pomega (12. 142)

Via Clive Thompson’s latest Link Fest, we are introduced to another chaotic twin of π called ϖ—from the above script variant of pi, also called varpi—that represents the transcendental mathematical constant ratio of the perimeter to the diameter of Bernoulli’s lemniscate, analogous to the way pi defines a circle. The foci of the elliptical plane are equidistant in this figure which has applications in orbital mechanics (see previously). The curve having a shape similar to a figure 8 or the infinity symbol, ♾️, is from the Latin for something bedecked with hanging ribbons and occur in nature as often as the perfect circle. Much more from John Carlos Baez at Mathsodon at the link above.

⚳ (12. 130)

Discovered on this day in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi at the Palermo observatory that the priest and mathematician founded, Ceres—originally classified as the hidden or missing planet that astronomers, in the period between the general consensus and acceptance of heliocentrism and the discovery of Neptune beyond the worlds known since Antiquity, believed was necessary to balance out Solar System (see also here and here)—was the first known (see previously) and largest asteroid. Reclassified several times from a planet-proper, to dwarf planet, to asteroid and presently with a dual designation combining the last two—the only one of the latter catalogued not beyond the orbit of outer planets, it is about a quarter of the size of the Earth’s Moon and is cryovolcanically active with an extremely rarefied atmosphere of water vapour. Piazzi’s original proposal was to name his discovery after the Roman goddess of agriculture (hence the sickle and whose main temple and earthly home was in Sicily), Ceres Ferdinandea—the latter in honour of his patron and king Ferdinand III was roundly rejected (see Neptune above) by the international community. Ceres was visited in 2015 and studied closely by NASA’s Dawn mission in 2015 and return trips are planned by the European and Chinese Space Agencies.

synchronoptica

one year ago: celebrating those we lost in 2023 (with synchronoptica) plus sci-fi movies set in 2024

eight years ago: welcoming 2017, time zones, Public Domain Day, saving seed stock, early adopters plus the art of not sleeping

nine years ago: welcoming 2016, assorted links worth revisiting plus the mental worlds of animals

ten years ago: a year’s worth of trivia, the Eurasian Economic Union plus a philosophy of contradictions

eleven years ago: Schweinehunden plus St Ursula and companions

starquake (12. 115)

On this day in 2004, forty-two thousand years after a powerful explosion occurred on the surface of the magnetar, a class of neutron star with a powerful magnetic field, located in the constellation of Sagittarius, the resultant gamma ray reached Earth, the brightest event known to have been experienced on the planet with an origin outside the universe, the incredibly dense and compact star (only fifteen kilometres in diameter) designated as SGR 1806-20 and discovered in 1979 as a gamma-repeater (see previously) releasing as much energy in a tenth of a second as the Sun will in one hundred and fifty thousand years. The expanding cloud, shock wave of radiation briefly enlarged the ionosphere and it is estimated that a comparable blast within ten light years of Earth would ravage the atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer.

synchronoptica

one year ago: solfège in other languages (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: messianic complexes, one of small character, memories of y2k plus an inverted skyscraper

eight years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus telegraphing kisses

nine years ago: banana supply chains plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: tiny houses, Russian metro stations plus stress and motivation

8x8 (12. 112)

carnian pluvial event: that time it rained for two million years  

acme corporation: eight technological failures of 2024  

double-harvest: Christmas tree farmers exploring mycoforestry to raise timber and mushrooms on the same plot of land 

 🐜: how the world of ant geopolitics mirrors that of human colonisation and globalisation  

9.3 m_w: the Boxing Day Tsunami that cost a quarter of a million lives twenty years on

royal warrant: chocolatier to British crown Cadbury is delisted after generations for continued business operations in Russia  

woty: the Fritinancy edition—via Kottke 

wax wings: researchers awaiting telemetry back from the Parker Solar probe (previously) after historic approach to the Sun

synchronoptica

one year ago: DJ Earworm’s annual (with synchronoptica), The Glass Menagerie (1944) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: a banger to time for New Year’s

eight years ago: a charging stretch of road, outer space vodka plus 2016 in review

nine years ago: 3D printing as a cottage industry, Quentin Crisp shares their favourite gangster films, Jesus in Japan, lions and lionesses plus Aleister Crowley’s manor

eleven years ago: Second Christmas plus a tuxedo vest

bittersweet symphonie (12. 095)

