wide area synchronous grid (13. 648)

Via MetaFilter, we are directed to a rather amazing project drawing on a lot of aggregated public data to visualise global energy infrastructure (zoom out a bit by punching, pinching the screen and one also see the constellations of satellites) with power plants, colour-coded for solar, wind, geo-thermal, nuclear, hydro and other fuel sources, data-centres (as consumers, represented by bright diamonds), transmission lines, undersea cables, electric substations and more from one Brian Bartholomew. Of course, exploring the network nearby is engrossing, but further afield, it is heartening to see the growing percentage of energy drawn from non-petroleum sources, particularly in areas with mindless political opposition.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an early emoticon (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ),  the Commodore A1000, dark oxygen, everything is context plus attempts to keep Trump off the ballot and Biden on it

three years ago: an MST3K classic, denizens of the deep, more links to enjoy plus a banger from The Cars

four years ago: secret spots in Scotland plus Highland Moors

five years ago: your daily demon, Neptunalia plus the first communications satellite

six years ago: even more links worth the revisit 

light-rail (13. 623)

Via Kottke, we learn that a rather enterprising Swiss start-up has recently concluded the first year’s trial run of a demonstration project in along a one hundred metre stretch of train track in the village of Buttes in the canton of Neuchâtel that placed forty-eight removable solar panels in the space between between the rails (called sleepers—Bahnschwellen, the spot for the crossties). Installed in May of 2025, the short spur has seen the traffic of over eleven thousand locomotives (despite its size and remoteness, it is well-connected to the national transport network), rolling safely over the panels, which despite the narrow gauge, short length of the array and interruptions for maintenance and winter snows, the portable solar generator produced enough electricity to power four average Swiss homes for an entire year. The innovative idea is attracting interest in Italy, France, the Philippines and South Korea.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus Project Ester

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus the Trump-Vance ticket

three years ago: even more links,  Netscape Navigator defunct (1993) plus the Rosetta Stone (1799)

four years ago: Jane Fonda in Vietnam (1972) plus Gangnam Style (2012)

five years ago: the Elder Fuþark plus the Stone Ship of Nassjä

six years ago: a rhapsodic roller-coaster, Castor and Pollux plus more official state junk

jónsmessa (13. 553)

The celebration coinciding with the Feast of John the Baptist, this second night of Mid-Summer, according to Icelandic tradition when the midnight sun returns, barely dipping below the horizon and never setting, is one of the four miraculous eves when magic happens, the others occurring during Yuletide with Christmas, New Years and Twelfth Night. Wishing stones may be found as well as healing herbs and grasses mature and are at the height of their potency. The evening due heavy, rolling around in it naked guarantees a year’s inoculation from all ailments. Cows gain the capactiy for human speech, though their utterances can drive the hearer mad so it is best not to listen. Lore also states that sitting at a crossroads with all paths leading to a church invites elves, who will attempt to seduce one with food and gifts.

convention zone (13. 527)

The latest instalment of a multipart series on the Sun and its inner workings addresses in depth a fact briefly touched on in a recent post regarding the surprisingly glacial speed which a photon escapes the solar core to emerge as light and radiative energy. Whilst many of us may be cognisant of the fact that the beams of light reaching us from the Sun are eight minutes old due to the distance that they have to transverse and how looking up into the night sky is looking into the distant past, the fact that the stellar furnace is so dense that it takes a photon over one hundred thousand years to work its way through the crowd of excited particles to the surface strikes one as a strange contrast. Because protons emanate in all directions through the medium of packed plasma, the straightforward journey is impeded by obstacles at every step, the bumping into a fellow traveller and the redirection over and over again increases the time to make it from the core to the corona by a factor of a trillion, a dampening process calculated in a process called a random walk, that sustains the fusion reaction. This delayed makes the light in the sky prehistoric, older than civilisation.

the do-nothing machine (13.434)

