A "light" wall ... 1.4+ billion light-years long ...

Humungous says it all regarding the South Pole Wall, a galactic laden monster hiding behind our galaxy, stretching 1.4+ light-years & counting.

Spectacular 3D maps of the universe have revealed one of the biggest cosmic structures ever found — an almost-inconceivable wall stretching 1.4 billion light-years across that contains hundreds of thousands of galaxies.

The South Pole Wall, as it's been dubbed, has been hiding in plain sight, remaining undetected until now because large parts of it sit half a billion light-years away behind the bright Milky Way galaxy. The South Pole Wall rivals in size the Sloan Great Wall, the sixth largest cosmic structure discovered. (One light-year is roughly 6 trillion miles, or 9 trillion kilometers, so this "biggest cosmic structure" is mind-bendingly humongous.)

The starry core of our spiral Milky Way galaxy, in an infrared image from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. Obscured behind it is the South Pole Wall, a curtain of thousands of galaxies across at least 700 million light-years of space.Credit...NASA

Humungous indeed. :)

A train wreck of biblical proportions

Words cannot describe how President Bone Spurs screwed the pooch regarding COVID-19, something any competent person could have handled given the resources a president has at his or her disposal. Unreal as the chief executive can get the best of the best in terms of filling cabinet posts with people who actually know what the hell they are doing and, like FDR, listen to the advice of said persons residing in the cabinet. A CF comes to mind here and people far more versed in pandemics than yours truly agree.

US PANDEMIC ADVISOR SAYS THE COUNTRY NEEDS TO SHUT DOWN AGAIN

"THE US RESPONSE HAS BEEN EXTRAORDINARILY DISAPPOINTING AND WRONGHEADED. WHENEVER THERE'S BEEN AN OPPORTUNITY TO DO THE RIGHT THING, WE SEEM TO HAVE DONE THE WRONG THING"

According to one of the world’s foremost pandemic experts, everyone will need to stay vigilant for years in order to truly beat the coronavirus.

Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security and a prominent government advisor on pandemic preparedness, told CNET that wearing masks and some degree of social distancing will be necessary for years — and that to beat the disease, we’d need to lock down the country again.

“I think what’s important is that there’s going to be no summertime lull with a big wave in the fall,” Toner told CNET. “It’s clear that we are having a significant resurgence of cases in the summer, and they’ll get bigger. And it’ll keep going until we lock things down again.”

A train wreck of biblical proportions indeed.

Social Distancing ... Lobster style

Seems insects, lobsters, fish, birds and primates socially distance themselves whenever any of their brethren catch a disease threatening their well being, something not being done by a significant portion of the population risking possible death while bitching about losing their inherent freedom to be stupid by not social distancing or wearing a mask while spreading said disease to others as seen in the COVID-19 debacle in the good ole USA.

On a shallow reef in the Florida Keys, a young Caribbean spiny lobster returns from a night of foraging for tasty mollusks and enters its narrow den. Lobsters usually share these rocky crevices, and tonight a new one has wandered in. Something about the newcomer is not right, though. Chemicals in its urine smell different. These substances are produced when a lobster is infected with a contagious virus called Panulirus argus virus 1, and the healthy returning lobster seems alarmed. As hard as it is to find a den like this one, protected from predators, the young animal backs out, into open waters and away from the deadly virus.

The lobster’s response to disease—seen in both field and laboratory experiments—is one we have become all too familiar with this year: social distancing. People’s close interactions with family and friends have been cut off to reduce the spread of COVID-19. It has been extremely hard. And many have questioned the necessity. Yet despite how unnatural it may feel to us, social distancing is very much a part of the natural world. In addition to lobsters, animals as diverse as monkeys, fishes, insects and birds detect and distance themselves from sick members of their species.

Any questions?

29 Days ...

From the Strawberry Moon to the Buck, 29 days have passed as we move further into summer. 

Enjoy.

C ...

White dwarf stars are a primary source for one of the building blocks of life.
NASA and H. Richer (University of British Columbia)

We are made of stars, or more accurately, the remnants of stars as nature recycles everything but we already knew that. right? Now, scientists know the prime source of Carbon, the most versatile element in the universe and ... when our sun dies, it may become part of the carbon-producing entity known as white dwarfs ... 5 billion years from now.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that WHITE DWARF STARS are the main source of carbon atoms in the Milky Way, a chemical element known to be crucial to all life.

White dwarfs are hot, dense stellar remains with temperatures that reach 100,000 Kelvin. Over time, billions of years, these stars cool and eventually dim as they shed their outer material. However, right before they collapse, their remains are transported through space by winds that originate from their bodies.

These stellar ashes contain chemical elements such as carbon.

Carbon is the fourth most abundant chemical in the universe and is a key element in the formation of life as it is the basic building block to most cells.

Addendum ...

An artist’s impression of a pair of orbiting white dwarfs, ZTF J153932.16+502738.8. 

Image credit: Caltech / IPAC.

