Sinister beauty of a different kind ...

The ocean, earth's untamed and unforgiving environment, comes equipped
with sinister beauty of a different kind.

The definition of is is ... :)

The Last Supper :)

Well, here it is. The project that has eaten up my last three months worth of weekends (some were not as busy as others ;)).

This, my dearies, is my takeoff on Leonardo's Last Supper. All of the characters are from the Thimble Theater strip by E.C. Segar, which later became just the Popeye comic strip. I tried to keep most of the characters in the same positions as the apostles are in Leonardo's version, and tried to put in a few little fun things relating to the original.

ATIBladerunner rules.

Awesome!!!

Caught in the act ...

Guilty as charged, a black hole is caught in the act of destroying a star.

For the first time, NASA’s planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) watched a black hole tear apart a star in a cataclysmic phenomenon called a tidal disruption event. Follow-up observations by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and other facilities have produced the most detailed look yet at the early moments of one of these star-destroying occurrences.

Stellar without a doubt.

We're in deep shit

The latest IPCC report on the world's oceans is dire. If nothing is done, we are screwed.

B1. Global-scale glacier mass loss, permafrost thaw, and decline in snow cover and Arctic sea ice extent are projected to continue in the near-term (2031–2050) due to surface air temperature increases (high confidence), with unavoidable consequences for river runoff and local hazards (high confidence). The Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are projected to lose mass at an increasing rate throughout the 21st century and beyond (high confidence). The rates and magnitudes of these cryospheric changes are projected to increase further in the second half of the 21st century in a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario (high confidence). Strong reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades are projected to reduce further changes after 2050 (high confidence). {2.2, 2.3, Cross-Chapter Box 6 in Chapter 2, 3.3, 3.4, Figure SPM.1, SPM Box SPM.1}

B2. Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions with

increased temperatures (virtually certain), greater upper ocean stratification (very likely),

further acidification (virtually certain), oxygen decline (medium confidence), and altered net

primary production (low confidence). Marine heatwaves (very high confidence) and extreme El

Niño and La Niña events (medium confidence) are projected to become more frequent. The

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is projected to weaken (very likely). The

rates and magnitudes of these changes will be smaller under scenarios with low greenhouse gas

emissions (very likely). {3.2; 5.2; 6.4; 6.5; 6.7; Box 5.1; Figures SPM.1, SPM.3}

Deep shit indeed.

The real deal ...

GIF version of a black hole with continuous motion.

The real deal, a visualization of a black hole, courtesy Goddard Media Studios, is simply astounding.

Had to add this gem as the beauty of science never disappoints. 

GIF loop of edge-on view

This new visualization of a black hole illustrates how its gravity distorts our view, warping its surroundings as if seen in a carnival mirror. The visualization simulates the appearance of a black hole where infalling matter has collected into a thin, hot structure called an accretion disk. The black hole’s extreme gravity skews light emitted by different regions of the disk, producing the misshapen appearance.

Bright knots constantly form and dissipate in the disk as magnetic fields wind and twist through the churning gas. Nearest the black hole, the gas orbits at close to the speed of light, while the outer portions spin a bit more slowly. This difference stretches and shears the bright knots, producing light and dark lanes in the disk.

Viewed from the side, the disk looks brighter on the left than it does on the right. Glowing gas on the left side of the disk moves toward us so fast that the effects of Einstein’s relativity give it a boost in brightness; the opposite happens on the right side, where gas moving away us becomes slightly dimmer. This asymmetry disappears when we see the disk exactly face on because, from that perspective, none of the material is moving along our line of sight.

This image highlights and explains various aspects of the black hole visualization.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

Kip Thorne certainly nailed Gargantua in Interstellar without question.

Stellar without question. :)

Before you go ... :)

Before you go ... :)

Have you ever thought about visiting a black hole? We sure hope not. However, if you're absolutely convinced that a black hole is your ideal vacation spot, watch this video before you blast off to learn more about them and (more importantly) how to stay safe.

You can also click the link below to download a handy safety brochure, watch short clips to learn different things about black holes, and even get some short glimpses into the lives of black holes and the explorers that want to visit them.

Hope you enjoy your trip, and please...stay safe out there.

Download the video, brochure, and more here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13322 

Enjoy

Chatter ...

chat·ter
/ˈCHadər/

verb

      talk rapidly or incessantly about trivial matters.
      "the kids chattered and splashed at the edge of the lagoon"

noun

    1. incessant trivial talk.
       "a stream of idle chatter"

    2. a series of quick high-pitched sounds.
       "the chatter of a typewriter"

Paying attention comes to mind here when viewing this very cool video above. Enjoy.

