Two for the price of one :)

Hubble strikes again with two views of Jove, one in actual color, the other in ultraviolet/near infrared. 

[Left] This latest visible-light image of Jupiter was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on 25 August 2020 and was captured when the planet was 653 million kilometres from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet’s turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of the Great Red Spot changing colour — again. The new image also features Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

[Right] This multiwavelength observation in ultraviolet/visible/near-infrared light of Jupiter was obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope on 25 August 2020 and is giving researchers an entirely new view of the giant planet. Hubble’s near-infrared imaging, combined with ultraviolet views, provides a unique panchromatic look that offers insights into the altitude and distribution of the planet’s haze and particles. This complements Hubble’s visible-light pictures that show the ever-changing cloud patterns.

11/3/2020 ...

 

Soldiers guarding Lincoln Memorial on June 2, 2020. (Photo by Martha Raddatz / Twitter)

Heather Cox Richardson's wakeup call regarding Trump and his push for cobbling together a coup if he loses the election on 11/3/2020 is a must-read without question.

Today’s big story is the growing threat of violence on the part of Trump loyalists in the administration, including the president himself.

On September 10, Trump’s friend and adviser Roger Stone appeared on Infowars, the show run by the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Convicted of lying to Congress and tampering with witnesses before they testified concerning the ties of the 2016 Trump campaign to Russia, Stone publicly asked Trump to commute his sentence and, in exchange, promised to campaign for him.

A Stone backgrounder ...

Stone was a political operative for Richard Nixon—he famously has a picture of Nixon tattooed on his back—and was a business partner of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, now also a convicted felon. Stone calls himself a “rat-f**ker” — a term used by Nixon insiders to describe electoral fraud and dirty tricks — and was an instigator of the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that shut down the recount of ballots in Florida in 2000.

In July, Trump commuted Stone’s 40-month prison sentence, and now, apparently, Stone is holding up his end of the deal.

On Jones’s show, Stone said, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud meant that the only legitimate result of the election would be a Trump victory. (Remember: voter fraud is a myth.) He claimed that the ballots in Nevada were already “completely corrupted” and that they “should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state,” especially the ones in Clark County, which leans Democratic. He suggested that former Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) should be arrested.

Stone said that Trump should form “an Election Day operation using the FBI, federal marshals, and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity.” Trump should also, he said, consider declaring martial law and then using that power to arrest Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, “the Clintons” and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity.”

A possible shit show for the ages looms.

GW yet again ...

Global Warming, a fact Agent Orange seems to deny with ever greater passion, is real, no matter what The Donald has to say about the matter.

Heat alone, however, won’t determine Americans’ fate. A new climate analysis — presented for the first time here — projects how humidity and heat will collide to form “wet bulb” temperatures that will disrupt the norms of daily existence.

Today, the combination of truly dangerous heat and humidity is rare. But by 2050, parts of the Midwest and Louisiana could see conditions that make it difficult for the human body to cool itself for nearly one out of every 20 days in the year. New projections for farm productivity also suggest that growing food will become difficult across large parts of the country, including the heart of the High Plains’ $35 billion agriculture industry. All the while, sea level rise will transform the coasts.

Taken together, some parts of the U.S. will see a number of issues stack on top of one another — heat and humidity may make it harder to work outside, while the ocean continues to claim more coastal land. The table above ranks the most at-risk counties in the U.S. if all of the perils were combined. You can also sort by individual climate risk to see how each one stacks up, with higher numbers being worse in all categories. The projections are for 2040-2060 under RCP 8.5.

Exactly.

Out of the blue

An image of Venus, made with data recorded by Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft in 2016. So close, so similar and very mysterious, the planet is surprising scientists with a chemical signature spotted in its clouds.Credit...PLANET-C Project Team/JAXA

Out of the blue says it all regarding Venus, our hellish twin, equipped with 800+ degree temperatures and a toxic atmosphere comprising of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid 90 times denser than earth's, may harbor life as we know it, residing in her upper atmosphere if recent research finding's ring true.

High in the toxic atmosphere of the planet Venus, astronomers on Earth have discovered signs of what might be life.

