Wow! Nacreous clouds over UK this week

John Fagan caught these nacreous clouds over Ireland and posted the photo to Earthsky Facebook on Monday.

We began getting photos of nacreous clouds on our Facebook page on Monday (February 1, 2016), from the UK. These clouds – sometimes called polar stratospheric clouds, or mother-of pearl-clouds – are putting on amazing display there this week! Les Cowley at the great website Atmospheric Optics has posted several photos of them in his Optics Picture of the Day. Tuesday morning, he wrote:

There were yet more spectacular polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) this morning (and in daytime) over Ireland and UK. The low stratospheric temperatures continue and we should see more after sunset this evening (February 2, ’16).

These pictures give a true picture of how the rarest of clouds actually appear in the sky. But the reality is better.

Look all around the sky at 15 to 45 minutes after sunset.

Nacreous clouds over Dublin on February 1, 2016, posted to EarthSky Facebook by Q Del Moral.

Les also posted a beautiful explanation for these clouds, saying:

Nacreous clouds, sometimes called mother-of-pearl clouds, are rare but once seen are never forgotten. They are mostly visible within two hours after sunset or before dawn when they blaze unbelievably bright with vivid and slowly shifting iridescent colours. They are filmy sheets slowly curling and uncurling, stretching and contracting in the semi-dark sky. Compared with dark scudding low altitude clouds that might be present, nacreous clouds stand majestically in almost the same place – an indicator of their great height.

They need the very frigid regions of the lower stratosphere some 15 – 25 km (9 -16 mile) high and well above tropospheric clouds. They are so bright after sunset and before dawn because at those heights they are still sunlit.

They are seen mostly during winter at high latitudes like Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska and Northern Canada. Sometimes, however, they occur as far south as England.

Indeed they do, as the photos below show! Thanks, Les, and thanks to all who posted pics of the clouds at EarthSky Facebook!

Nacreous clouds over Dublin on the morning of February 2, 2016, posted to EarthSky Facebook by Owen Dawson in Bishop-Auckland, UK.

Nacreous clouds over Burton Upon Trent, UK, posted to EarthSky Facebook on February 2, 2016, by Will Plant.

Nacreous clouds over Warrington, UK, posted to EarthSky Facebook by Kimberley Aldred on the morning of February 2, 2016.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1PdZIg1

John Fagan caught these nacreous clouds over Ireland and posted the photo to Earthsky Facebook on Monday.

We began getting photos of nacreous clouds on our Facebook page on Monday (February 1, 2016), from the UK. These clouds – sometimes called polar stratospheric clouds, or mother-of pearl-clouds – are putting on amazing display there this week! Les Cowley at the great website Atmospheric Optics has posted several photos of them in his Optics Picture of the Day. Tuesday morning, he wrote:

There were yet more spectacular polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) this morning (and in daytime) over Ireland and UK. The low stratospheric temperatures continue and we should see more after sunset this evening (February 2, ’16).

These pictures give a true picture of how the rarest of clouds actually appear in the sky. But the reality is better.

Look all around the sky at 15 to 45 minutes after sunset.

Nacreous clouds over Dublin on February 1, 2016, posted to EarthSky Facebook by Q Del Moral.

Les also posted a beautiful explanation for these clouds, saying:

Nacreous clouds, sometimes called mother-of-pearl clouds, are rare but once seen are never forgotten. They are mostly visible within two hours after sunset or before dawn when they blaze unbelievably bright with vivid and slowly shifting iridescent colours. They are filmy sheets slowly curling and uncurling, stretching and contracting in the semi-dark sky. Compared with dark scudding low altitude clouds that might be present, nacreous clouds stand majestically in almost the same place – an indicator of their great height.

They need the very frigid regions of the lower stratosphere some 15 – 25 km (9 -16 mile) high and well above tropospheric clouds. They are so bright after sunset and before dawn because at those heights they are still sunlit.

They are seen mostly during winter at high latitudes like Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska and Northern Canada. Sometimes, however, they occur as far south as England.

Indeed they do, as the photos below show! Thanks, Les, and thanks to all who posted pics of the clouds at EarthSky Facebook!

