BEGINNING TODAY

All postings for this blog will appear on my blog:  JOURNAL FOR DAILY PAGES....  all of the internal page links have been switched.  This blog will remain open should anyone want to revisit previous articles that have been posted.

Morgan Freeman on Racism

 

Attention Readers

 BEGINNING MONDAY JULY 12, 2021...

I have decided to combine three of my blogs into one blog, therefore as of the above date, all postings for this blog will appear on my blog:  JOURNAL FOR DAILY PAGES....  all of the internal page links have already been switched.  This blog will remain open should anyone want to revisit previous articles that have been posted.

Stellar Evolution

Sometimes when a star reaches the end of its life it does so with a cataclysmic bang. In quick time it shreds itself, throwing out the raw materials that will seed the next generation of stars and planets. Even companion stars can be caught up in the explosion and scarred by the fallout.

Astronomers have found that this scarring can tell them a great deal about the binary star system as it was before the explosion even occurred. With most stars being a part of multiple star systems, this is of particular interest to scientists trying to understand their evolution.

But not all stars will go supernova as they run out of fuel – only the more massive ones have enough self-gravity to actually explode. A star needs to have roughly eight times more mass than our Sun for what is known as a core-collapse supernova to occur.  And it is gravity that drives the processes that lead to this dramatic ending.

For most of its life, a star exists in a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, where the inward and outward forces on the star are finely balanced. Gravity draws in surrounding matter towards the star’s core, while radiation pressure from the heat being generated within pushes outwards and prevents the star from imploding.

In fact, these two forces are inextricably linked. If the core were to cool a little, the inward force of gravity would exceed the outward radiation pressure and the star would contract. The contraction would increase the temperature and pressure of the star again, returning it to equilibrium.

The real excitement comes as the star runs out of fuel and can no longer support itself against its own weight. Within a split second the core collapses, sending a shockwave radiating out through the star blowing it apart and causing one of the most energetic events we see anywhere in the Universe.

How much energy are we talking about? Roughly as much as the Sun will generate over something like 10-billion years. All produced in barely a fraction of that time.  If there is a nearby companion star, it can be hit by debris from the explosion. When this happens, the surface heats up and causes the star to swell, a bit like having a burn blister on your skin.

The star blister can be 10 or even 100 times larger than the star itself, but it lasts only for a very short time. Within a few decades, the blister heals, and the star shrinks back to its original form.

The team of Australian and Japanese astronomers, including post-doc researcher Dr Ryosuke Hirai from Monash University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), have carried out hundreds of computer simulations to investigate how companion stars inflate depending on their interactions with nearby supernovae. They then applied their results to SN2006jc, a supernova that was first seen by amateur astronomers and preceded by something that was, well, a little confusing.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE,
CLICK HERE...

China's Super Carrier

A new aircraft carrier, currently under construction in Shanghai, is the most visible sign of China's rapidly expanding navy. It is larger than China's current two carriers and differs in key aspects. But the natural comparison is to the U.S. Navy's latest carriers, the Ford Class.

Aircraft carriers are a strategic priority for the world’s leading navies. Experienced players such as the Royal Navy, French Navy (Marine Nationale) and Indian Navy are all in the process of bringing in new carriers. And Japan, South Korea and likely other countries are all taking steps to join the club. But nowhere is the capability gathering steam as much as in China. The Chinese Navy (PLAN) has already commissioned two carriers based on the Russian Admiral Kutzenov class. But their third carrier, known as Type-003, promises to take the PLAN to the next level.

Meanwhile the U.S. Navy, for decades the world leader in this technology, is also modernizing with a new class of super carrier. The first Ford Class ship, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was commissioned in 2017. While it has suffered some teething problems it remains the largest and most modern carrier afloat.

The Type-003 is very close in size to the U.S. Navy’s carriers. And although the definition is vague, it seems fair to also describe it as a “super carrier”.

Fresh commercial satellite imagery from Kompsat, via Shadowbreak Inti., allows us to finally measure the size and layout of the Type-003. This permits a general high-level comparison to the Ford Class.

The imagery shows that it is approximately 320 meters (1,050 feet) long. This is about 13 meters (43 feet) shorter than the Ford Class. And it seems less than it sounds if you placed the two ships side by side.