But now, some researchers are trying a different approach, studying how the brain suppresses information rather than how it augments it. Perhaps more importantly, they’ve found that this process involves more ancient regions much deeper in the brain — regions not often considered when it comes to attention.

By doing so, scientists have also inadvertently started to take baby steps toward a better understanding of how body and mind — through automatic sensory experiences, physical movements and higher-level consciousness — are deeply and inextricably intertwined.

And so it goes - K Vonnegut

Biological Annihilation & then some ...

Agent Orange, the environmental president, is doing "good" in the world in terms of taking care of earth with one good deed after another with step one being the opening up of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and fracking interests and step 2, iniating 85 regulatory/environmental  rollbacks centered on, you guessed it, enhancing profits for the fossil fuel crowd along with significant others who pollute and compromise the environment in ways that truly boggle the mind.

To whit ...

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. The Trump administration is finalizing plans to open one of the world’s last pristine wilderness regions, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil and fracked gas drilling. The Arctic refuge is rich in biodiversity, home to caribou, polar bears, musk oxen and other species. Millions of migratory birds gather there from across the world, and whales reside just offshore. It’s also been home to generations of indigenous people for thousands of years..

& the aforementioned 85 rollbacks ...

President Trump has made eliminating federal regulations a priority. His administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has often targeted environmental rules it sees as burdensome to the fossil fuel industry and other big businesses.

A New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts more than 80 environmental rules and regulations on the way out under Mr. Trump.

Our list represents two types of policy changes: rules that were officially reversed and rollbacks still in progress. The Trump administration has released an aggressive schedule to try to finalize many of these rollbacks this year.

Remember, it's all about the money. Always has been, always will be save for the specter of climate change and what it portends to mankind as civilization moves ever further into the 21st century.

The power of lies ...

The lizard lives in a new documentary. Can't wait to see this as Cohn was truly a lizard where truth was just a notion and lies, when properly used, was his gateway to power, especially when serving as chief counsel for Tail Gunner Joe (Mcarthy) , the eminently mediocre Wisconson senator who unleashed the anti-communism hysteria back in the 1950s that blacklisted and ruined the careers of innocent people almost too numerous to count.

Joe Mcarthy

Luckily, Cohn's "success" in demonizing people came to an end when Joseph Welch asked the famous question of Mcarthy & company ... 

To be continued.

Killing me slowly/rev XXX

Biodiversity, you know, having enough flora and fauna to keep earth and us alive, is rather important to sustain unless one is in pursuit of money, an activity proving to be most disquieting in light of the fact 29% of all the birds in America (and Europe) have disappeared since 1969 as articulated in an NYTimes piece Birds Are Vanishing From North America

Baltimore Oriole

Gary Mueller, Macaulay Library at Cornell Lab of Ornithology

The new study was not designed to determine why birds are disappearing, but the results — as well as earlier research — point to some likely culprits, Dr. Rosenberg said.

Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development.

“Every field that’s plowed under, and every wetland area that’s drained, you lose the birds in that area,” Dr. Rosenberg said.

In addition to habitat loss, pesticides may have taken a toll. A study published last week, for example, found that pesticides called neonicotinoids make it harder for birds to put on weight needed for migration, delaying their travel.

But insects are in trouble also.

An annual decline of 5.2% in flying insect biomass found in nature reserves in Germany
 – about 75% loss in 26 years.[1]

Several studies report what appears to be a substantial decline in insect populations. Some of the insects most affected include bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies. Anecdotal evidence has been offered of much greater apparent abundance of insects in the 20th century; recollections of the windscreen phenomenon are an example.[2]

Possible causes of the decline have been identified as habitat destruction, including intensive agriculture, the use of pesticides (particularly insecticides), urbanization, and industrialization; introduced species; and climate change.[3] Not all insect orders are affected in the same way; many groups are the subject of limited research, and comparative figures from earlier decades are often not available. The decline of the scientific field of entomology may also be contributing to errors in data analysis and overgeneralization from limited findings, resulting in exaggeration of the decline in insect populations.

In 2018 the German government initiated an "Action Programme for Insect Protection",[4][5] and in 2019 a group of 27 British entomologists and ecologists wrote an open letter calling on the research establishment in the UK "to enable intensive investigation of the real threat of ecological disruption caused by insect declines without delay".[6]

And we haven't even discussed the decline of life in the oceans due to pollution, climate change and overfishing.