Nacreous clouds over Dublin on the morning of February 2, 2016, posted to EarthSky Facebook by Owen Dawson in Bishop-Auckland, UK.

Nacreous clouds over Burton Upon Trent, UK, posted to EarthSky Facebook on February 2, 2016, by Will Plant.

Nacreous clouds over Warrington, UK, posted to EarthSky Facebook by Kimberley Aldred on the morning of February 2, 2016.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1PdZIg1

Monstrous gas cloud boomerangs back to our galaxy

This composite image shows the size and location of the Smith Cloud on the sky. The cloud appears in false-color, radio wavelengths as observed by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The visible-light image of the background star field shows the cloud’s location in the direction of the constellation Aquila. Image credit: Saxton/Lockman/NRAO/AUI/NSF/Mellinger

An immense, invisible cloud of hydrogen gas outside the Milky Way, known as the Smith Cloud, is plummeting toward our galaxy at nearly 700,000 miles (1,152,641 km) per hour. The cloud appears to have been ejected from within the Milky Way and is now boomeranging on a return collision course and is expected to plow into the Milky Way’s disk in about 30 million years. When it does, astronomers believe it will ignite a spectacular burst of star formation, perhaps providing enough gas to make 2 million suns. That’s according to new research by a team of Hubble Space Telescope astronomers published January 1, 2016 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers have measured this comet-shaped region of gas to be 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years across. If the cloud could be seen in visible light, it would span the sky with an apparent diameter 30 times greater than the size of the full moon.

Though hundreds of enormous, high-velocity gas clouds whiz around the outskirts of our galaxy, the Smith Cloud is unique because its trajectory is well known. New Hubble observations suggest it was launched from the outer regions of the galactic disk, around 70 million years ago. The cloud was discovered in the early 1960s by doctoral astronomy student Gail Smith, who detected the radio waves emitted by its hydrogen.

This diagram shows the 100-million-year-long trajectory of the Smith Cloud as it arcs out of the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and then returns like a boomerang. Hubble Space Telescope measurements show that the cloud came out of a region near the edge of the galaxy’s disk of stars 70 million years ago. The cloud is now stretched into the shape of a comet by gravity and gas pressure. Following a ballistic path, the cloud will fall back into the disk and trigger new star formation 30 million years from now. Image credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)

Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland is the team leader. Fox said:

Our galaxy is recycling its gas through clouds, the Smith Cloud being one example, and will form stars in different places than before. Hubble’s measurements of the Smith Cloud are helping us to visualize how active the disks of galaxies are.

Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph can measure how the light from distant background objects is affected as it passes through the cloud, yielding clues to the chemical composition of the cloud. Astronomers trace the cloud’s origin to the disk of our Milky Way. Combined ultraviolet and radio observations correlate to the cloud’s infall velocities, providing solid evidence that the spectral features link to the cloud’s dynamics. Image credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)

Astronomers long thought that the Smith Cloud might be a failed, starless galaxy, or gas falling into the Milky Way from intergalactic space. If either of these scenarios proved true, the cloud would contain mainly hydrogen and helium, not the heavier elements made by stars. But if it came from within the galaxy, it would contain more of the elements found within our sun.

The team used Hubble to measure the Smith Cloud’s chemical composition for the first time, to determine where it came from. They observed the ultraviolet light from the bright cores of three active galaxies that reside billions of light-years beyond the cloud. Using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, they measured how this light filters through the cloud.

In particular, they looked for sulfur in the cloud, which can absorb ultraviolet light. Fox explained:

By measuring sulfur, you can learn how enriched in sulfur atoms the cloud is compared to the sun. Sulfur is a good gauge of how many heavier elements reside in the cloud.

The astronomers found that the Smith Cloud is as rich in sulfur as the Milky Way’s outer disk, a region about 40,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center (about 15,000 light-years farther out than our sun and solar system). The team suggests that this means that the Smith Cloud was enriched by material from stars. This would not happen if it were pristine hydrogen from outside the galaxy, or if it were the remnant of a failed galaxy devoid of stars. Instead, the researchers say, the cloud appears to have been ejected from within the Milky Way and is now boomeranging back.