The Chinese ship does have a narrower flight deck however, It’s width of about 73 meters (240 feet) is very similar to preceding Type-001 and Type-002 carriers. There may be logistical reasons for this, such as dry dock sizes. Or it may simply be that the Chinese planners were happy with the width of the current carriers.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Civilization Most Likely

The Milky Way is 13 BILLION years old. Some of our Galaxy’s oldest stars were born near the beginning of the Universe itself. During all these eons of time, we know at least one technological civilization has been born – US!

But if the Galaxy is so ancient, and we know it can create life, why haven’t we heard from anybody else? If another civilization was just 0.1% of the Galaxy’s age older than we are, they would be millions of years further along than us and presumably more advanced. If we are already on the cusp of sending life to other worlds, shouldn’t the Milky Way be teeming with alien ships and colonies by now?

Maybe. But it’s also possible that we’ve been looking in the wrong place. Recent computer simulations by Jason T. Wright et al suggest that the best place to look for ancient space-faring civilizations might be the core of the Galaxy, a relatively unexplored target in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence.

The Churn
Older mathematical models of space colonization have tried to determine the time required for a civilization to spread throughout the Milky Way. Given the size of the Milky Way, wide-scale galactic colonization could take longer than the age of the Galaxy itself. However, a unique feature of this new simulation is its accounting for the motion of the Galaxy’s stars.  

The Milky Way is not static, as assumed in prior models, rather it is a churning swirling mass. Colonization vessels or probes would be flying among stars that are themselves in motion. The new simulation reveals that stellar motion aids in colonization contributing a diffusing effect to the spread of a civilization.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

ATTENTION READERS

 BEGINNING MONDAY JULY 12, 2021...

I have decided to combine three of my blogs into one blog, therefore as of the above date, all postings for this blog will appear on my blog:  JOURNAL FOR DAILY PAGES....  all of the internal page links have already been switched.  This blog will remain open should anyone want to revisit previous articles that have been posted.

Who's To Blame?

Women have become prey for “female-identifying” inmates in Californian prisons. A California law is being blasted by women’s rights groups for allowing transgender inmates to pick the gendered prison of their choice, citing abuse of females by men.

In a letter to Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) accused the state of violating the constitutional rights of incarcerated women and subjecting them to “physical, psychological, and emotional harm” by allowing men into their living quarters to “prey on women.”

“Under the law as written, there is no method to screen out males who genuinely self-identify as transgender from those who are using the system to prey on women. Even if sincere self-identification was the criterion for transfer, however, it would not mitigate or remove the danger posed to women. A 2009 report found 20% of trans-identified men in California are sex offenders, and 50% have committed crimes against persons,” the letter reads.

“Those running the prison system know how dangerous conditions have become for the women in California state custody. Many of the correctional officers have openly acknowledged that they expect the women will be raped and assaulted, there will likely be pregnancies, and, in general, the environment will be ripe for exploitation of the women and challenging to control.”

The WoLF has received numerous complaints from women who have been subject to abuse and traumatized at the hands of male inmates who transferred to their prisons, WoLF Legal Director Lauren Adams said.

“We are working with a woman who was punched in the face so hard by a new transfer that she couldn’t chew for three days. He was taken away and released back in a different yard with no restrictions,” Adams said. “He was her cellmate. She had to sleep with him.”

Adams added that many women who have been sexually abused in the past now have to share communal showers with nude men.

“One woman went in there with two naked men showering who still had penises,” Adams added. “It was incredibly traumatic and scary, to know for, [possibly], the rest of their lives they are going to be subjected to this.”

The state currently has 273 transfer requests. 266 of the requestees are housed at male institutions and are seeking to be transferred to female institutions, while only seven from female institutions are requesting a transfer to male institutions. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the state has 1,286 inmates who identify as transgender or nonbinary.

So far, 24 male prisoners have been transferred to female institutions. WoLF speculates that many of the male inmates looking to transfer to women’s prisons are not transgender, but are looking to escape their current living situation.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Ancient Human Discovered

Researchers working in Israel have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human that lived alongside our species more than 100,000 years ago.

They believe the remains uncovered near the city of Ramla represent one of the "last survivors" of a very ancient human group.  The finds consist of a partial skull and jaw from an individual who lived between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Details have been published in the journal Science.