The culmination of a formal joint West German-French collaboration, the first constellation of European communications satellites (see previously) was launched into orbit on this day in 1974 from Cape Canaveral atop a Delta rocket, with the stipulation that this would only be a demonstration project and not be fully operational in order for the US to protect its monopoly. The triad of retractable solar cell booms and thrusters to stabilise orbit and repositioning were the first time such innovations, now standards, were put to use. The impositions restricted commercial use but satellites could beam educational programming, primarily from Deutsche Welle to India and Africa as well as news concern Red Cross relief missions. Considered unacceptable, the embargo led to the development of Europe’s domestic Ariane rocket for future enterprises. Symphonie I and Symphonie II, launched the following August, we decommissioned and deorbited on this anniversary in 1984, exceeding their original mission by five years.

project score (12. 093)

The first purpose-built communications satellite, abbreviation fore Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was launched on this day in 1958 atop an Atlas rocket and provided a follow up demonstration to broadcasts from space. Regarded as an advancement that brought the American space programme on par with the Soviet accomplishments of Sputnik I and Sputnik II, showing that messages could be transmitted through the upper atmosphere across multiple round stations. Albeit pre-recorded, Project SCOPE also delivered a Christmas greeting from US president Eisenhower (see previously), the first voice from space, capturing global attention. Like the signal from Sputnik, it could be picked up by sufficiently sensitive radios worldwide but most heard the message on news re-broadcasts.  After circling the Earth twelve times, the orbit degraded and the satellite burned up on re-entry.

9x9 (12. 057)

globetrotter—more like globetriggered: a wrap of 2024 in therapy  

new doge, old tricks: Musk and Ramaswamy present their plan to rapture three-quarters of the government workforce but it’s going to be a challenge to achieve real cost-cutting or improved efficiency  

vote de censure: French government collapses after legislature moves to eject controversial prime minister Michel Barnier—see previously 

field of vision: the challenges of bringing the Vera Ruben perched high in the Andes on online includes unidentified intelligence agencies screening images before they are released to the public  

my empathy is out of network: Americas respond to the assassination of a major medical insurance CEO  

ekistical portrait: Rob Stephenson is documenting all the three hundred and fifty neighbourhoods of New York City’s five boroughs—via Kottke  

what just happened: South Korea’s declaration of marshal law, parliament’s rejection and the ongoing political crisis  

stonks: Bitcoin just hit $100 000 a piece  

hot topic: the year in Wikipedia, recent celebrity deaths topped the list again

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Michelob Music Hour (with synchronoptica) plus modern art presented as a fun-fair

seven years ago: noisy GIFs, assorted links worth the revisit plus 52 more things

eight years ago: the origins of Play-Doh

nine years ago: red cup controversy, a trip to Rosenau plus our faithful chronicler

ten years ago: troublesome ideas in the marketplace plus an A-ha! reunion concert

catch a falling star and put it your pocket (12. 044)

On this day in 1954, in the Oak Grove neighbourhood of Sylacauga, Alabama, Elizabeth Fowler Hodge was jolted awake from an early afternoon nap after being struck from a fragment of a meteorite, about the size of a grapefruit. Though sustaining only the physical injury of a large bruise to her thigh (later suffering trauma however from the singular incident and the intense albeit short-lived fame garnered because of it), Hodges’ case was the only well documented individual to be hit by an object from space and survive it. The rock came hurtling through the roof of her house she shared with her mother and husband, ricocheting off the family radio (destroying it) and bounced into Hodges. There was somewhat of a custody battle after scientists from a nearby airforce base confirmed the rock’s origins between the mayor of the town who promised it to a museum and the Hodges’ landlords but ultimately Elizabeth was allowed to keep the meteorite. By the time it was settled, however, Ms Hodges’ celebrity had died down and no buyer could be found and eventually it ended up in the state’s natural history museum. Likely sourced from asteroid 1685 Toro, similar but unverified incidents include a 1677 strike on a friar in Milan and the 1908 Tunguska Event, reported to have caused at least three casualties.