Though this might settle the mystery of the Smith Cloud’s origin, it raises new questions: How did the cloud get to where it is now? What calamitous event could have catapulted it from the Milky Way’s disk, and how did it remain intact? Could it be a region of dark matter — an invisible form of matter — that passed through the disk and captured Milky Way gas? Future research will try to answer these questions.

Enjoying EarthSky? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Bottom line: Research by a team of Hubble Space Telescope astronomers published January 1, 2016 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters says that the Smith Cloud, An immense cloud of hydrogen gas, appears to have been ejected from within the Milky Way and is now boomeranging on a return collision course and is expected to plow into the Milky Way’s disk in about 30 million years.

Read more from NASA

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1TAl1Oj

This composite image shows the size and location of the Smith Cloud on the sky. The cloud appears in false-color, radio wavelengths as observed by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The visible-light image of the background star field shows the cloud’s location in the direction of the constellation Aquila. Image credit: Saxton/Lockman/NRAO/AUI/NSF/Mellinger

An immense, invisible cloud of hydrogen gas outside the Milky Way, known as the Smith Cloud, is plummeting toward our galaxy at nearly 700,000 miles (1,152,641 km) per hour. The cloud appears to have been ejected from within the Milky Way and is now boomeranging on a return collision course and is expected to plow into the Milky Way’s disk in about 30 million years. When it does, astronomers believe it will ignite a spectacular burst of star formation, perhaps providing enough gas to make 2 million suns. That’s according to new research by a team of Hubble Space Telescope astronomers published January 1, 2016 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers have measured this comet-shaped region of gas to be 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years across. If the cloud could be seen in visible light, it would span the sky with an apparent diameter 30 times greater than the size of the full moon.

Though hundreds of enormous, high-velocity gas clouds whiz around the outskirts of our galaxy, the Smith Cloud is unique because its trajectory is well known. New Hubble observations suggest it was launched from the outer regions of the galactic disk, around 70 million years ago. The cloud was discovered in the early 1960s by doctoral astronomy student Gail Smith, who detected the radio waves emitted by its hydrogen.

This diagram shows the 100-million-year-long trajectory of the Smith Cloud as it arcs out of the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and then returns like a boomerang. Hubble Space Telescope measurements show that the cloud came out of a region near the edge of the galaxy’s disk of stars 70 million years ago. The cloud is now stretched into the shape of a comet by gravity and gas pressure. Following a ballistic path, the cloud will fall back into the disk and trigger new star formation 30 million years from now. Image credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)

Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland is the team leader. Fox said:

Our galaxy is recycling its gas through clouds, the Smith Cloud being one example, and will form stars in different places than before. Hubble’s measurements of the Smith Cloud are helping us to visualize how active the disks of galaxies are.

Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph can measure how the light from distant background objects is affected as it passes through the cloud, yielding clues to the chemical composition of the cloud. Astronomers trace the cloud’s origin to the disk of our Milky Way. Combined ultraviolet and radio observations correlate to the cloud’s infall velocities, providing solid evidence that the spectral features link to the cloud’s dynamics. Image credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)

Astronomers long thought that the Smith Cloud might be a failed, starless galaxy, or gas falling into the Milky Way from intergalactic space. If either of these scenarios proved true, the cloud would contain mainly hydrogen and helium, not the heavier elements made by stars. But if it came from within the galaxy, it would contain more of the elements found within our sun.

The team used Hubble to measure the Smith Cloud’s chemical composition for the first time, to determine where it came from. They observed the ultraviolet light from the bright cores of three active galaxies that reside billions of light-years beyond the cloud. Using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, they measured how this light filters through the cloud.

In particular, they looked for sulfur in the cloud, which can absorb ultraviolet light. Fox explained:

By measuring sulfur, you can learn how enriched in sulfur atoms the cloud is compared to the sun. Sulfur is a good gauge of how many heavier elements reside in the cloud.