The team members think the individual descended from an earlier species that may have spread out of the region hundreds of thousands of years ago and given rise to Neanderthals in Europe and their equivalents in Asia.  The scientists have named the newly discovered lineage the "Nesher Ramla Homo type".

Dr Hila May of Tel Aviv University said the discovery reshaped the story of human evolution, particularly our picture of how the Neanderthals emerged. The general picture of Neanderthal evolution had in the past been linked closely with Europe.
 
"It all started in Israel. We suggest that a local group was the source population," she told BBC News. "During interglacial periods, waves of humans, the Nesher Ramla people, migrated from the Middle East to Europe."

The team thinks that early members of the Nesher Ramla Homo group were already present in the Near East some 400,000 years ago. The researchers have noticed resemblances between the new finds and ancient "pre-Neanderthal" groups in Europe.  "This is the first time we could connect the dots between different specimens found in the Levant" said Dr Rachel Sarig, also from Tel Aviv University.

"There are several human fossils from the caves of Qesem, Zuttiyeh and Tabun that date back to that time that we could not attribute to any specific known group of humans. But comparing their shapes to those of the newly uncovered specimen from Nesher Ramla justify their inclusion within the [new human] group."  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Our Divided House

 

Stupid Laws

 

Our Milky Way Galaxy

Photos from satellites and other sources are just one of the ways we learn about the universe around us. NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, for example, can create composite views of radio waves and X-ray waves, which is exactly what we see in this new image of the Milky Way. And wow, is it awesome.

The photo, originally released in May, shows a composite image of our galaxy’s core, and combined Chandra’s X-ray images with radio-wave data from South Africa’s MeerKAT Radio Telescope. NASA colorized the striking image so that all of the lightwaves are visible to the human eye. The brighter band at the center of the image is the Milky Way’s plane, which is a disk of matter where most of its stars are located.

The accompanying explainer video from NASA (above) states that the image “contains a wealth of scientific information” to explore. One of the most fascinating elements found within the image are threads—long, narrow bands of X-rays comprised of superheated gas and magnetic fields. One such thread runs perpendicular to our galaxy’s plane and looks to have X-ray and radio emission intertwined. It measures 20 light-years long but is only one-hundredth that size in width. Researchers think the threads were formed due to magnetic fields that collided with and twisted around each other.

NASA’s panoramic image uncovered several other amazing elements as well, like enormous plumes of hot gas that extend 700 light-years above and below the Milky Way’s plane. These plumes are believed to be heated by things like supernova explosions and hard-to-detect magnetic reconnections. There is also a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center, too, which also impacts movement and other elements.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Critical Race Theory

 

Unintended Consequences

U.S. taxpayers may have to end up paying $15 billion to the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline. The company is seeking damages after Democrat President Joe Biden canceled the pipeline to pursue his far-left energy agenda.

TC Energy announced last month that they were scrapping the project because revoked the permit needed to complete the pipeline. Fox Business noted that a study from the State Department found that the pipeline would have created 26,100 indirect and direct jobs.

TC Energy announced last week that it had “filed a Notice of Intent to initiate a legacy North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to recover economic damages resulting from the revocation of the Keystone XL Project’s Presidential Permit,” the company said in a statement. “TC Energy will be seeking to recover more than US$15 billion in damages that it has suffered as a result of the U.S. Government’s breach of its NAFTA obligations.”

The Notice of Intent was filed with the U.S. Department of State. In May, nearly two dozen state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for canceling the pipeline, saying that he exceeded his presidential authority.

The attorneys general argue that Biden exceeded his authority because “of a provision Congress tucked into tax legislation in 2011 that required then-President Barack Obama to either approve the pipeline within 60 days or issue a determination that it wasn’t in the national interest,” NBC News reported. “Obama then rejected TransCanada’s (now TC Energy Corp) application weeks later, saying Congress gave him insufficient time, but allowed the company to re-apply, which deferred the decision until after his re-election. Obama later rejected the application, President Donald Trump approved it, and Biden revoked the approval.”  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Hollywood

 

Ancient Ruins

The world is littered with the ancient ruins of man-made cities and settlements that stretch back thousands of years. Represented are 100 ruins that embody some of the outstanding achievements of humanity across various cultures and civilizations.