Courtesy of friend of the blog, Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to the 1957 experimental demonstration, one of the first uses of solar power at the time (see previously) from dynamic design duo Charles and Ray Eames (see also here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), over which the couple expressed some reluctance over the invitation to participate in the project sponsored by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). The whimsical initiative, called the Forecast Programme, and included Isamu Noguchi (野口·勇, furniture designer and landscaper who contributed the Prismatic Table) and Alexander Girard, specifically commissioned the Eames to construct a sampling of aluminium toys, at first considering items powered directly by passive sunlight and then introduced to photovoltaic technology, initially had reservations, saying that “Life is too full of real problems to permit introducing hypothetical ones,” but were persuaded by the observation that the demonstration was ultimately not an uninteresting and engaging assignment and that playthings are not as innocent as they appear.

kid icarus (12. 887)

Collaborating with astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, skydiver and musician Gabriel C Brown captured this incredible image of Brown transiting the Sun with an appreciable measure of luck and timing to triangulate and signal the exact moment for the jump and the shot, a composite mosaic through a telescope’s lens of the Sun roiling surface remotely tracking Brown’s falling silhouette, captured in the course of six passes by the ultralight prop-plane in the skies over Arizona.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Musk as Salacious Crumb (with synchronopticæ), letters to the president, Julian time plus Trump pushes through controversial nominees

twelve years ago: outsourcing espionage plus moving Germany’s spy agency headquarters from Bonn   

thirteen years ago: a survey of customer service 

fourteen years ago: a news roundup 

fifteen years ago: hysteria and security theatre 

8x8 (12. 813)

vampira: the obscure made-for-television title by George Moorse with a atmospheric score by Tangerine Dream 

concrete progress: a demonstration project for turning the rubble of war torn Ukraine into cement 

overton window: a measured approach to AI—via Kottke—see also  

spoiler-alert: William Castle’s Homicidal, a hammy, gimmicky film capitalising on the success of Psycho, gets reviewed by Poseidon’s Underworld

 
atira asteroids: a constellation of interior-Earth objects in our orbit and hidden by solar glare are uncomfortably close—via Damn Interesting 

it’s awfully strange to make a decision where i’m paying myself—but i was damaged very great and any money i would get i would give to charity: Grifter-in-Chief demands two-hundred and thirty million dollars in restitution from the US department of justice for past convictions  

billionaires’ row: a supertall residential tower on Manhattan’s Park Avenue is riddled with stress-fractures that may lead to its condemnation

the vampyre: Lord Byron’s unremembered manservant who invented the modern form of the genre—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronopticæ) plus the Berlin Crisis of 1961

fourteen years ago: exploring the past with the Retronaut

agrovoltaics (12. 620)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest—with back links to previous research on the topic, we return to the subject of growing crops underneath solar panels, addressing some of reasonable objections to industrial scale solar-farms (see previously) taking up arable land. Colocation provides numerous mutual benefits that are only beginning to be factored in—not least of which is public support for solar when it’s dual-use but also the symbiosis between plants and their artificial photovoltaic counterparts, many plants growing better with the added shade and the panels trap water vapour, yielding quite impressive leafy greens and the photovoltaic array also get the advantage from the undergrowth by regulating ambient heat and helping to maintain an optimal operating temperature by their off-gassing. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: mandatory voting in Australia (with synchronopticæ), psychometric scales plus prosperity and apocalypse

twelve years ago: daily affirmations plus more fairy tale Germany 

fourteen years ago: goblin holes plus toponymic etymology

fifteen years ago: for profit privacy 

gegenschein (12. 583)

Light pollution being a topic of particular concern to us, appreciating the fact that we are privileged to be far removed from most of the effects and most holidays too are spend under the stars, we liked learning about the metrics that went into this app—via MetaFilter—that uses the Bortle Scale, which builds and improves upon the way astronomers generally gauge the quality of the observations, naked-eye limiting magnitude (NELM) and judging the apparent brightness of the faintest visible objects, to make a better informed assessment of one’s environs and how far those margins might extend when looking up from a given location. The enlightening nine-step classification system with visible phenomena, untethered from a specific constellation or distant galaxy, with the most optimal including the zodiacal band (false dusk), regions of the Milky Way casting shadows on the ground with starshine and the above occurance of counterglow (not pictured—it’s much more subtle than that—see here for an actual attempt to image it), a brighter spot in the night sky centred at the antisolar point caused by the backscatter of sunshine on the opposite side of the Earth by interplanetary dust. Though previously described, the term was coined by Alexander von Humboldt during his South American expeditions, noting that this slightly illuminated spot appeared at midnight.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the asteroid Pallas (with synchropticæ) plus Lonesome (1928)

