system and beyond. In addition to the technical name, the Pan-STARRS team dubbed it 'Oumuamua (pronounced oh MOO-uh MOO-uh), which is Hawaiian for "a messenger from afar arriving first." Astronomers estimate that an interstellar asteroid similar to 'Oumuamua passes through the inner solar system about once per year, but they are faint and hard to spot and have been missed until now. It is only recently that survey telescopes, such as Pan-STARRS, are powerful enough to have a chance to discover them. "What a fascinating discovery this is!" said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "It's a strange visitor from a faraway star system, shaped like nothing we've ever seen in our own solar system neighborhood." The image at the top of the page is an artist's concept of interstellar asteroid 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua) as it passed through the solar system after its discovery in October 2017. The aspect ratio of up to 10:1 is unlike that of any object seen in our own solar system. (European Southern Observatory / M. Kornmesser) The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL

Mysterious Radioactive Cloud Over Europe Hints At Accident Farther East November 10, 20172:05 PM ET NPR Monitoring stations similar to this one in Germany detected unusual radioactive material over Europe last month. CTBTO/FLICKR European authorities are providing new details about a cloud of mysterious radioactive material that appeared over the continent last month. Monitors in Italy were among first to detect the radioactive isotope ruthenium-106 on Oct. 3, according to a fresh report by France's Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety Institute, known as IRSN. In total, 28 European countries saw the radioactive cloud, the report says. The multinational Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which runs a network designed to monitor for nuclear weapons tests, also confirmed to NPR that it had detected the cloud. Based on the detection from monitoring stations and meteorological data, the mysterious cloud — which has since dissipated — has been traced to somewhere along the Russia-Kazakhstan border, according to Jean-Christophe Gariel, director for health at the IRSN. "It's somewhere in South Russia," he says, likely between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. Authorities say the amount of material seen in Europe was small. "It's a very low level of radioactivity and it poses no problems for health and the environment in Europe," Gariel says. A map from French authorities suggests that the release came from the east, near the border of Russia and Kazakhstan. IRSN But modeling suggests that any people within a few kilometers of the release — wherever it occurred — would have needed to seek shelter to protect themselves from possible radiation exposure. "If it would have happened in France, we would have taken measures to protect the population in a radius of a few kilometers," Gariel says. French authorities, he adds, will conduct random checks of foodstuffs from the region to check for possible contamination of agricultural products. Ruthenium-106 is a radioactive isotope that is not found in nature. "It's an unusual isotope," says Anders Ringbom, the research director of the Swedish Defense Research Agency, which runs radioactive monitoring for that nation. "I don't think we have seen it since the Chernobyl accident." The IRSN analysis suggests that the ruthenium did not come from a nuclear reactor accident. Instead, it most likely came from either the chemical reprocessing of old nuclear fuel or the production of isotopes used in medicine. Based on the size of the release, Gariel says, whatever happened had to have been accidental. "It's not an authorized release, we are sure about that," he says. A handful of Russian nuclear facilities are located roughly in the region where the ruthenium originated, including a large nuclear reprocessing plant known as the Mayak Production Association. During the Cold War, the Mayak plant turned used nuclear fuel into material for nuclear weapons. The plant has been the site of numerous past accidents, including a 1957 explosion that rivaled the nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima and Chernobyl. Gariel says that while Mayak is a possible source of the cloud, there simply aren't enough data to conclusively link it to the release of radioactive material. He also says he has spoken to Russian safety officials over the past few days and that while they do not dispute his analysis, they are unaware of any incidents in the region in the past few months.

where are the human slaves? they're still asleep. Not for long. Come on, we'll walk on them and put our butts in their faces until they wake up and feed us...

Lot's of people go to the gym and... fail hard. It's complicated. There's all sorts of machines, techniques, theories, philosophies, and just plain wrong. Even if you spend the bucks on a personal trainer, does he have the smarts to craft a program that's right for you? It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. At my age, it would be pretty stupid to try to make myself into Conan the Barbarian. We've all seen this guy at the gym. I wonder what he does for fun. I mean, besides steroids. I have discovered something that's working pretty good for me. While I absolutely detest classical aerobics, it's one of the best methods to strengthen your heart, burn fat and improve your endurance. With my knees, it would be a short dance to reconstructive surgery which is probably in my future but, I'm not looking to rush it. I started thinking how can I get the best out of a blend of aerobic and resistance training? This is what I've come up with. I start with twenty minutes on the exercise bike. Not a leisurely 20 minutes, a hard twenty minutes. This serves to get my heart rate up and warm me up. Every session I decide where I'm going to focus and its: core, legs, arms, chest. Sometimes I do specific stuff for my back but usually I focus on one of the four. Next I decide which machines or routines I'm going to do. Crunches, leg presses, bench, curls, pull ups, rowing- pick a few of them and do three sets. When you do your sets, go with lower resistance and many, many reps. This combines the action of the aerobic and resistance training. When you finish your three sets, do 20 more minutes on the bike and repeat. Go as long as you can stand it or for as much times as you have. This has worked for me. I lost forty pounds and I'm shaping up nicely. I also like what it has done for my stamina. My doc was shocked at the change the last time he saw me. I feel and look much younger than my calendar age. There are a LOT of people thinking about how to do this. This is just how I've implemented it. Yes- I do work out with heavier weights at times. This is what I've been focused on for some months and I can see fast progress.

