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The Grim Reefer writes:
Babylon 5 and Lost actress Mira Furlan has died at the age of 65, her family and management have confirmed.Furlan played Minbari Ambassador Delenn in the 1990s sci-fi TV drama, Babylon 5, and Danielle Rousseau in the noughties mystery drama, Lost.
Her family told the BBC the Croatian actress died on Wednesday due to complications with West Nile Virus."It is with great sadness that I confirm the passing of Mira Furlan" the statement read."She was a woman full of kindness, strength and compassion." It continued: "She died peacefully at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by her family.
"We will all continue to celebrate her life and legacy, and know she'll always be here with us."
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The Grim Reefer writes:
The whispers started three years ago.
A mysterious bullet-shaped plane was spotted at the Southern California Logistics Airport near Victorville in April 2017. Its unusual design prompted immediate speculation, with military website The War Zone being the first to report that the aircraft was the work of California-based Otto Aviation — and that development was very much under wraps.
Someone looking for an ID of an unusual looking aircraft spotted at the Southern California Logistics Airport. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F83J7RqOpvy pic.twitter.com/eAPrXNwIEf
— John Wiseman (@lemonodor) April 16, 2017
Now, in the late summer of the strangest year in aviation history, the Celera 500L has finally been revealed to the world, with the launch of a new website and a bunch of very cool new photos.
What we're looking at is a six-person private craft that promises to fly at jet speeds, but with eight times lower fuel consumption, and a range that's twice that of a comparably sized craft.
Bold claims indeed. Otto Aviation says on its website that 31 successful test flights have so far been performed, with aerodynamic efficiency proven in 2019, bolstering its declaration that "the Celera 500L is the most fuel-efficient, commercially viable aircraft in existence."
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The Grim Reefer writes:
The lives of stars, even the ones that burn fast and furious, are measured in millions of years.
There are exceptions, however. Some stars, in the latter stages of their lives, begin to pulsate, changing their brightness over a period of days, weeks or months. These are the variable stars.
One such variable star is the bright red star Betelgeuse, marking the shoulder of the familiar winter star pattern of Orion, the Hunter.
Last month, astronomers noticed Betelgeuse had faded much more than usual. This is the faintest it has been in over a century of observations. What’s up with Betelgeuse?
Well, probably nothing. It is most likely experiencing a super minimum as two of its variability cycles sync up and reach minimum brightness at the same time.
On the other hand, stars like Betelgeuse are well advanced in age and are destined to explode as supernovas at the end of their lives.
There hasn’t been a bright supernova in our Milky Way galaxy since the supernova of 1604. Sure, we’ve seen supernovas in galaxies far, far away, but none have been seen close to home.
So, there is some excitement in the astronomical community, warranted or not, that Betelgeuse might be ready to pop. Astrophysicists theorize that a pronounced fading might presage an impending supernova explosion. If Betelgeuse continues to fade into January and beyond, then look out — the end might be near.
112727062
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The Grim Reefer writes:
For the first time, scientists have created a permanently magnetic liquid. These liquid droplets can morph into various shapes and be externally manipulated to move around, according to a new study.
We typically imagine magnets as being solid, said senior author Thomas Russell, a distinguished professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But now we know that "we can make magnets that are liquid and they could conform to different shapes — and the shapes are really up to you."
The liquid droplets can change shape from a sphere to a cylinder to a pancake, he told Live Science. "We can [even] make it look like a sea urchin if we wanted."
Russell and his team created these liquid magnets by accident while experimenting with 3D printing liquids at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (where Russell is also a visiting faculty scientist). The goal was to create materials that are solid but have characteristics of liquids for various energy applications.
One day, postdoctoral student and lead author Xubo Liu noticed 3D-printed material, made from magnetized particles called iron-oxides, spinning around in unison on a magnetic stir plate. So when the team realized the entire construct, not just the particles, had become magnetic, they decided to investigate further.
Using a technique to 3D-print liquids, the scientists created millimeter-size droplets from water, oil and iron-oxides. The liquid droplets keep their shape because some of the iron-oxide particles bind with surfactants — substances that reduce the surface tension of a liquid. The surfactants create a film around the liquid water, with some iron-oxide particles creating part of the filmy barrier, and the rest of the particles enclosed inside, Russell said.
The team then placed the millimeter-size droplets near a magnetic coil to magnetize them. But when they took the magnetic coil away, the droplets demonstrated an unseen behavior in liquids — they remained magnetized. (Magnetic liquids called ferrofluids do exist, but these liquids are only magnetized when in the presence of a magnetic field.)
112726924
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The Grim Reefer writes:
In a forest in New Zealand, a vampire clings to life.
Once a mighty kauri tree — a species of conifer that can grow up to 165 feet (50 meters) tall — the low, leafless stump looks like it should be long dead. But, as a new study published today (July 25) in the journal iScience reminds us, looks are only surface-deep.
Below the soil, the study authors wrote, the stump is part of a forest "superorganism" — a network of intertwined roots sharing resources across a community that could include dozens or hundreds of trees. By grafting its roots onto its neighbors' roots, the kauri stump feeds at night on water and nutrients that other trees have collected during the day, staying alive thanks to their hard work.
"For the stump, the advantages are obvious — it would be dead without the grafts, because it doesn't have any green tissue of its own," study co-author Sebastian Leuzinger, an associate professor at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, said in a statement. "But why would the green trees keep their grandpa tree alive on the forest floor while it doesn't seem to provide anything for its host trees?"
Leuzinger and his colleagues tried to answer that by studying nutrient flow through the vampire stump and its two closest neighbors. Using several sensors to measure the movement of water and sap (which contains important nutrients) through the three trees, the team saw a curious pattern: the stump and its neighbors seemed to be drinking up water at exact opposite times.