cp 1919 (12. 037)

Discovered by post-graduate astrophysics student Jocelyn Bell Burnell using the Interplanetary Scintillation Array of Cambridge Observatory on this day in 1967 whilst searching for radio signals in space, because of its precise regularity, it was dismissed by colleagues as terrestrial interference initially,but combing through reams of data, Bell Burnell correctly pinpointed its origins to celestial coordinates of nineteen′ nineteen′′ right ascension, twenty-one° declination, coming from the constellation Vulpecula—for which it was given the designation LGM-1, little green men, supposing it might be an alien beacon of some kind. The discoverer, however, correctly posited that the source was a rapidly rotating neutron star. Fellow researchers received a Nobel prize in 1974 for their work in radioastronomy but Bell Burnell’s contributions were overlooked (for her part, she maintained that she did not believe that the committee should be in the business of honouring research assistants), and the novel class of star is now recognised as a pulsar, emitting beams of radiation from its poles and have proven to be an indispensable lighthouse in the cosmos for detection and triangulation, a throughline for detecting the first exoplanents and the phenomena of gravitational waves among others. In 1979, for their debut studio album, Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division adapted a ridgeline plot of the stars’s radio emissions’ pulses for the cover art.

julian day zero (12. 009)

Introduced by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1957 to track the orbit of Sputnik with a thirty-six-bit mainframe, to save on memory and compute resources by expressing time-coordinates in just eighteen-bits through 7 August 2576, the Modified Julian Date system simply dispatched with the proceeding two-million four-hundred-thousand days of history from the dawn of the calendar, counting backwards and resetting the number at noon on this day in 1858, often further truncated. This was also the reference epoch (see previously) for the earliest operating systems, chosen in part as it predated most modern record keeping. Because of the continual count, it is easier for software to process the intervening time elapsed between two events for applications like calculating interest, sell-by-dates for perishable inventories, etc, in the same was computers can’t really perform mathematical operations except by matrices. The Julian Period was proposed by sixteenth century academic Joseph Justus Scaliger (a year after the unrelated calendar was replaced in most of Europe by the Gregorian one) as the sum product of three calendrical cycles that comprise the system, twenty-eight solar cycles, nineteen lunar cycles and fifteen indiction cycles (the periodic census and tax reassessment of the Roman Empire that occurred every fifteen years)—or a span of seven thousand nine hundred and eighty years, reaching back in time under the assumption that all were synchronised at the beginning of time. Scaliger calculated this to be 4713 BC, well before any events in recorded history known to him.

cr2291 (11. 985)

Entering the above synodic solar rotation period on the thirteenth of this month, the count (necessarily arbitrary as the Sun is not a solid body but rather a gaseous plasma with it spinning at significantly different rates at different latitudes, the equator rotating some eight days faster than polar climes), the Carrington count began on this day in 1853 as a method to track solar topology over short to moderate periods of time by tracking the movement of sunspots and eruptions. For the purposes of calculation, each diurnal cycle is a shade over twenty-seven terrestrial days and since its inception by Robert Christopher Carrington has been assigned a unique number. The meticulously recorded observations by this amateur astronomer from Chelsea further demonstrated the phenomena of solar flares and their influence on the Earth’s aurorae. Likely the result of a coronal mass ejection, the powerful geomagnetic storm of September 1859 which disabled telegraph systems worldwide and would be catastrophic for global connectivity were it to happen today is named the Carrington Event in his honour.