The astronomers found that the Smith Cloud is as rich in sulfur as the Milky Way’s outer disk, a region about 40,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center (about 15,000 light-years farther out than our sun and solar system). The team suggests that this means that the Smith Cloud was enriched by material from stars. This would not happen if it were pristine hydrogen from outside the galaxy, or if it were the remnant of a failed galaxy devoid of stars. Instead, the researchers say, the cloud appears to have been ejected from within the Milky Way and is now boomeranging back.

Though this might settle the mystery of the Smith Cloud’s origin, it raises new questions: How did the cloud get to where it is now? What calamitous event could have catapulted it from the Milky Way’s disk, and how did it remain intact? Could it be a region of dark matter — an invisible form of matter — that passed through the disk and captured Milky Way gas? Future research will try to answer these questions.

Enjoying EarthSky? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Bottom line: Research by a team of Hubble Space Telescope astronomers published January 1, 2016 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters says that the Smith Cloud, An immense cloud of hydrogen gas, appears to have been ejected from within the Milky Way and is now boomeranging on a return collision course and is expected to plow into the Milky Way’s disk in about 30 million years.

Read more from NASA

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1TAl1Oj

Why does blowing on your hot drink cool it down? (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

“I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.” -David Lynch

Particularly in the dead of winter, most of us enjoy a hot drink, whether it’s coffee, tea, hot chocolate or soup. But if that drink is too hot, your options for cooling it down are unsatisfying: wait for the room to cool it, which takes forever, drop an ice cube in, which waters down your drink, or blow on it.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Pdbailey, who created this image and placed it in the public domain. The speed distribution is qualitatively the same for liquids as it is for gases.

While blowing on your drink may seem ineffective, as the breath inside your body is generally warmer than the ambient air, there’s an additional feature that makes blowing on it totally worth it: the circulation and exposure-to-air of the hot fluid vastly increases the rate of evaporation, taking the highest-kinetic-energy molecules out of the equation and cooling your drink more quickly.

Image credit: Pete Lewis/Department for International Development, United Kingdom.

Go read the physics behind why blowing on your hot drink actually does cool it down faster!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/20EuB4v

“I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.” -David Lynch

Particularly in the dead of winter, most of us enjoy a hot drink, whether it’s coffee, tea, hot chocolate or soup. But if that drink is too hot, your options for cooling it down are unsatisfying: wait for the room to cool it, which takes forever, drop an ice cube in, which waters down your drink, or blow on it.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Pdbailey, who created this image and placed it in the public domain. The speed distribution is qualitatively the same for liquids as it is for gases.

While blowing on your drink may seem ineffective, as the breath inside your body is generally warmer than the ambient air, there’s an additional feature that makes blowing on it totally worth it: the circulation and exposure-to-air of the hot fluid vastly increases the rate of evaporation, taking the highest-kinetic-energy molecules out of the equation and cooling your drink more quickly.

Image credit: Pete Lewis/Department for International Development, United Kingdom.

Go read the physics behind why blowing on your hot drink actually does cool it down faster!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/20EuB4v

Lessons from the Iowa Caucus [Greg Laden's Blog]

Increasingly, I feel the need to declare my position on the candidates before commenting on the process, because, increasingly, the conversation has become one of comparative litmus tests. So, here’s the deal on that: I like Clinton and Sanders both, and I like each of them for both overlapping and different reasons. As a life long Democrat I’m glad to see such good candidates running. I will decide whom to support in the Minnesota Caucus some time after I walk into the building, most likely. Then, later, I will decide which candidate, if any, I might work for during the time between our caucus and the convention, though most likely it will be neither. I don’t have a lot of money to donate to anything, but so far I have split my financial support evenly. After the convention (or a bit before if there is a clear winner a priori) I will do everything I can to move the chosen candidate into the White House, while at the same time working on my Congressional District and state wide races or issues.

The first thing we learned from the Iowa Caucus is that Bernie Sanders is a viable candidate who can win. I didn’t doubt that before, but his showing in Iowa, a statistical tie, demonstrates this. This is not really too important in the big picture, partly because it simply reifies what was already known, and partly because Iowa (and New Hampshire) provide only a part of information needed to think strategically about the process. The way things are set up, we really won’t know until Super Tuesday, I think, how the two candidates stand. South Carolina may tell us something about the alleged demographic disconnect that favors Clinton over Sanders, and Nevada may show us if Unions matter in this election, and who they matter to. But from that perspective (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada) it will be very difficult to predict Super Tuesday’s outcome.