thirteen years ago: more security theatre plus the Vertue of the Coffee Drink 

sixteen years ago: hundredth blog post 

the carnac stones (12. 552)

Just a short drive away, we visited—I suspect revisited at least in part we'll have to check an earlier version of the blog, the monumental arrangement of prehistoric dolmen, menhir and burial chambers surrounding the village of Carnac (Karnag).

Three main groups of monoliths in the adjoining fields and forest at Menéc, Kermario (House of the Dead) and Kerlescan are aligned to mark the spring and winter solstices. Although escapingly ancient, dating to 4 500 BC, a pious legend surrounded them from the late Middle Ages (imagination insufficient for such time scales--see previously) that the discipline of the formation was owing to an enchantment cast by Pope Cornelius, an early pontiff serving just after the Decian persecutions, on a legion of pagan soldiers in pursuit—or alternatively by the wizard Merlin’s spell, Bretagne having its own Arthurian matter.

A bit removed from the main site, we discovered another ensemble of transept graves at Mané Kerioned including an underground chamber with an inscription.

synchronoptica

one year ago: exploring Maccagno (with synchronopticæ) 

ten years ago: assorted links to revisit, fidelity plus even more links to enjoy

eleven years ago: the importance of boredom, distinctions among German terms for immigration plus alternative currencies

twelve years ago: capitalism and moral bankruptcy 

fourteen years ago: advances in solar energy generation 

interdisciplinary (12. 475)

On the corner of Broadway and West 112th Street, above the iconic neon-lit Tom’s Diner used as the establishing exterior shot for the sitcom Seinfeld and in the Susan Vega song, NASA research facility, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has occupied the six upper storeys of Armstrong Hall since 1966. Affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth institute, from whom it leases the laboratory space, GISS has embarked on a broad programme of astrophysics and climate dynamics and advanced public understanding of phenomena like El Niño and first synergised ideas such as plate tectonics, quasars and black holes—introducing the terminology to common parlance. The institute also issued a vocal warning regarding global warming’s trajectory and involved with numerous solar system exploration missions dating from Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager to the present. This impressive list of accomplishments and continuing projects, both theoretical and applied, however, is failing to secure the lab’s legacy for the the Trump administration, which has cut overall science funding by half and is sceptical of climate change, and through the auspices of DOGE and the Government Services Administration is terminating the lease effective at the end of the month (or at least pretending to in the name of efficiency as the contract cannot be broken early and the building will sit empty until it expires) and is directing the staff of one hundred thirty to work from home until they can be dismissed or placed within another part of the agency. More from the Guardian at the link above.

penumbra (11. 477)

Visible for totality in a narrow corridor of the Pacific Ocean, as North America is watching the skies, when the shadow of the Moon’s ascending node (where the orbit of the satellite intersects the plane of the solar ecliptic from our perspective) obscured the Sun, crossing the international dateline and beginning on the ninth and ending on this day in 1995, this relatively rare hybrid eclipse with phases of the complete and the annular (when the lunar disc does not quite obscure the sun) as it progressed across the globe. Observers in extreme northwestern South American, Central America and the Caribbean were afforded near totality.