9x9 (11. 950)

hotwired: an oral history of Wired! magazine and the choices made with its 1994 launch—via Kottke 

enjoy it while you can: duo forms political action committee to appeal to inconsistent voters through ads on porn sites

affaire des poisons: a murder scandal with accusations of witchcraft in the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV  

nutty narrows: a catenary suspension bridge built over a busy road in Washington state to give squirrels safe passage 

oh brave new world with so many goodly creatures: Uranus’ moon Miranda may harbour a subsurface ocean 

la jetée: an influential time-travel movie made of still images  

scope of practise: a new museum dedicated to the paranormal and Victorian spiritualism opens in Carmarthen’s Penuel chapel 

if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed: a terrifying theory on the truth behind Trump and Johnson’s ‘little secret’ that defers the election to 11 December  

ghost jobs: banking resumes for vacancies that don’t really exist are haunting already demoralised tech workers

synchronoptica

one year ago: Three Wishes for Cinderella (with synchronoptica), McDonald theogony plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: books and things, art entrêpots plus assorted links worth revisiting

eight years ago: US sending troops to Norway to counter Russian aggression, mobile office space, high-fives plus synthehol

nine years ago: esotericism in the Third Reich plus advances in fusion power

ten years ago: Rome abandons the West

9x9 (11. 936)

die krümelmonster: in 2013 the German version of Cookie Monster pilfered and ransomed the golden Leibniz Kek for charity  

bad map projection #102: a blended USA / Australia gazette that almost works 

0,1 arcsec: hunting for dark matter and dark energy the Euclid space telescope (previously) unveils a dazzlingly 3D map of one percent of the Cosmos—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links  

bob & carol & martin & barbara: various adaptations of a comedy about partner-swapping during the sexual revolution  

red lion passage: alleyways of London then and now  

bokeh and backscatter: spirit photography and the history of the medium— the New Shelton wet/dry  

clockwork universe: The Birth of the Robot by Len Lye—see previously  

geoconfirmed: a volunteer group tagging the space-time coordinates for footage of conflict zones to combat disinformation  

cheese heist: using an elaborate scam, £300 000 pilfered from artisan cheddar makers—see previously—via jwz

9x9 (11. 928)

star crystal, 1986: the manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space—via jwz 

sorry charlie: a 1961 patent for advertising on fish—perfect for aquariums in waiting rooms  

ghost mall: the story of Spirit Halloween bear and lampshade: an electronic medley of Queen songs 

bear and lampshade: an electronic medley of hits from Queen

ghost with the most: the psychological profile of people who cut off communication 

carbon capture: a covalent organic framework that binds CO₂ in ambient air—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links 

vội vàng: the legacy of Edgar Allen Poe in Vietnam  

extra-toppings: Pizza Hut is offering to print one’s CV on a box and deliver it (along with a pizza) to prospective employers—via Pasa Bon!   

the city of orion: Hannsjorg Voth’s monumental structures in the Moroccan desert like the Earth and sky—via Messy Nessy Chic

synchronoptica

one year ago: Bob Sinclair’s Stardust (with synchronoptica) plus a data-poisoning tool to fight against AI scraping

seven years ago: the typography of Vinicius Araujo, cheese in China, innovative underground maps, an underwater restaurant in the works, Japanese delivery boxes plus more presidential merchandise

eight years ago: problem-solving paradigms plus a thriving orchid

nine years ago: grand tours, assorted links to revisit plus a Lenin monument transformed

eleven years ago: German chancellor’s phone tapped

common rocket propulsion units (11. 909)

Founded on this day in 1974 in the Frankfurt suburb of Neu-Isenburg by entrepreneur and aerospace engineer Lutz Kayser, the West German company Orbital Transport - und Raketen-Aktiengesellschaft became the first commercial developer of satellite launch vehicles, attempting to undercut national space agencies with a cheaper, modular alternative to traditional rocketry, French Ariane rockets and the US space shuttle. With Wernher von Braun and retired NASA director Kurt Debus as scientific advisors, OTRAG carried out their first test launches in Zaire, hoping to secure the market potential of Africa, with mixed results. France and the Soviet Union, concerned by the prospect of German reentry into the field of long-distance rocket, pressured the Zairian government of Mobutu Sese Seko to close down the research and development facility, and eventually convince Bonn to withdraw its support for the private operations. In response Kayser relocated production and testing to Libya by 1981, and for the next six years made some rather significant advances (differing from traditional multi-stage launchers, their rockets were bundled tubes that could be mass produced inexpensively) and even attempted the launch of a private space vehicle, until Gaddafi seized the facility and equipment and nationalised it.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a solar energy firm established in 1905 (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: the panopticon of Piccadilly Circus plus more findings from gravitational waves

