Thanks for the Crabapples, Giuseppe!
State Of The Ocean (SOTO)
SOTO is an interactive web-based tool, created by NASA’s Physical Oceanography DAAC (PO.DAAC) to generate informative maps, animations, and plots that communicate and prove the discovery and analysis of the state of the oceans.
The suite of tools provide access to a broad range of satellite-derived products and key parameters of interest to the oceanographic community.
Animation of plants taking up and releasing carbon as the seasons change.
Billows Smooth and Bright
Mission
“ Through the Looking GLASS: A James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Exploration of Galaxy Formation and Evolution from Cosmic Dawn to Present Day
Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) is one of JWST Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science Programs, and will be focused on two main science areas: (1) understanding the reionization of the universe less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang: (2) understanding how gas and heavy elements are distributed (chemical abundance) within and around galaxies over time.
Focus Area
(1) Ionization is the process by which an atom or a molecule acquires a negative or positive charge by gaining or losing electrons, often in conjunction with other chemical changes. In the fields of Big Bang theory and cosmology, reionization is the process that caused matter in the universe to reionize after the lapse of the “dark ages” which began around 370,000 years after the Big Bang. During the Dark Ages, the temperature of the universe cooled from some 4,000 (K)elvin to about 60 K (3,727 °C to about −213 °C) and though the universe was transparent it was dark, as only two sources of photons (visible light) existed: (a) the photons released during recombination or decoupling (as neutral hydrogen atoms formed), which we can still detect today as the cosmic microwave background (CMB); (b) photons occasionally released by neutral hydrogen atoms.
While the majority of baryonic matter in the universe is in the form of hydrogen and helium, reionization usually refers strictly to the reionization of hydrogen. Baryonic matter is a type of composite subatomic particle which contains an odd number of valence quarks (at least 3) and belong to the hadron family of particles which includes protons and the neutrons.
(2) The abundance of the chemical elements is a measure of the occurrence of the chemical elements relative to all other elements in a given environment. The abundance of chemical elements in the universe is dominated by the large amounts of hydrogen and helium which were produced in the Big Bang. Remaining elements, making up only about 2% of the universe, were largely produced by supernovae and red giant stars.
Method
GLASS will combine the natural magnifying power of gravitational lensing, caused by the massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (one of the Frontier Fields), with JWST’s incredible sensitivity to measure detailed properties of distant galaxies in the early universe.
Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster, is a giant galaxy cluster resulting from the simultaneous pile-up of at least four separate, smaller galaxy clusters that took place over a span of 350 million years. It is located approximately 4 billion light years from Earth. The galaxies in the cluster make up less than five percent of its mass. The cluster’s gas (accounting for around 20 percent of the cluster’s mass) is so hot that it shines only in X-rays. And dark matter makes up the remaining 75 percent of the cluster’s mass.
Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, but it makes itself apparent through its gravitational attraction. To pinpoint the location of this elusive substance gravitational lensing is exploited. A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter (such as a cluster of galaxies) between a distant light source and an observer, that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels toward the observer. This bending of light rays from distant galaxies as they pass through the gravitational field created by the cluster forms a series of telltale distortions in the images of galaxies observed in the background of observations from the Hubble and Very Large Telescope (VLT). The mass of Abel 2744 will act as a sort of massive but distant focal lense.
Key Science Drivers
(1) To shed light upon the role of galaxies in reionizing the universe, the topology of high redshift intergalactic/interstellar medium and on Lyman alpha escape fraction. A redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and simultaneous increase in frequency and energy, is known as a negative redshift, or blueshift. The value of a redshift is often denoted by the letter z, corresponding to the fractional change in wavelength (positive for redshifts, negative for blueshifts), and by the wavelength ratio 1 + z (which is >1 for redshifts, <1 for blueshifts). It is commonly believed that galaxies at z ≳ 5 are the dominant sources for cosmic reionization. The escape fraction of Lyman-continuum (LyC), or hydrogen ionizing photons from these galaxies is hence an important question for understanding the reionization process.
(2) To study: (a) gas accretion, the accumulation of particles into a massive object by gravitationally attracting more matter); (b) star formation and outflows by mapping spatially resolved star formation, where spatial resolution is a measure of the smallest object that can be resolved by the sensor; (c) metallicity, the abundance of elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen and helium) gradients in galaxies at z = 1.3 – 2.3.
(3) To study the environmental dependence of galaxy evolution.
