Hello again, follower of science and reason,
Over 50,000 people in the Bay Area speak Persian at home. The Persian holiday of Eid al-Ghadir is the time for being kind to people in need, making donations, and giving gifts to one another. (Sorta like Christmas) It fell on June 14th this year during the bombings.
Simply standing on a sidewalk holding a sign with hundreds of others lifted all of our spirits. I had to laugh when a smiling teenage girl rode by showing thumbs-up while her grim-faced mother driving the car gave us a thumbs-down. Returning home, we felt a collective failure: our inability to reverse cuts to research [medicine, climate, physics, chemistry, etc.] and cuts to services [food stamps, HIV/AIDS treatments, suicide prevention, special & early education, juvenile justice programs, disease tracking, etc.]. We felt dread with the erosion of due process, legal safeguards, and respect for ‘others.’ We felt deeply disappointed that many of our country’s agencies are now run by people with a dearth of expertise and with world views so different from our own. But standing on sidewalks – holding signs demonstrated to our neighbors – and to the world that we do not approve.
SPACE
Earth’s North Pole pointed maximally toward the Sun on Friday: The Summer Solstice. ¡Summer is here!
The first pictures from the amazing Vera C. Rubin Telescope will be posted online beginning Monday morning. For a link, see “Things To Do This Week” below.
Whenever there’s a solar eclipse, scientists use the occasion to study the Sun’s corona. The European Space Agency, ESA, decided to put two satellites in Earth orbit where one would ‘eclipse’ the Sun while the other took photos. Result: Eclipse on Demand.
Honda Motors, Japan, just demonstrated their reusable “Hopper” rocket. It resembles a ‘baby’ SpaceX Falcon 9. Watch it climb to 270m and gently return to the launch pad.
The Chicxulub asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs could have been as much as 15km in diameter. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the size of a recently discovered comet, UN271, is estimated to be 140km in diameter with over 800 times the mass of Chicxulub. Although the huge comet is racing farther into the Solar System at 35,000 kph, it won’t come any closer than Saturn to us. Good thing.
RAFFLE
We are offering this 325ml mug displaying the structure of the caffeine molecule. Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith [at] gmail.com with your guess of an integer between 0 and 1,000. Last time, Kevin won a metal JWST model kit. Of the 23 contestants, his guess of 901 was closest to the randomly-generated 934.
ARCHAEOLOGY
The Denisovans now have a face. Until now, the only verified Denisovan fossils were teeth, bone fragments, and a couple of jaw bones. However, a skull was dug up in the 1930s during a construction project in China and was hidden away until the family donated it to a university in 2018. DNA and protein analyses reveal the skull was that of a Denisovan.
THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK – My Picks
Great week for me!
Telescope: I wear a JWST lapel pin.
Whales: I had a course in marine mammals.
Ecology: A.B. in Ecological Sciences.
Misinformation: Member of the Bay Area Skeptics.
Lizards: A memorable catch was a pair of Granite Night Lizards.
Nature Walk: Most weeks.
Jazz: Has always helped me through tough times.
Vera C. Rubin Telescope First Light Livestream Monday 8am
32 Years of Observing North Pacific Blue Whales: What Their Body Conditions Tell Us Livestream Tuesday 7pm, $
Courtrooms & Cocktails: What Ecology Can Teach You about Keeping a Moral Compass Livestream Wednesday 3pm
Psychological Inoculation Against Misinformation Livestream Thursday 4pm
After Dark: Pride Month: Queer Science Thursday 6 – 10pm, ExplOratorium, S.F., $
California Lizards & Where to Find Them Friday 6pm, Pacific Grove, $
Foothills Family Nature Walk Saturday 11am, Los Altos
Music of the Spheres – The History of the Cosmos (and our understanding of it) Saturday 7:30 – 11pm, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, $
Jazz Under the Stars Saturday 9 – 11pm, College of San Mateo
BIOLOGY / ETHOLOGY
The psychedelic drug psilocybin (shown above) is being studied for its potential use in helping people with certain mental disorders. One of the studies revealed that the drug wipes out the normal communications network between different parts of the brain, a system known as the DMN – Default Mode Network. Simultaneously, the experimental subjects report a loss of their sense of self. This has implications both for understanding brain function and for the drug’s effectiveness in assisting with some forms of mental disorders, such as depression.
This meter-long squid had never before been seen alive before Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists sent an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) down 2,100m below the surface in Antarctic waters.
FUN (?) NERDY VIDEOS
3D Tour around Constellation Taurus – Space Telescope Science Inst. – 1.5 mins
A Dinosaur’s Last Meal – Curtin University, Australia – 2 mins
Airdropping Dead Mice – Cup O’ Joe – Joe Schwarcz – 3 mins
Monkton Amphibian Crossing – Vermont Transportation – Chris Slesar – 4.5 mins
4 Starlink Satellites Fall Each Day, Creating Problems – Sabine Hossenfelder – 6 mins
The Northern Hairy Wood Ant – U.K. National Trust – 7 mins
¿Is Our Universe inside a Black Hole? – Star Talk – Neil deGrasse Tyson – 7.5 mins
Nobel Prize for Incorrect Results – Dr. Becky – Becky Smethurst – 8.5 mins
Dragon Man Skull is Denisovan – History with Kayleigh – Kayleigh During – 11 mins
Platypuses Aren’t Weird, We Are – SciShow – Stefan Chin – 14 mins
Nudibranchs – Real Science – 19 mins
Neptunium – Tales from the Periodic Table – Ron Hipschmann – 35 mins
Seeking to Understand Whales – PBS NOVA – David Attenborough – 50 mins
Chin up and have a good week,
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”
— From “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia Butler (1947 – 2006) American author
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