If the discovery is confirmed by additional telescope observations and future space missions, it could turn the gaze of scientists toward one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Venus, named after the Roman goddess of beauty, roasts at temperatures of hundreds of degrees and is cloaked by clouds that contain droplets of corrosive sulfuric acid. Few have focused on the rocky planet as a habitat for something living.

The astronomers, who reported the finding on Monday in a pair of papers, have not collected specimens of Venusian microbes, nor have they snapped any pictures of them. But with powerful telescopes, they have detected a chemical — phosphine — in the thick Venus atmosphere. After much analysis, the scientists assert that something now alive is the only explanation for the chemical’s source.

Something's afoot - Sherlock Holmes

Addendum - choice info about Phosphine :)

At first glance, phosphine might seem like a funny molecule to associate with life, given that it's a "highly flammable, extremely toxic, outrageously foul-smelling molecule," says Sousa-Silva. "It's an extremely dangerous molecule that kills in a variety of imaginative ways, all of which are very final and macabre."

"It's used widely as a fumigant and it was used as a chemical warfare agent in the first world war," she says, noting that the colorless gas can burn with a green and blue light.

As for its odor, well, "apparently it smells basically like death," says Sousa-Silva. "It just smells horrific. We once, I think, found a report of someone saying it smelled like the rancid diapers of the spawn of Satan."

Because phosphine interferes with oxygen metabolism, it's toxic for the majority of life on Earth. Still, says Sousa-Silva, "there's plenty of life, mostly in the shadows, that doesn't particularly enjoy oxygen and doesn't rely on oxygen. And these anaerobic ecosystems on Earth happily produce phosphine in reasonably large quantities."

Life that makes phosphine on Earth is found in swamps and sewage plants and the bottoms of lakes, she says, as well as in the intestines of animals — that's why phosphine can be detected in their flatulence.

Excellent. :)

Experimentation & then some ...

A quiet Get Toghether

Stepping Lightly

Relaxing before dusk

Seeds

Tough Guy

My 4-year-old GD: Strike a pose :)

My 4-year-old GD: It's all about DA feet :)

A 30's state of mind ...

Water Lines ...

The ghost in the machine/rev II

Anduril's Ghost 4 drone can carry systems capable of jamming enemy communications or an infrared laser to direct weapons at a target -  ANDURIL

AI resides everywhere, running beyond the control of man due to real time requirements, now steps into the drone era with a elegant system able to be folded into a soldier's back pack without issue, equipped with sophisticated cameras, and ... at a later date, smart weapons configured as needs warrant.

The new drone, the Ghost 4, shows the potential for AI in military systems. Luckey says it is the first generation that can perform various reconnaissance missions, including searching an area for enemy hardware or soldiers, under the control of a single person on the ground. The vehicle uses machine learning (the method behind most modern AI) to analyze imagery and identify targets, but it also relies on more conventional rules-based software for critical control and decisionmaking among swarm teammates.

Luckey says the drones can carry a range of payloads, including systems capable of jamming enemy communications or an infrared laser to direct weapons at a target. In theory the drone could be fitted with its own weapons. “It would be possible,” he says. “But nobody’s done it yet.”

Skynet's first weapons platform is here ...

Must admit, the damn thing looks very cool does it not?

Compare if you dare :)

Continents and Countries Compared from Visual Capitalist on Vimeo.

 Cool interactive map showing how economics interface with continents and countries.
Interesting to a fault.

For example ...

Surface Area: Does Size Matter?

When it comes to sheer land mass, Asia emerges on top with over one-third of the global surface area. On that front, it certainly has a little help from the combined forces of Russia and China, even as the former overlaps Eastern Europe as well.

Africa comes in second, but doesn’t lag behind by much. A stone’s throw from Europe, Algeria is the largest country on the continent—and the 10th largest in the world.

Failing to grasp the true size of Africa is a common mental mistake, as many maps systematically underestimate its scale. The continent could easily fit the entirety of China, India, the U.S., and multiple European countries within its borders.

Yes indeed, interesting to a fault. :)

Hothouse Earth ...