8x8 (11. 396)

a bridge too far: German authorities pledge investigation into embarrassing leak of confidential military talks about Ukrainian aid  

heteronyms: the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa with seventy pen-names  

solar symbology: a survey of the various cartographic representations of North America’s upcoming total eclipse  

phrixus and helle: newly excavated fresco in Pompeii retells the myth of the Golden Fleece  

re:design: Jason Kottke unveils his new website with fresh 2024 energy—maybe we could all use a face-lift  

replevin: Trump fraudulently overvalued his Scottish golf course and resort by £200 000 000—see previously 

club remix: annual competition that invites doctoral candidates to dance their dissertation 

airdrop: US begins aid delivery to a beleaguered Gazan population on the verge of famine

 synchronoptica

one year ago: TIME magazine (1923) plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus the largest capacity cargo plane

three years ago: more links worth the revisit, an artist’s message to get vaccinated plus Rocket Man (1972)

four years ago: the French version of the Dallas theme, Super Tuesday, Nigerian contributions to English plus more on the Human Interference Task Force

five years ago: graphic designer Alvin Lustig, Apollo IX (1969), an example of Celtic Revival architecture, McLaren’s Imperial Cheddar Club Cheese plus artist Pokey LaFarge

sun electric (11. 063)

Via Kottke, we are directed to a fascinating technological artefact and possible point of departure, contra-factual in this profile of entrepreneur and inventor George Cove, an early advocate of renewable energy who developed solar panels (and battery storage) not much different from those systems employed today. In 1905. There was a significant interest in this new technology and its potential fuelled by no shortage of media coverage and incremental improvements with attendant cost savings and greater efficiency. Yet the enterprise and Cove’s prospects came to an abrupt halt in 1909 when he was kidnapped and would only be released if he withdrew his patents and shut up shop. Though Cove reportedly refused to give in to these conditions, he was nonetheless released. Whilst some contemporary accounts say that the inventor staged his ransom to generate publicity or was victim of a jilted investor, it seems more likely he was roughed up by a thug sent from nascent Oil, an industry not known to be a friend of the democratising effects that virtually limitless and unfettered energy could provide or willing to pull any punches with the threat of competition. Solar power had no more champions for decades, and although it might be painful and disheartening to contemplate alternate-histories in the face of squandered time, resources and a planet that is burning, the fact that dependence of petroleum wasn’t a foregone outcome of industrialisation and modernity and that energy alternatives always had an uneasy coexistence is something for one’s quiver of hopes and disabusing. More from The Conversation at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: St Andrew of Crete,  assorted links to revisit plus RRR

two years ago: the tragical death of an apple pie

three years ago: the taking of Harper’s Ferry (1859), the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, change what the bunny is holding plus more links to revisit

four years ago: The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago

five years ago: pumpkin spice in everything, early Uber, The Republican Club plus more links to enjoy

einsteinturm (11. 027)

Closed for renovations for over a year, the solar observatory on Potsdam’s Telegraphenberg in the science park also named for the renowned physicist, the solar observatory with a range of experiments designed to validate—or disprove—the theory of relativity has now been reopened to the public. Designed by industrial, Streamline Moderne architect Erich Mendelsohn and Richard Neutra in consultation with astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich 1920 and operational by 1924, the accessible laboratory could demonstrate the gravitational red-shift (detectable in slight variations in the Sun’s spectral signature) by Einstein and introduce visitors, not just scientists and educators, to the new cosmological model and introduce basic research principles to general audiences. An active scientific facility run by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics to the present day, the Einstein Tower focuses on studies of the solar magnetic field and Sun spot activity. During the Nazi regime, the observatory was stripped of its name and independence and a bronze bust of Albert Einstein was removed from the premises. Employees and associates have maintained a tradition of placing a single, substitute stone (ein stein) in its place since.

😎 (10. 865)

Owing to the population distribution of the Earth (fewer people live at the North Pole so after the June solstice once the Sun has slipped a bit further south toward the more populous equator), the different definitions of sunrise, sunset and twilight—civilian, nautical and astronomical and the underestimated size (half the globe) of the Pacific Ocean, on 8 July annually about ninety-nine percent of the people of Earth will be under the sun, experiencing daylight after a fashion at the same time. Despite the two hemisphere and the progression of the seasons, during the northern summer, this sunny side phenomenon can occur for a couple of minutes each day from mid-May through mid-July—charted out after some fact-checking on what seemed like an outrageous but somewhat true internet claim, and while it might be a bit more intriguing to have found it a singular instance on the calendar when only one percent of the world’s population was (temporary—Oceana and Baja California still get their daylight hours, just after the rest of the world’s dusk and dawn), it’s even more remarkable that it happens over a span of sixty days.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: the Roswell Incident (1947), more on the Trolley Problem plus the animations of Sam Lyon