But, here’s the thing: Bernie supporters who have shown a great deal of angst and jitteriness, to the point of sometimes acting inappropriately for a Primary, can relax a bit now. Your candidate is for real, we all know this. And best of luck to you and to us all.

At the same time, Clinton supporters who may have viewed Bernie as an anomalous inviable insurgent now know that isn’t true. This should have been obvious all along, but for the doubters, stop doubting.

The second lesson is a bit more complex. On one hand, Clinton should have done better in Iowa, given the demographic match up. This puts Clinton on notice. Every campaign is like a herd of bison moving across the plains, with each bison being unique and likely to go in any of several directions. The efficient campaign tends to ignore the bison that are going in the “right” direction (for that campaign) and focus on those that seem likely to stray. I think Iowa demonstrates that some of Clinton’s bison need to have a good talking to.

On the other hand, the Sanders campaign makes the point that the #FeelTheBern surge will not only carry Sanders past the demographic disconnects he faces, but that it will sprout a long and stable coat tail to bring Congress with him. Did going from an obscure(ish) Senator from an obscure(ish) state to nearly besting The Anointed One (for good reason) in Iowa constitute a Bern-Surge? Or was it not enough? The turnout in Iowa was pretty good, but it was not Obama-esque. To the extent that Obama’s 2008 campaign is a model for a 2016 Sanders campaign, something is lacking here. This may or may not be important.

One test of the surgosity of the Sanders campaign may be South Carolina and Nevada. He is unlikely to win in South Carolina and Nevada is obscure. But if he does way better than expectations, that might mean that the surge if getting fueled (by itself, as surges do). I suppose New Hampshire could also be an indicator. Sanders will likely win that state. Not because New Hampshire and Vermont are clones — they are very different. But because among Democrats, Sanders will be seen as something of a favorite son. (New Hampshire and Vermont share a long border, but most cross-state interconnections, I think, are: Vermont-Update NY, and Vermont-Berkshires/Pioneer Valley, MA; and New Hampshire-Greater Boston Areas.) In any event, if Sanders does better than X percent over Clinton in New Hampshire, that could be a post-Iowa surge-fueling effect. X is probably around 12% .

On the Republican side, there are more lessons than I want or need to discuss, but I’ll mention two. First, as per this item, no matter how out of the box some of this year’s campaigns seem to be (i.e., Trump’s celebrity approach), the political process is a real, living entity that can’t be ignored. Trump risks loss for doing so. The other major lesson, I think, is that the field is now much smaller than it used to be. I’m not sure if any of the bottom tier candidates can recover, however, New Hampshire might bring one or two back into the race. But right now, it is looking like Trump-Cruz-Rubio. I’ve seen some convincing commentary that Cruz is actually not viable long term. I don’t know if I believe that, even if I can hope it to be so. So, the Trump Will Burn Out theory says that Rubio is the GOP nominee, and based on overall patterns, likely the next President unless the Democrats pull their heads out of each other’s butts and start focusing on the end game. I suppose it could be worse.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1nDk62V

Increasingly, I feel the need to declare my position on the candidates before commenting on the process, because, increasingly, the conversation has become one of comparative litmus tests. So, here’s the deal on that: I like Clinton and Sanders both, and I like each of them for both overlapping and different reasons. As a life long Democrat I’m glad to see such good candidates running. I will decide whom to support in the Minnesota Caucus some time after I walk into the building, most likely. Then, later, I will decide which candidate, if any, I might work for during the time between our caucus and the convention, though most likely it will be neither. I don’t have a lot of money to donate to anything, but so far I have split my financial support evenly. After the convention (or a bit before if there is a clear winner a priori) I will do everything I can to move the chosen candidate into the White House, while at the same time working on my Congressional District and state wide races or issues.