During the day, when the vibrant neighbor trees were busy transporting water up their roots and into their leaves, the stump sat dormant. At night, when the neighbors settled down, the stump circulated water through what was left of its body. The trees, it seemed, were taking turns — serving as separate pumps in a single hydraulic network.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
After decades of improvement, America’s air may not be getting any cleaner.
Over the last two years the nation had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data shows. While it remains unclear whether this is the beginning of a trend, health experts say it’s troubling to see air quality progress stagnate.
There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when America had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980.
Air quality is affected by a complex mix of factors, both natural and man-made. Federal regulations that limit the emissions of certain chemicals and soot from factories, cars and trucks have helped dramatically improve air quality over recent decades. In any given year, however, air quality can be affected by natural variations. That may be what’s behind the stalled progress, scientists say.
“What you’re seeing is a flattening off of progress as opposed to a major change in the wrong direction,” said former deputy EPA administrator Bob Perciasepe, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
On November 11 there were strange rumbling waves that traveled at 9,000mph across the globe, nearly undetected and unnoticed by the world. Except for one person, a seismologist, who spotted the signal and quickly put out an alert to see if other systems detected the same unusual wave.
The waves began 15 miles off the coast of the small French island of Mayotte, wedged between Madagascar and Mozambique. Seismographs picked up the waves as they traveled as far as New Zealand, Chile, Hawaii and Canada. In total, the waves were detected as far as 11,000 miles from their origin, ringing for 20 minutes or more minutes as they passed. It took only 40 minutes for the waves to travel from Mayotte to the UK and 75 minutes to reach the Hawaiian islands.
The seismologists noted the strange nature of the waves, they were unnaturally monotone and low-frequency as they traveled across the globe. When we think of seismic waves the most common association is an earthquake, which triggers a sudden release of fast moving waves at different frequencies. Toward the later tail of an earthquake's rumbling, they do emit low-frequency waves that can spread out across the globe. For this to have been the case there would have had to be a major earthquake somewhere in the region, yet none was detected.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
Is Pluto a planet?
It's not a question scientists ask in polite company.
“It's like religion and politics,” said Kirby Runyon, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “People get worked up over it. I've gotten worked up over it.”
For years, astronomers, planetary scientists and other space researchers have fought about what to call the small, icy world at the edge of our solar system. Is it a planet, as scientists believed for nearly seven decades? Or must a planet be something bigger, something more dominant, as was decided by vote at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006?
The issue can bring conversations to a screeching halt, or turn them into shouting matches. “Sometimes,” Runyon said, “it's just easier not to bring it up.”
But Runyon will ignore his own advice this week when he attends the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. In a giant exhibit hall crowded with his colleagues, he's attempting to reignite the debate about Pluto's status with an audacious new definition for planet — one that includes not just Pluto, but several of its neighbors, objects in the asteroid belt, and a number of moons. By his count, 102 new planets could be added to our solar system under the new criteria.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
IRVING, Texas, Sept. 16 (UPI) — A Texas teen who made a digital clock and brought it to school, only to end up being arrested and accused of a bomb scare, has been invited to the White House to show off his creation.
President Obama
@POTUS
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, faces no charges after he was arrested in Texas for bringing to school a homemade clock teachers and administrators mistook for a bomb — a detention some claim was due to his Muslim background.
Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said the event was a "naive accident," adding that the department is "confident" the clock is not a bomb and that the case is closed.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
Scientists working off the coast of the US have found something pretty incredible — the second pocket shark ever discovered, some 36 years after the first one was spotted off the coast of Peru.
The team, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), say the tiny creature — which measures just 13 cm (5.5 inches) long — was caught off the coast of Louisiana, where they were observing the feeding habits of sperm whales. It belongs to the genus Mollisquama, which has earned itself the nickname 'pocket shark', not because of its pocked-sized dimensions, but because of the unique and rather mysterious orifice it has above its pectoral fin.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet's gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday.
Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California received a signal from the spacecraft at 5:36 a.m. PST (8:36 a.m. EST) that Dawn was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine, the indicator Dawn had entered orbit as planned.
"Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet," said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL. "Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home."
In addition to being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet, Dawn also has the distinction of being the first mission to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. From 2011 to 2012, the spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta, delivering new insights and thousands of images from that distant world. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive residents of our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
The Arctic isn't nearly as bright and white as it used to be because of more ice melting in the ocean, and that's turning out to be a global problem, a new study says.
With more dark, open water in the summer, less of the sun's heat is reflected back into space. So the entire Earth is absorbing more heat than expected, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That extra absorbed energy is so big that it measures about one-quarter of the entire heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide, said the study's lead author, Ian Eisenman, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
The Arctic grew 8 per cent darker between 1979 and 2011, Eisenman found, measuring how much sunlight is reflected back into space.
"Basically, it means more warming," Eisenman said in an interview.
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The Grim Reefer writes:
Before the transcontinental race in "Cannonball Run," the starter tells the gathered racers, "You all are certainly the most distinguished group of highway scofflaws and degenerates ever gathered together in one place."
Ed Bolian prefers the term "fraternity of lunatics."
Where the 1981 Burt Reynolds classic was a comedic twist on a race inspired by real-life rebellion over the mandated 55-mph speed limits of the 1970s, Bolian set out on a serious mission to beat the record for driving from New York to Los Angeles.
The mark? Alex Roy and David Maher's cross-country record of 31 hours and 4 minutes, which they set in a modified BMW M5 in 2006.
Bolian, a 28-year-old Atlanta native, had long dreamed of racing from East Coast to West. A decade ago, for a high school assignment, Bolian interviewed Brock Yates, who conceived the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, aka the Cannonball Run.