two years ago: your daily demon: Ipos, a hierarchy of merfolk, uncombable hair syndrome, top-selling albums (1958) plus the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1822)

three years ago: St Kilian and companions, more adventures in Moselle wine country plus the fortifications of the upper Moselle valley

five years ago: a treasury of southwest Native American folktales, the colossal art of Thrashbird plus the street photography collection of Barry L Gfeller

six years ago: a trove of historical data uncovered in teletext pages, the Hamburg G20 plus taking action against contrived obsolescence

path of totality (10. 774)

Hailed by Isaac Asimov and others as the singular advent of science though some doubts persist to the accuracy of the claims of having forecasted the event in advance and what method was used, the 585 BC solar eclipse over Anatolia predicted by Thales of Miletus (the first philosopher to have broke with the tradition of mythology as a explanation for the state of the Cosmos, used deductive reasoning, proposed navigating by the stars and credited with the maxim “Know Thyself” as well as being a shrewd entrepreneur, having bought up all the olive presses in his archontes ahead of what was a very good harvest) that occurred on this day is a cardinal date used for triangulating other historical events, and, if true, is the earliest instance known of such an advanced vaticination. The announced event happened during a skirmish in the protracted war between the Medes and the Lydians, under the leadership of Cyaxares and Alyattes respectively, at Halys—the river bordering the two kingdoms, with the belligerents taking it as an omen to call a truce, though Miletus had no dog in this fight. Though astronomical knowledge at this point in history was not sufficiently advanced to know that the shadow of the Moon caused eclipses (not an avowed flat-earther, he provisionally believed that the continents floated on an infinite ocean under the dome of the firmament until a better idea came along)—that would come a century later—it is speculated that Miletus had noticed patterns in the periodicity, known to the Babylonians and programmed into the Antikythera Mechanism.

solaris (10. 324)

We’ve previously looked at proposals for a broadcast energy transmitter (here and here) but feel that the technology and will have arrived for this monumental though practical, feasible project that the European Space Agency is presently considering. Space chiefs from member countries of the association are holding their triennial council to decide what programmes and initiatives will be funded and to budget their pooled resources for priorities. In circulation for several decades now but never seriously contemplated until recent years with the precipitous drop in the cost of launching payloads into space, increased efficiency and virtually autonomous construction, researchers believe that installing massive photovoltaic elements in geostationary orbit (as to always face the Sun) will prove cost-effective and might be nicely complementary endeavour to this hypothetical sunshade . The energy is converted into microwave radiation and beamed down to Earth where it is reconverted and put on the electrical grid. More at the links above.

8x8

crisis on terra prime: US president Biden invokes emergency powers to boost solar energy production

midsommar: ten ways to celebrate the June Solstice—via Strange Company  

madagascator projection: another look at mapping and bias—see previously  

unai no tomo: an early twentieth century catalogue of Japanese toys  

imago and eclosion: good pictures of a newly emerged swallowtail  

controlled burn: astronauts have lit thousands of little fires in microgravity to understand its strange behaviour  

you spin right round, baby, right round: the only way to play Weezer’s new singles is to become one’s own turn table—via Waxy  

perovskites: research into making cheap but brittle photovoltaic technology sturdier to rival modern solar cells

sunshade

Rather than pursue possibly risky and irreversible terrestrial geoengineering that might further ravage habitats and exacerbate the collapse of biomes, via TMN we learn that a group of researchers from MIT are hoping to create a thin film of deflective materials (easily deployable and reversible), like a parasol for our planet, that by just lessening the solar radiation that reaches us by two percent could give us the needed reprieve (in combination with efforts on other fronts, including serious lifestyle adjustments) to clean up our act.  More on MIT’s Senseable City Lab’s Space Bubble project at the link above.