The first thing we learned from the Iowa Caucus is that Bernie Sanders is a viable candidate who can win. I didn’t doubt that before, but his showing in Iowa, a statistical tie, demonstrates this. This is not really too important in the big picture, partly because it simply reifies what was already known, and partly because Iowa (and New Hampshire) provide only a part of information needed to think strategically about the process. The way things are set up, we really won’t know until Super Tuesday, I think, how the two candidates stand. South Carolina may tell us something about the alleged demographic disconnect that favors Clinton over Sanders, and Nevada may show us if Unions matter in this election, and who they matter to. But from that perspective (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada) it will be very difficult to predict Super Tuesday’s outcome.

But, here’s the thing: Bernie supporters who have shown a great deal of angst and jitteriness, to the point of sometimes acting inappropriately for a Primary, can relax a bit now. Your candidate is for real, we all know this. And best of luck to you and to us all.

At the same time, Clinton supporters who may have viewed Bernie as an anomalous inviable insurgent now know that isn’t true. This should have been obvious all along, but for the doubters, stop doubting.

The second lesson is a bit more complex. On one hand, Clinton should have done better in Iowa, given the demographic match up. This puts Clinton on notice. Every campaign is like a herd of bison moving across the plains, with each bison being unique and likely to go in any of several directions. The efficient campaign tends to ignore the bison that are going in the “right” direction (for that campaign) and focus on those that seem likely to stray. I think Iowa demonstrates that some of Clinton’s bison need to have a good talking to.

On the other hand, the Sanders campaign makes the point that the #FeelTheBern surge will not only carry Sanders past the demographic disconnects he faces, but that it will sprout a long and stable coat tail to bring Congress with him. Did going from an obscure(ish) Senator from an obscure(ish) state to nearly besting The Anointed One (for good reason) in Iowa constitute a Bern-Surge? Or was it not enough? The turnout in Iowa was pretty good, but it was not Obama-esque. To the extent that Obama’s 2008 campaign is a model for a 2016 Sanders campaign, something is lacking here. This may or may not be important.

One test of the surgosity of the Sanders campaign may be South Carolina and Nevada. He is unlikely to win in South Carolina and Nevada is obscure. But if he does way better than expectations, that might mean that the surge if getting fueled (by itself, as surges do). I suppose New Hampshire could also be an indicator. Sanders will likely win that state. Not because New Hampshire and Vermont are clones — they are very different. But because among Democrats, Sanders will be seen as something of a favorite son. (New Hampshire and Vermont share a long border, but most cross-state interconnections, I think, are: Vermont-Update NY, and Vermont-Berkshires/Pioneer Valley, MA; and New Hampshire-Greater Boston Areas.) In any event, if Sanders does better than X percent over Clinton in New Hampshire, that could be a post-Iowa surge-fueling effect. X is probably around 12% .

On the Republican side, there are more lessons than I want or need to discuss, but I’ll mention two. First, as per this item, no matter how out of the box some of this year’s campaigns seem to be (i.e., Trump’s celebrity approach), the political process is a real, living entity that can’t be ignored. Trump risks loss for doing so. The other major lesson, I think, is that the field is now much smaller than it used to be. I’m not sure if any of the bottom tier candidates can recover, however, New Hampshire might bring one or two back into the race. But right now, it is looking like Trump-Cruz-Rubio. I’ve seen some convincing commentary that Cruz is actually not viable long term. I don’t know if I believe that, even if I can hope it to be so. So, the Trump Will Burn Out theory says that Rubio is the GOP nominee, and based on overall patterns, likely the next President unless the Democrats pull their heads out of each other’s butts and start focusing on the end game. I suppose it could be worse.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1nDk62V

QM/MM trajectory of an aqueous Diels-Alder reaction

Update on Our Lives [Casaubon's Book]

Since Zion’s arrival as a newborn in 2013, this blog has been quite quiet. First I wanted to give Zion the same time and resources that my other babies had. Then just as we started to get back on our feet, the flood of adding four kids to our home, including three under three (plus Zion who was 10 months at the time) took up most of our lives. As soon as things settled down, we had a difficult spring last year, and then got my foursome’s youngest brother, and then spent our fall dealing with legal matters as the children were finally freed for adoption.