Asymmetrical Warfare/rev XX

War and its blood relative, terror, is now a digital play where, if one has money and access to digitally-driven tools of great accuracy and range, mayhem and death will ensue at bargain basement prices. To whit, the precise attack on the Saudi oilfields using cheap tech from North Korea, China and Iran.

Regardless of their origin, when I first saw the damage, I felt like drones were potentially part of the attack, but likely not the only weapons employed. In fact, it looked a lot like a cruise missile strike with some of those weapons being equipped with shaped charges for penetrating fortified structures and others being equipped with general high explosives warheads for greater effects against unfortified structures. Whoever planned the strike had a very good understanding of the facilities targeted and what their components do, as well as their vulnerabilities and propensity for secondary effects. In other words, it wasn't just showering a target area with explosive-laden drones or even picking some important-looking structures targeting those. The targeting was systemic in nature and high in quality. 

That brings us to my next point, one you probably also thought to yourself when this happened—this was an unprecedented attack. Welcome to the murky world of unmanned warfare that I have been warning about for many years. I almost take this issue personally because people use to blow it off or even snicker at it. Now all the predictions I wish were wrong are coming true and at an alarming pace. 

The Department of Defense was ridiculously asleep at the wheel regarding this threat and is now scrambling to play catchup. Anyone who says differently is straight-up lying. It's well established what non-state actors can already do with relatively low-end unmanned aircraft technology—Houthi rebels alone have been using suicide drones for two and a half years—just imagine what a peer state will be able to do in the very near future. Instead of a mass of individual suicide drones layered in with other weapons, like cruise missiles, attacking a target simultaneously, imagine a swarm that is fully networked and works cooperatively to best achieve their mission goals, including jamming or killing air defenses in order for the swarm to make it to its final destination. America's adversaries are all too aware of this game-changing potential and the lack of defenses to counter it in any robust manner.

On the political end, the first question to ask is, why is the US potentially getting involved in a self-inflicted wound by MBS when attacking Yemen, thus creating the Saudi version of Vietnam, something eloquently articulated by Ron Paul in a piece titled. Will Trump Take Neocon Bait and Attack Iran Over Saudi Strike?

The recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities by Yemeni Houthi forces demonstrate once again that an aggressive foreign policy often brings unintended consequences and can result in blowback. In 2015 Saudi Arabia attacked its neighbor, Yemen, because a coup in that country ousted the Saudi-backed dictator. Four years later Yemen is in ruins, with nearly 100,000 Yemenis killed and millions more facing death by starvation. It has been rightly called the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.

But rich and powerful Saudi Arabia did not defeat Yemen. In fact, the Saudis last month asked the Trump Administration to help facilitate talks with the Houthis in hopes that the war, which has cost Saudi Arabia tens of billions of dollars, could finally end without Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman losing too much face. Washington admitted earlier this month that those talks had begun.

The surprise Houthi attack on Saturday disrupted half of Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas production and shocked Washington. Predictably, however, the neocons are using the attack to call for war with Iran!

What is remarkable is that all of Washington’s warmongers are ready for war over what is actually a retaliatory strike by a country that is the victim of Saudi aggression, not the aggressor itself. Yemen did not attack Saudi Arabia in 2015. It was the other way around. If you start a war and the other country fights back, you should not be entitled to complain about how unfair the whole thing is.

Last but not least, the US Patriot Missles were useless against the drones and cruise missiles, something Putin alluded to when suggesting to SA that maybe buying the S-400 might be the better way to go.

The S-400 Triumf, is an advanced air and missile defence system intended to engage targets at ranges of up to 400 km, in an intensive jamming environment, says James Bosbotinis, a UK-based specialist in maritime and air force developments. 

Not only is it highly advanced, but it costs a fraction of its counterparts. The S-400 system costs around $500 million, in comparison to the Patriot Pac-2 which comes in at around $1 billion. This is one of the major reasons why the S-400 has garnered interest all over the world. 

It's a better deal is it not?

Plan A - Wargames 2019

Several months ago, researchers from Rutgers University, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research ran a simulation to see what a nuclear war between the US and Russia would do, and the findings were not pretty: Such a war would plunge the planet into a nuclear winter, with clouds of soot and smoke covering the planet. The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, found that the nuclear detonations would inject about 147 million tons of soot into the atmosphere. That soot would then spread around the stratosphere, blanketing the Earth in darkness.

Not only would explosions, fires, and radiation exposure kill millions in targeted cities, but the resulting nuclear winter – which could last many years- would drastically alter the Earth’s climate. The growing season would be slashed by nearly 90 percent in some areas, and death by famine would threaten nearly all of the Earth’s 7.7 billion people.