1 – Por-Bazhyn – The Mysterious Island Fortress in Siberia
Por-Bazhyn, meaning “Clay House” in the Tuvan language are the remains of an adobe monastery or a fortified palace, that was built on a small island in Lake Tere-Khol, located in the Sengelen mountains of southern Siberia, Russia. Radiocarbon dating and dendrochronological studies suggest that Por-Bazhyn was built around AD 777 by the Uighurs, a tribal confederation under the Orkhon Uyghur that ruled from AD 742 to 848.


2 – Rujm el-Hiri – the “Stonehenge of the Levant”
Rujm el-Hiri (meaning “”stone heap of the wild cat”), also called Gilgal Refā’īm (meaning “wheel of spirits”), is an ancient megalithic monument, located in the Israeli-occupied region of the Golan Heights. Archaeologists dating sediment eolian samples, and the study of pottery sherds excavated in situ, suggest it was constructed either during the Early Bronze Age II around 3000 to 2700 BC, or from the Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age I between 3880– 3540 BC (although there is still no consensus).

3 – The Sunken Town of Pavlopetri
Pavlopetri, also called Paulopetri, is a submerged ancient town, located between the islet of Pavlopetri and the Pounta coast of Laconia, on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Ceramics recovered in situ confirms that Pavlopetri had Mycenaean occupation, but further archaeological evidence suggests that the town was occupied as early as 3500 BC.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

America

 

Independence Day

 

Fourth of July

Independence Day (colloquially the Fourth of July or July 4) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence of the United States, on July 4, 1776. The Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were no longer subject (and subordinate) to the monarch of Britain, King George III, and were now united, free, and independent states. The Congress had voted to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2, but it was not declared until July 4.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, political speeches, and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the thirteen colonies from Great Britain in 1776 actually occurred on July 2, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia declaring the United States independent from Great Britain's rule.  After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the wording of the Declaration to remove its vigorous denunciation of the slave trade, finally approving it two days later on July 4. 

Jefferson had written the following indictment against King George III:  He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Liberty

 

Using Novels to Predict...

Philip Oltermann of THE GUARDIAN writes...


Three years ago, a small group of academics at a German university launched an unprecedented collaboration with the military – using novels to try to pinpoint the world’s next conflicts. Are they on to something?

s the car with the blacked-out windows came to a halt in a sidestreet near Tübingen’s botanical gardens, keen-eyed passersby may have noticed something unusual about its numberplate. In Germany, the first few letters usually denote the municipality where a vehicle is registered. The letter Y, however, is reserved for members of the armed forces.

Military men are a rare, not to say unwelcome, sight in Tübingen. A picturesque 15th-century university town that brought forth great German minds including the philosopher Hegel and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, it is also a modern stronghold of the German Green party, thanks to its left-leaning academic population. In 2018, there was growing resistance on campus against plans to establish Europe’s leading artificial intelligence research hub in the surrounding area: the involvement of arms manufacturers in Tübingen’s “cyber valley”, argued students who occupied a lecture hall that year, brought shame to the university’s intellectual tradition.

Yet the two high-ranking officials in field-grey Bundeswehr uniforms who stepped out of the Y-plated vehicle on 1 February 2018 had travelled into hostile territory to shake hands on a collaboration with academia, the like of which the world had never seen before.

The name of the initiative was Project Cassandra: for the next two years, university researchers would use their expertise to help the German defence ministry predict the future.

The academics weren’t AI specialists, or scientists, or political analysts. Instead, the people the colonels had sought out in a stuffy top-floor room were a small team of literary scholars led by Jürgen Wertheimer, a professor of comparative literature with wild curls and a penchant for black roll-necks.

After the officers had left, the atmosphere among Wertheimer’s team remained tense. A greeting gift of camouflage-patterned running tops and military green nail varnish had helped break the ice, but there was outstanding cause for concern. “We’d been unsure about whether to go public over the project,” recalls Isabelle Holz, Wertheimer’s assistant. The university had declined the opportunity to be formally involved with the defence ministry, which is why the initiative was run through the Global Ethic Institute, a faculty-independent institution set up by the late dissident Catholic, Hans Küng. “We thought our offices might get paint-bombed or something.”