The update is that my sibling group of five should be adopted in mid-March. We are tentatively planning on March 14 for adoption day (Pi day adoptions!) It has been a long, hard road for the last almost-3 years, but things are more settled now and everyone is doing extremely well. So I should have time to write. Of course, I’ve said that before. And we’re hoping to move this spring or summer. But I’m trying.

You’ve known my kids by initials for the last 3 years. I can’t post pictures until the adoption is finalized, but I can at least begin using their names (note, the initials I use do not always correspond with people’s names for reasons of privacy.)

So just to give everyone a scorecard, since everyone finds it confusing, our ten kids are as follows. (For the record, Isaiah and Asher want to be formerly known as something too, but we haven’t figured out what the should be ;-))

Eli, 16 (born 2000)
Simon, 14 (born 2001)
Deniece, 13 (born 2002, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “D”
Isaiah, 12 (born 2003)
Asher, 10 (born 2005)
Rimonah, 6 (born 2009, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “R”
Judah, 6 (born 2009, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “K”
Malkiah (“Miss Bean” “Malkie”), 4 (born 2012, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “Q”
Zion, 3 (born 2012, arrived 2012, adopted 2014) – the moppet formerly known as “Z”
Hezekiah (“Kai”), 2 (born 2013, arrived 2015, adopted 2016. – The moppet formerly known as “C”

Ok, is that confusing enough?

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/20EfLLx

Since Zion’s arrival as a newborn in 2013, this blog has been quite quiet. First I wanted to give Zion the same time and resources that my other babies had. Then just as we started to get back on our feet, the flood of adding four kids to our home, including three under three (plus Zion who was 10 months at the time) took up most of our lives. As soon as things settled down, we had a difficult spring last year, and then got my foursome’s youngest brother, and then spent our fall dealing with legal matters as the children were finally freed for adoption.

The update is that my sibling group of five should be adopted in mid-March. We are tentatively planning on March 14 for adoption day (Pi day adoptions!) It has been a long, hard road for the last almost-3 years, but things are more settled now and everyone is doing extremely well. So I should have time to write. Of course, I’ve said that before. And we’re hoping to move this spring or summer. But I’m trying.

You’ve known my kids by initials for the last 3 years. I can’t post pictures until the adoption is finalized, but I can at least begin using their names (note, the initials I use do not always correspond with people’s names for reasons of privacy.)

So just to give everyone a scorecard, since everyone finds it confusing, our ten kids are as follows. (For the record, Isaiah and Asher want to be formerly known as something too, but we haven’t figured out what the should be ;-))

Eli, 16 (born 2000)
Simon, 14 (born 2001)
Deniece, 13 (born 2002, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “D”
Isaiah, 12 (born 2003)
Asher, 10 (born 2005)
Rimonah, 6 (born 2009, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “R”
Judah, 6 (born 2009, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “K”
Malkiah (“Miss Bean” “Malkie”), 4 (born 2012, arrived 2013, adopted 2016) – the moppet formerly known as “Q”
Zion, 3 (born 2012, arrived 2012, adopted 2014) – the moppet formerly known as “Z”
Hezekiah (“Kai”), 2 (born 2013, arrived 2015, adopted 2016. – The moppet formerly known as “C”

Ok, is that confusing enough?

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/20EfLLx

Hagbard’s Scaffold [Aardvarchaeology]

Sweden’s bedrock has been entirely abraded by the inland ice. It sanded down the country like a big wood planer, leaving smooth lovely outcrops known as hällar all over the place. This is the main natural prerequisite of Sweden’s rich rock art tradition. Most of it dates from the Bronze Age, 1700–500 BC.

Denmark hardly has any visible bedrock, so they don’t have much rock art over there, and what they do have tends to be on boulders. It is thus hardly surprising that when you do find figurative art on boulders in Sweden, it tends to be in the provinces closest to Denmark.

Near Asige church in Halland we have one of the most monumental examples of this. Two flat stone grave markers and two pairs of big honking menhirs with rock art on them! One pair has become embellished with an antiquarian name: Hagbards galge, “Hagbard’s Scaffold”. This refers to a tale told by Saxo Grammaticus in his History of the Danes and is probably a coinage from about 1800: after us Scandies rediscovered Medieval literature but before we realised that the world is considerably more than 6000 years old. There was a time when intellectuals thought that all Scandinavian antiquities could be explained with reference to the Sagas.