Reassuring without question is it not and ... both countries are toast.

Last but not least, the 1984 WG original tells us not to play, right?

Late Summer 2019

Persistence

Success

A path less traveled. :)

Blue Darter

Fellow travelers of the orange kind

Red Darter

Red Darter II

Moving toward Dusk

Tough Viceroy

Tough DF

Taking a bow

Io's shadow ...

Don't panic, this isn't a massive hole on Jupiter.

All is well on our largest neighbor; NASA's Juno spacecraft just managed to spot the shadow of Jupiter's moon, Io, passing over its marbled clouds.

The Juno mission made its 22nd close skim over the gas giant around Sept. 11, when the celestial geometry was just right for Io to slip between the sun and the planet during one of its rapid-fire circuits of Jupiter. (The moon takes just 1.77 days to orbit the planet.)

This is an imperfect experiment to create a 360˚ horizon-to-horizon view over Jupiter during Juno's Perijove 22 flyover of Io's shadow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX1SYot-1vc

Cool without question.

Burning Man 2019

Short clip on Burning Man2019. The music works without question. So does the BMPCC6K camera. :)

Data as prime driver ...

Origami fascinates as it's mathematical to the max. Seems a brilliant VR game designer, Eric Chahi, has taken this notion to the max with his game titled Paper Beast where data becomes prime driver and everything's alive ... to the max.

Chahi knew this could make for an innovative and intriguing thematic base for a game, but he was unsure of how to realize his vision and connect the dots. From the first prototype, he was set on juxtaposing paper with big data and creating a world teeming with unique flora and fauna. “It’s not realistic, but there’s a connection to data,” he tells me. “The first use of paper is to write on it, which strongly connects it to data, [because] it’s a connection to information. So why not create a universe born out of big data?”

Wish this game was on the web. Elegant and thought-provoking comes to mind here without question.

Mathematical indeed.

B&W + 2 ...

Game on ...

Channeling Saturn

D Lion et al

Gradient

Harbor Stage Theatre

Peony + 1

Queen Anne's Lace 

A merger of a different kind ...

This simulation shows how a black hole merger would appear to our eyes if we could somehow travel in a spaceship for a closer look. It was created by solving equations from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity using LIGO data from the event called GW150914. Credit: SXS, the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) project

Seems Einstein was right yet again as a merger of a different kind, i.e. two black holes combining into one, generates a chirp when the two becomes one.

To whit.

If Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity holds true, then a black hole, born from the cosmically quaking collisions of two massive black holes, should itself "ring" in the aftermath, producing gravitational waves much like a struck bell reverbates sound waves. Einstein predicted that the particular pitch and decay of these gravitational waves should be a direct signature of the newly formed black hole's mass and spin.

Now, physicists from MIT and elsewhere have "heard" the ringing of an infant black hole for the first time, and found that the pattern of this ringing does, in fact, predict the black hole's mass and spin—more evidence that Einstein was right all along.

Tilts & Spins

A quick video show spin rates and tilts of our beloved planet that should include Pluto
but does not, for now. :)

Certain death ...

Outside of Earth, certain death awaits when visiting other denizens of our solar system.

To whit.

If Elon Musk has his way, we'll soon be living it up on Mars. But until then, we're all stuck here on Earth. Trust us: You don't want to venture into other parts of the solar system before we have every single safety precaution in place. Neil deGrasse Tyson explained why to Business Insider. In short, being basically anywhere in space without a spacesuit would be catastrophic. (Heck, even being in space in a spacesuit will do you some harm.) There's nowhere besides Earth where you could survive any longer than two minutes.

Enticing is it not?

Frequency of ...

Frequency of ... courtesy XKCD. Note, the real deal blinks according to, you guessed it, the frequency of occurrence of said event. :)

Happiness is ...

On Rottnest Island, off the coast of western Australia, a peculiar marsupial has captivated the hearts of Instagram users worldwide—and supported a booming tourism economy. The quokka, a close cousin of the kangaroo, rocketed to internet fame when tourists began taking selfies with the animal, which is unafraid of humans and appears to smile for pictures.

“They are like living teddy bears,” filmmaker David Freid, who made a short documentary about the mammals and the attendant social-media sensation, told The Atlantic. “When you see one, it's a bonafide heart-melter.”

Yes, happiness is ... :)

The underground market ...

A cubic inch of soil contains about 7 billion fungal lifeforms and 1 billion bacteria. The complex interactions of these entities, in conjunction with their plant partners, is akin to a cutthroat marketplace where ruthless supply and demand dictate how zealously guarded resources are to be used by the parties in question is readily seen by the video above and the text below. Enjoy.