66 million years of Earth's climate uncovered from ocean sediments 

Credit: Thomas Westerhold / Adam Kutz

A hothouse earth is coming, predicted by the IPCC with the distinct possibility of temperatures rising 9-14 degrees Celsius by 2300, levels last seen 66-50 million years ago in the mid Eocene known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum. Comforting is it not?

"The IPCC projections for 2300 in the 'business-as-usual' scenario will potentially bring global temperature to a level the planet has not seen in 50 million years," Zachos said.

The new global climate record CENOGRID (lower panel) is the first to continually and accurately trace how Earth's climate has changed since the great extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The record was generated using the oxygen (shown) and carbon isotopes from tiny microfossils found in deep-sea sediments collected by the IODP ship R/V JOIDES Resolution (shown in the photo) and shows the natural range of climate change and variability over the last 66 million years. 

Critical to compiling the new climate record was getting high-quality sediment cores from deep ocean basins through the international Ocean Drilling Program (ODP, later the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, IODP, succeeded in 2013 by the International Ocean Discovery Program). Signatures of past climates are recorded in the shells of microscopic plankton (called foraminifera) preserved in the seafloor sediments. After analyzing the sediment cores, researchers then had to develop an "astrochronology" by matching the climate variations recorded in sediment layers with variations in Earth's orbit (known as Milankovitch cycles).

Now that they have compiled a continuous, astronomically dated climate record of the past 66 million years, the researchers can see that the climate's response to orbital variations depends on factors such as greenhouse gas levels and the extent of polar ice sheets.

"In an extreme greenhouse world with no ice, there won't be any feedbacks involving the ice sheets, and that changes the dynamics of the climate," Zachos explained.

It may be worse if the American Geophysical Union's findings are correct.

Earth may be 140 years away from reaching carbon levels not seen in 56 million years

Date:

February 20, 2019

Source:

American Geophysical Union

Summary:

Total human carbon dioxide emissions could match those of Earth's last major greenhouse warming event in fewer than five generations, new research finds. A new study finds humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate nine to 10 times higher than the greenhouse gas was emitted during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a global warming event that occurred roughly 56 million years ago.

We did this to ourselves.

Lightning of a different kind. :)

The best video yet courtesy Juno, the probe checking out Jove big time.

This animation takes the viewer on a simulated journey into Jupiter’s exotic high-altitude electrical storms. Get an up-close view of Mission Juno’s newly discovered “shallow lighting” flashes and dive into the violent atmospheric jet of the Nautilus cloud. The smallest white “pop-up” clouds on top of the Nautilus are about 100 km across. The ride navigates through Jupiter’s towering thunderstorms, dodging the spray of ammonia-water rain, and shallow lighting flashes. At these altitudes -- too cold for pure liquid water to exit – ammonia gas acts like an antifreeze that melts the water ice crystals flung up to these heights by Jupiter’s powerful storms – giving Jupiter an unexpected ammonia-water cloud that can electrify the sky. The animation was created by combining an image of high-altitude clouds from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft with a computer-generated animation.

It gets better.

New results from NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter suggest our solar system's largest planet is home to what's called "shallow lightning." An unexpected form of electrical discharge, shallow lightning originates from clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, whereas lightning on Earth originates from water clouds.

Other new findings suggest the violent thunderstorms for which the gas giant is known may form slushy ammonia-rich hailstones Juno's science team calls "mushballs"; they theorize that mushballs essentially kidnap ammonia and water in the upper atmosphere and carry them into the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere.

The shallow-lightning findings will be published Thursday, Aug. 6, in the journal Nature, while the mushballs research is currently available online in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

This illustration uses data obtained by NASA's Juno mission to depict high-altitude electrical storms on Jupiter. Juno's sensitive Stellar Reference Unit camera detected unusual lightning flashes on Jupiter's dark side during the spacecraft's close flybys of the planet. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Heidi N. Becker/Koji Kuramura

Awesome to a fault. :)

Dune

This may be the filmic version of Dune people have been waiting for for over 50 years as Herbert's great novel was the first true forway into ecology and SF at deep level. The look resembles Blade Runner 2049, which is a very good look indeed.