The legendary rock art surveyors Sven-Gunnar Broström and Kenneth Ihrestam have often figured here on the blog. Now they have reexamined and documented Hagbard’s Scaffold, finding lots of previously unseen motifs. (But first they had to kill and remove all the lichen on the stones.) This transforms the monument from a group of menhirs with some rock art on them into honest-to-goodness pictorial stelae! Though the mate of the birth-giver stele has only cupmarks and the mate of the shield-bearer stele has no markings at all.

Broström, S-G & Ihrestam, K. 2015. Hagbards galge. Raä 17 i Asige socken, Halland. Rapport över dokumentation av hällristningar 2015. BOTARKrapport 2015-29. Botkyrka.

Stele A, south side. The previously known concentric circles representing the sun and/or a shield have now been found to have two legs and a head, that is, we are looking at a person holding a shield and/or the sun.

Stele B, north side. Most people in Scandy rock art are just stick figures, so gender is sometimes difficult to judge. An oversized erection identifies men, like the guy bottom left. A ponytail hairdo is a common identifier for women, and there are cases where the ponytail is combined with a cupmark in the crotch. This attribute identifies the two otherwise ungendered top figures on the stele as women. Their unusual, extremely wide-legged stance suggests to me that the artist is emphasising female fertility. The concentric circles represent the sun and/or a shield here too.

Stele B, east side. The curved horizontal line and the horizontal ladder are both remains of the era’s ubiquitous ships.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1WZWjqb

Sweden’s bedrock has been entirely abraded by the inland ice. It sanded down the country like a big wood planer, leaving smooth lovely outcrops known as hällar all over the place. This is the main natural prerequisite of Sweden’s rich rock art tradition. Most of it dates from the Bronze Age, 1700–500 BC.

Denmark hardly has any visible bedrock, so they don’t have much rock art over there, and what they do have tends to be on boulders. It is thus hardly surprising that when you do find figurative art on boulders in Sweden, it tends to be in the provinces closest to Denmark.

Near Asige church in Halland we have one of the most monumental examples of this. Two flat stone grave markers and two pairs of big honking menhirs with rock art on them! One pair has become embellished with an antiquarian name: Hagbards galge, “Hagbard’s Scaffold”. This refers to a tale told by Saxo Grammaticus in his History of the Danes and is probably a coinage from about 1800: after us Scandies rediscovered Medieval literature but before we realised that the world is considerably more than 6000 years old. There was a time when intellectuals thought that all Scandinavian antiquities could be explained with reference to the Sagas.

The legendary rock art surveyors Sven-Gunnar Broström and Kenneth Ihrestam have often figured here on the blog. Now they have reexamined and documented Hagbard’s Scaffold, finding lots of previously unseen motifs. (But first they had to kill and remove all the lichen on the stones.) This transforms the monument from a group of menhirs with some rock art on them into honest-to-goodness pictorial stelae! Though the mate of the birth-giver stele has only cupmarks and the mate of the shield-bearer stele has no markings at all.

Broström, S-G & Ihrestam, K. 2015. Hagbards galge. Raä 17 i Asige socken, Halland. Rapport över dokumentation av hällristningar 2015. BOTARKrapport 2015-29. Botkyrka.

Stele A, south side. The previously known concentric circles representing the sun and/or a shield have now been found to have two legs and a head, that is, we are looking at a person holding a shield and/or the sun.

Stele B, north side. Most people in Scandy rock art are just stick figures, so gender is sometimes difficult to judge. An oversized erection identifies men, like the guy bottom left. A ponytail hairdo is a common identifier for women, and there are cases where the ponytail is combined with a cupmark in the crotch. This attribute identifies the two otherwise ungendered top figures on the stele as women. Their unusual, extremely wide-legged stance suggests to me that the artist is emphasising female fertility. The concentric circles represent the sun and/or a shield here too.

Stele B, east side. The curved horizontal line and the horizontal ladder are both remains of the era’s ubiquitous ships.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1WZWjqb