The analysis of white dwarfs observed by the team gave a surprising result: the masses of these stars were notably larger than expected, putting a ‘kink’ in the initial-final mass relation for stars with initial masses in a certain range.

“Our study interprets this kink in the initial-final mass relationship as the signature of the synthesis of carbon made by low-mass stars in the Milky Way,” Dr. Marigo said.

In the last phases of their lives, stars twice as massive as our Sun produced new carbon atoms in their hot interiors, transported them to the surface, and finally spread them into the interstellar medium through gentle stellar winds.

The team’s detailed stellar models indicate that the stripping of the carbon-rich outer mantle occurred slowly enough to allow the central cores of these stars, the future white dwarfs, to grow appreciably in mass.

Analyzing the initial-final mass relation around the kink, the researchers concluded that stars bigger than 2 solar masses also contributed to the Galactic enrichment of carbon, while stars of less than 1.5 solar masses did not.

In other words, the mass of 1.5 solar masses is the minimum mass for a star to spread carbon-enriched material.

Sol might not make after all. 

Dave lives ...

Center of Mass ...

Center of mass on physical things interests me. From sitting on teeter-totters to level them out to building tall towers liable to fall at any minute with my granddaughter, it's fun to see how to balance things like these, especially with a laughing four-year-old. 

It's fair to say planets orbit the Sun, but that's not 100% true. The Sun holds 99.8% of the Solar System's mass, Jupiter contains most of what's left (Saturn a distant 2nd), and in this vid you'll see how Jupiter plays tug of war with the Sun. Everything orbits a center of mass!

Enjoy.

Evolution 101 :)

Anotheca spinosa, a tree frog from Central America, likely uses the bony spikes on its skull as a defense against predators. Credit: Edward Stanley/Florida Museum

Frogs, cannibals to the max, also have another amazing trait, skull variability based on the type of prey they hunt and the kind of defense they use against predators who eat them.

Hemiphractus scutatus, a horned frog from South America, can prey on other vertebrates, thanks to its wide skull with a large gape. This species also has fanglike structures on its lower jaw. Credit: Edward Stanley/Florida Museum

Many frogs look like a water balloon with legs, but don’t be fooled. Beneath slick skin, some species sport spines, spikes, and other skeletal secrets.

While most frogs share a simple skull shape with a smooth surface, others have evolved fancier features, such as faux fangs, elaborate crests, helmet-like fortification and venom-delivering spikes. A new study is the first to take a close look at the evolution and function of these armored frog skulls.

Florida Museum of Natural History researchers used 3D data to study skull shape in 158 species representing all living frog families. Radically shaped skulls were often covered in intricate patterns of grooves, ridges and pits formed by extra layers of bone. The research team found that this trait, known as hyperossification, has evolved more than 25 times in frogs. Species with the same feeding habits or defenses tended to develop similarly shaped and patterned skulls, even if they were separated by millions of years of evolution.

Most frogs share a simple skull shape with a smooth surface. But some species evolved elaborately armored skulls, adapted for capturing large prey or defense. Credit: Daniel Paluh

Evolution 101 without question. :)

In just 3.5 years ...

In just 3.5 years, The Donald has turned America into a shithole. From raging nationalism, juiced by jesus & racism, to his disastrous handling of COVID-19, this empty man did the impossible, turning this once great nation into the laughing stock of the world.  We are in such trouble, the likes of which this country has not seen since the Civil War. He must go ... NOW.

The numbers of American sick and dead are a source of wonder and marvel all over the world. They also inspire fear and anxiety. The European Union has decided to allow some foreigners to cross its borders now, but not Americans. Uruguayans and Rwandans can go to Italy and Spain, but not Americans. Moroccans and Tunisians can go to Germany and Greece, but not Americans. For the first time in living memory, Canada has kept its border closed with the United States. On July 3, the governor of the Mexican state of Sonora delivered the coup de grace: She announced the temporary closure of the border with Arizona and banned Americans from Sonoran beaches.

How will American nationalists cope with this new situation? I’m guessing many will pretend, like the president, that this isn’t happening: Months into the crisis, he has once again expressed the belief that the virus will magically “disappear.” But for some, it will be difficult to prevent the intrusion of reality: The stupid and pointless competition among nations continues in their heads—and they are losing. A major reckoning is coming. It can’t arrive too soon.

Any questions?

In the garden ...

Hanging Out

< Inch Worm :)

Tiny Grasshopper 

< 1/2" 

Industrious ... to a fault :)

A "flower" writ large ...

Galaxy NGC 2775 as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team. Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla).

The spiral pattern shown by the galaxy in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is striking because of its delicate, feathery nature. These “flocculent” spiral arms indicate that the recent history of star formation of the galaxy, known as NGC 2775, has been relatively quiet. There is virtually no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is dominated by an unusually large and relatively empty galactic bulge, where all the gas was converted into stars long ago.

NGC 2275 is classified as a flocculent spiral galaxy, located 67 million light-years away in the constellation of Cancer.

A "flower" writ large indeed.