Happy birthday kid.

Morden was a putz. If I had been working for the Shadows, we would have stuffed those nauseating Vorlons into a convenient black hole.

Or have been long dead since Sparta was was top dog in Greece or Rome was in her heyday. Extinction is the Cosmic default. We're talking about billions of years of time and humanity has really only been civilized for a few thousand years,

"An Epic First!" --ESO's Fleet of Telescopes in Chile Detect Visible Explosion of Colliding Neutron Stars (WATCH Video) October 16, 2017 Daily Galaxy ESO’s fleet of telescopes in Chile have detected the first visible counterpart to a gravitational wave source. These historic observations suggest that this unique object is the result of the merger of two neutron stars. The cataclysmic aftermaths of this kind of merger — long-predicted events called kilonovae — disperse heavy elements such as gold and platinum throughout the Universe. This discovery, published in several papers in the journal Nature and elsewhere, also provides the strongest evidence yet that short-duration gamma-ray bursts are caused by mergers of neutron stars. For the first time ever, astronomers have observed both gravitational waves and light (electromagnetic radiation) from the same event, thanks to a global collaborative effort and the quick reactions of both ESO’s facilities and others around the world. On 17 August 2017 the NSF's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, working with the Virgo Interferometer in Italy, detected gravitational waves passing the Earth. This event, the fifth ever detected, was named GW170817. About two seconds later, two space observatories, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and ESA’s INTErnational Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), detected a short gamma-ray burst from the same area of the sky. The LIGO–Virgo observatory network positioned the source within a large region of the southern sky, the size of several hundred full Moons and containing millions of stars [1]. As night fell in Chile many telescopes peered at this patch of sky, searching for new sources. These included ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) and VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the Paranal Observatory, the Italian Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, the LCO 0.4-meter telescope at Las Cumbres Observatory, and the American DECam at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The Swope 1-metre telescope was the first to announce a new point of light. It appeared very close to NGC 4993, a lenticular galaxy in the constellation of Hydra, and VISTA observations pinpointed this source at infrared wavelengths almost at the same time. As night marched west across the globe, the Hawaiian island telescopes Pan-STARRS and Subaru also picked it up and watched it evolve rapidly. “There are rare occasions when a scientist has the chance to witness a new era at its beginning,” said Elena Pian, astronomer with INAF, Italy, and lead author of one of the Nature papers. “This is one such time!” ESO launched one of the biggest ever “target of opportunity” observing campaigns and many ESO and ESO-partnered telescopes observed the object over the weeks following the detection [2]. ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), New Technology Telescope (NTT), VST, the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) [3] all observed the event and its after-effects over a wide range of wavelengths. About 70 observatories around the world also observed the event, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Distance estimates from both the gravitational wave data and other observations agree that GW170817 was at the same distance as NGC 4993, about 130 million light-years from Earth. This makes the source both the closest gravitational wave event detected so far and also one of the closest gamma-ray burst sources ever seen [4]. The ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves are created by moving masses, but only the most intense, created by rapid changes in the speed of very massive objects, can currently be detected. One such event is the merging of neutron stars, the extremely dense, collapsed cores of high-mass stars left behind after supernovae [5]. These mergers have so far been the leading hypothesis to explain short gamma-ray bursts. An explosive event 1000 times brighter than a typical nova — known as a kilonova — is expected to follow this type of event. The almost simultaneous detections of both gravitational waves and gamma rays from GW170817 raised hopes that this object was indeed a long-sought kilonova and observations with ESO facilities have revealed properties remarkably close to theoretical predictions. Kilonovae were suggested more than 30 years ago but this marks the first confirmed observation. Following the merger of the two neutron stars, a burst of rapidly expanding radioactive heavy chemical elements left the kilonova, moving as fast as one-fifth of the speed of light. The colour of the kilonova shifted from very blue to very red over the next few days, a faster change than that seen in any other observed stellar explosion. “When the spectrum appeared on our screens I realised that this was the most unusual transient event I’d ever seen,” remarked Stephen Smartt, who led observations with ESO’s NTT as part of the extended Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects (ePESSTO) observing programme. “I had never seen anything like it. Our data, along with data from other groups, proved to everyone that this was not a supernova or a foreground variable star, but was something quite remarkable.” Spectra from ePESSTO and the VLT’s X-shooter instrument suggest the presence of caesium and tellurium ejected from the merging neutron stars. These and other heavy elements, produced during the neutron star merger, would be blown into space by the subsequent kilonova. These observations pin down the formation of elements heavier than iron through nuclear reactions within high-density stellar objects, known as r-process nucleosynthesis, something which was only theorised before. “The data we have so far are an amazingly close match to theory. It is a triumph for the theorists, a confirmation that the LIGO–VIRGO events are absolutely real, and an achievement for ESO to have gathered such an astonishing data set on the kilonova,” adds Stefano Covino, lead author of one of the Nature Astronomy papers. “ESO’s great strength is that it has a wide range of telescopes and instruments to tackle big and complex astronomical projects, and at short notice. We have entered a new era of multi-messenger astronomy!” concludes Andrew Levan, lead author of one of the papers. The Daily Galaxy via ESO