References: Space Telescope Science Institute glass.astro.ucla.edu NASA Wikipedia: Reionization; Abel 2744; Chemical Abundance; Gravitational lens
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Veitnow: Afghanistan and the U.S.
An editorial plea to our fellow American citizens to recognize a most grievous atrocity committed in our name .
A tragic comedy of errors is unfolding and the U.S. citizen is the punchline. After twenty years of war and occupation, the total cost in lives of the war in Afghanistan (as of April 2021) is 2,448 American Service Members and 3,836 U.S. contractors (as reported by the AP and using data gathered by Harvard University’s Kennedy School and from the Brown University.)
The capital costs, based on official data as reported by the BBC is an estimated $822bn (spent between 2001 and 2019). This estimate does not include expenses accrued in Pakistan, which the U.S. used as a base of operations during the Afghan-conflict.
And what did the U.S. secure after all this? “Guarantees and enforcement mechanisms that will prevent the use of the soil of Afghanistan by any group or individual against the security of the United States and its allies.” A grantee secured from an organization that the US does not even recognize. The ceasefire agreement refers to the other party simply as “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban.”
The U.S. tax payer will be paying for this “war” for generations to come, receiving in return a guarantee from an organization we do not recognize and are told not to trust. Does this seem right to you? More glaringly, American families paid the ultimate price, the lives of loved ones they will never see again.
According to the Council of Foreign Relations “The [Taliban] has withstood counterinsurgency operations from the world’s most powerful security alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and three U.S. administrations in a war that has killed more than 6,000 U.S. troops and contractors”
After all that, it estimated that the Taliban, has between fifty-eight thousand to one-hundred thousand full-time fighters and that it is stronger now than at any point in the last twenty years. Add to that, the United Nations recently reported that the Taliban still maintains a strong alliance with al-Qaeda.
The UN further reports the Taliban still receives resources and training from al-Qaeda in exchange for protection. An estimated two hundred to five hundred al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be in Afghanistan with leaders believed to be based in regions along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
As of this writing, the Taliban have retaken most of, and are on the verge of securing all of Afghanistan, with the terms of the ceasefire all but broken. The Taliban are stronger now than when NATO invaded.
One need look no further as to the comedy in this tragedy then to read reports concerning the Taliban’s capture of the Kunduz Airport this week. It is reported that upon overrunning the airport the Taliban seized billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment including MaxPro Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, ScanEagle drones and Humvees. U.S. tax dollars just went toward supplying the Taliban and possibly al-Qaeda with state of the art military equipment.
Was it all worth it?
In future essays we hope to explore that question along with several others. How did we get here? What were the true costs (sunk costs and ongoing future costs) of the war? What are the geopolitical ramifications? What will come of Afghanistan?
From Veitnow by Rage Against the Machine ”Terror's tha product ya push Well I'm a truth addict, oh shit I gotta headrush Tha sheep tremble an here come tha votes“
Praxis Thinking Supports the Principles of the Electronic Frontier Alliance
As a non-member organization we support the EFA, we believe that technology should support the intellectual freedom at the heart of a democratic society. In the digital age, that entails advancing:
Free Expression
People should be able to speak their minds to whoever will listen.
Security
Technology should be trustworthy and answer to its users.
Privacy
Technology should allow private and anonymous speech, and allow users to set their own parameters about what to share with whom.
Creativity
Technology should promote progress by allowing people to build on the ideas, creations, and inventions of others.
Access to Knowledge
Curiosity should be rewarded, not stifled.
We uphold these principles by fighting for transparency and freedom in culture, code, and law.
Praxis Thinking announces its World News service
Praxis Thinking today announced the launch of its new Global News service. A spokesperson for Praxis reported “ Praxis Thinking’s World News (PTWN) service provides an unmoderated feed of news from sources that span the globe.”
According to Praxis Thinking, the news feed is an unmoderated aggregate of headlines from global sources. Praxis also states that the service updates stories every hour and that they run headlines for twenty-four hours.
All news service providers featured are reviewed by an editorial board which reviews services regularly to ensure their continued unbiased journalistic integrity, according to Praxis. Current service providers include: The BBC; NPR; Reuters; and several others.
Old Guy, a fan of the new service, when asked why he liked PTWN, “I don’t want some stupid-@$$ algorithm feeding me news. Don’t you see, man, that’s all part of the plan to control the masses, man.’
The new service can be found at Praxis Thinking World News