They needn’t have worried. “Cassandra reaches for her Walther PPK” ran the headline in the local press after the project was announced, a sarcastic reference to James Bond’s weapon of choice. The idea that literature could be used by the defence ministry to identify civil wars and humanitarian disasters ahead of time, wrote the Neckar-Chronik newspaper, was as charming as it was hopelessly naive. “You have to ask yourself why the military is financing something that is going to be of no value whatsoever.”  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Dark Matter & Galaxy Spin

The Milky Way rotates at a whopping 130 miles (210 kilometers) per second, but a new study has found that dark matter has slowed the rotation of its bar by at least 24% since its formation nearly 14 billion years ago.

"Astrophysicists have long suspected that the spinning bar at the center of our galaxy is slowing down, but we have found the first evidence of this happening," study co-author Ralph Schoenrich, an astrophysicist at University College London, said in a statement.

These new findings not only shed light on the rotation of the Milky Way but also provide an insight into the nature of one of the most elusive materials in the universe — dark matter.

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a thick band of stars in the center and large pivoting arms stretching out across the cosmos. Scientists think that a halo of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way, extending out far beyond its visible edge, as occurs at other galaxies.

In the new study, researchers used data from Gaia, a European Space Agency mission mapping the positions of billions of stars, to study the Hercules Stream, a thick cluster of stars that revolve around the Milky Way at the same rate that the galactic bar itself spins.

Because the stars in the Hercules Stream are gravitationally trapped by the pivoting bar, slowing down the bar's rotation would cause the stars to creep outward to keep their orbits in sync with the bar's spin.

The researchers found evidence of such an outward cosmic migration when they investigated the chemical makeup of the stars. The Hercules Stream stars are rich in heavier elements, suggesting that these stars formed closer to the galactic center, where stars are about 10 times richer in metals compared to those in the galactic suburbs.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Some Characters

 

I Don't Own No Gun

I am a Vietnam Veteran but after leaving the military made a pledge to myself that I would never own or fire another firearm...  at 73 years of age, I have honored and continue to fulfil that pledge...

HOWEVER, I do believe in the Second Amendment and the right of every American to bear arms if they so desire...  I also believe that it is not the law abiding citizens that are the problem with firearms but the few people who have criminal intent on their minds...  or, those who are mentally deranged for some reason...  typically outside of their own control. 

AND, if a LIBERAL GOVERNMENT ever tries to take guns or the Second Amendment away from the people, there will be a CIVIL WAR in this country because of it...   This is NOT A THREAT...  this is a fact of life and the RIGHTS that were given to us by our Founding Fathers.

Change the government to SOCIALISM and change the CONSTITUTION so that there is no more Second Amendment and this country will pay the price for that egotistical desire...  MOREOVER, not only will this country suffer internally, but it will suffer externally as well as our enemies RUSSIA and CHINA will have a perfect opportunity for conquest...

WAKE UP AMERICA...

Chine's Secret Computer System

Whether it is China’s rover on Mars, its space station orbiting the Earth or its moon probe bringing back lunar samples, one little-known system is behind them all.  The core of the Kylin computer operating system has been guarded as a national secret and its use in the country’s space programme has only just been officially confirmed.

Its main codes were written by Chinese military researchers, according to developer China Electronics Corporation (CEC), but it also includes elements of Unix-like software FreeBSD, parts from Linux, and a user interface similar to Windows.  It is a hybrid, like the mythical qilin dragon beast it is named after.

Speaking to state media on the weekend, members of the Kylin development team revealed the role the operating system played in these missions, coordinating communication between artificial intelligence software, human controllers on the ground and all the hardware on board the spacecraft.

Until about a decade ago, China, like most other countries, relied on Linux and Windows to drive its space programmes, according to a paper published in domestic journal Space Industry Management last year.

From 2008, China’s space authorities started to replace Western software and hardware in satellites and spacecraft. The process sped up after Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about US hacking activities.

Kylin was one of the results – along with the Zhanxing, or Warring Star, system developed by the Chinese military’s space force, according to the paper.

Dan Jianqun, a lead scientist with CEC’s Kylin project, said China had no other choice but to develop its operating system.

“Using other people’s systems, to quote President Xi [Jinping], is like building a house on other people’s land. It can be large and beautiful, but it can also be destroyed overnight,” he said in an interview on state television on Sunday.

The transition from western to home-made software was full of challenges, according to some of the software engineers involved.  Liu Jun, a software engineer on the Kylin team, said space missions required not only high security, but reliability and performance.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...