Kiers surrounded some nodules on soybean plants with an almost nitrogen-free air supply, making the bacteria in those nodules useless to the plant. She found that the plant reacted by shutting off the supply of oxygen to those bacteria, drastically reducing their reproduction. It seemed the relationship between the bacteria and the soybeans, far from being a happy friendship, was an uneasy détente, with the plant imposing crippling sanctions on any bacterial partners that failed to earn their keep. 

Kiers then switched from bacteria to fungi. While bacteria might nestle into the roots of select groups of plants, fungi are without question the masters of the underground domain. Certain fungi spread through vast areas and commingle with just about every plant they encounter, even sending thready tendrils known as hyphae directly into plants’ roots. (The name for these fungi — “mycorrhizae” — literally fuses the Latin myco-, meaning “of fungi,” with the Greek rhiza, or “root.”) Indeed, the mycorrhizal world forms a sort of inversion of the vegetable one, with branching fungal networks extending downward, mirroring the branching stems and limbs of the plants reaching skyward.

Factoids ...

But what really distinguishes the fungal world is its diversity and complexity. A spoonful of soil contains more microbial individuals than there are humans on Earth. “It’s the most species-dense habitat we have,” said Edith Hammer, a soil ecologist at Lund University in Sweden. A single plant might be swapping molecules with dozens of fungi — each of which might in turn be canoodling with an equal number of plants. It’s a promiscuous party down there.

By growing carrot roots and fungi in segmented petri dishes that held unequally distributed nutrient resources, Kiers and her colleagues demonstrated that the organisms favor symbiotic partners that have more to offer in nutrient exchanges.

The underground market ... indeed.

300+

If you have beaucoup bucks and are really competent, you too can do this as the Bugatti Chiron is a street-legal car of a different kind.

Ever since the Bugatti Chiron was launched, with a 261-mph speed limiter, we've been desperate to know what it could manage if let off the leash. Now Bugatti has done that at the vast Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany; the car smashed both the production-car record and the 300-mph barrier.

Factory test driver Andy Wallace, who previously set production-car records in both the Jaguar XJ220 and the McLaren F1, drove a slightly modified Chiron to a time, certified by the German TÜV organization, of 304.773 mph.

300+ indeed.

Unicron ... lives!! :)

Unicron, the Transformer of transformers is alive and well as seen by this clip changing his evil eminence from sphere to character. Enjoy. :)

Introducing the first ever Transformers HASLAB project: Transformers War For Cybertron Unicron.

The Lord of Chaos. The Planet Eater. The Chaos Bringer. Unicron stands alone as the most menacing figure in Transformers lore, capable of devouring entire worlds and civilizations. He debuted in the 1986 film Transformers: The Movie and his insatiable appetite nearly brought the entire universe to its knees.

But his legacy transcends both space and time.

“I have summoned you here for a purpose.” - Unicron

Transformers fans may be mere humans, inhabiting a miniscule planet hardly worth consuming, but they are some of the most passionate fans out there. That’s why HASLAB, the Hasbro Pulse crowdsourcing platform, is the place to awaken such a massive project.

“Then it pleases me to be the first.” - Unicron

My son and I enjoy the original, especially when finding out it was Orsen Well's last professional act as the voice of Unicron. :)

Seems the 2020 version will be somewhat different as seen by this clip.

Methinks my son and I will check this out for old times sake. :)

Beyond pitch-black

Carbon nanotubes rule as they are virtually indestructible, possessing unique characteristics that promise to change how man does business on planet earth. When placed vertically on a substrate, said nanotubes create the ultimate black, reflecting just a tiny bit of light, thus resulting in a visual look akin to a black hole, an effect readily seen by the BMW above and a telescope assembly shown below, ready to be equipped with lenses as needs warrant, both of which are coated with Vantablack, the first commercially available carbon nanotube-based material being used for any application requiring the kind of absolute blackness that only this tech can provide.

Vantablack, first announced in 2014, is a rare real-life special effect, a coating so black that it sucks in almost every photon that hits it. It makes any three-dimensional object basically look like a hole has been cut in the universe. Painted in this array of infintessimally small carbon nanotubes, everything loses its appearance of shape, because there's no light or shade to define it. It's incredibly unnerving to look at, and since the moment it was first announced, people have been saying "for the love of all that's holy, put this stuff on a car, it would be the sickest thing in history."

Beyond pitch-black indeed.

Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube

Here's a video showing the origin and properties of this unique material.

Happy accident indeed.