eight years ago: Mister Smith Goes to Washington plus atmospheric wells

nine years ago: the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards plus more on America’s drone wars

twelve years ago: US military bases in Germany plus oversized landmarks

8x8 (11. 908)

jianmen underground neutrino observatory: a tour of JUNO, the massive Chinese lab built to study the elusive particle—Damn Interesting’s Curated Links 

xoxo: Cabel Sasser’s talk on rediscovering a forgotten artist—more here from the presenter, see also

post on own site, syndicate elsewhere: more on the POSSE technique for retaining control of one’s work—see previously  

first draft: the Balloon Boy Hoax of 2009 illustrates the problems of for-profit journalism—see also 

saturday night soirées: the house parties of Charles Babbage (previously) boasted an impressive guest list, including Faraday, the Darwins, Dickens and more  

central casting: recalculating the Kevin Bacon Game with eigenvectors to reveal the most well connected film is Pulp Fiction—via Quantum of Sollazzo 

monsters and madonnas: the eerie, erotic photography of William Mortensen—labelled the “Antichrist of Hollywood” in the 1930s for his horror film inspired compositions  

strong thermal emission velocity enhancement: the rare atmospheric phenomenon called Steve (which science made a backronym) that sometimes accompanies geostorms

9x9 (11. 874)

must contain the characters #@^*!: US regulatory body that sets standards for government agencies issues guidance that urges the end of vexing password compliance rules  

landscape of faith: church-to-residential development is in some places easing the housing crisis  

ertunet crater: planetoid Ceres may harbour potentially life-sustaining oceans like Europa  

hippopotami: the phenomenon of Moo Ding seems likely the natural conclusion of art history—see also  

regency era: unofficial Bridgerton Ball Experience leaves attendees feeling scammed—drawing parallels with another disappointing and pricey event 

outré west: eight radical architectural works from western America (see previously) 

huaca de la luna: brilliantly painted throne room of a seventh century Moche female leader discovered in northern Peru 

the creepy hallways of the built environment: American suburbs are a horror show  

universal media disc: the challenges of conserving good data in the age of AI and shuttered, zombified outlets—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links

starlight suppression (11. 864)

As part of a fascinating series called “Who is Government?” (see also), Washington Post columnist Dave Eggers confidently asserts that with the next quarter of a century, humanity will have conclusive evidence of extra-terrestrial life, thanks to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—giving a thoroughgoing profile of the astronomy pioneer who is the soon to be launched observatory’s name sake—which features a system of tiny pistons designed to occult the light of a host star, a coronagraph that can dynamically deform the reflecting mirror, that will enable with this shadow-casting technique far better imaging of any exoplanets orbiting it—an alternate yet untenable proposal (among other competitors) would be to use our Sun as a telescope through gravitational lensing (see also here and here) but the focal point is three times the distance that Voyager I has travelled. Aside from the answer to the existential question of are we alone, the essay goes on the explore the importance of tax-payer funded science (with dedicated government workers generally maligned) and return on investment in knowledge—projects that billionaires would never finance as there’s no money to be made in such endeavours. Much more at the links above.

star hustler (11. 839)

Via the always engrossing Web Curios, we discover this lovely calendar, almanac called Nights on Earth by Phil Mosby that gives one a preview of what astronomical wonders one might behold in the upcoming evenings, assuming clear skies and minimal light pollution, triangulated for one’s location. It strikes just the right balance of coming-attractions without being overwhelming in terms of information and telemetry, and we especially liked the timetables of the various twilights and offer to suggest an event.

floating chad (11. 827)

Via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest and using the recent stranding of two US astronauts aboard the International Space Station for what originally was tour of eight days or so are now, due to a malfunctioning Boeing Starliner, are stuck in orbit until at least February as a narrative device, space blogger Swapna Krishna began exploring the long and complicated history that gets to yes for these eligible voters to cast their ballots in upcoming US elections. Back in 1997 then Texas (where NASA astronauts are stationed and registered) governor signed legislation that allowed residents to vote absentee from space when the previous year the Secretary of State had not allowed two US researchers aboard the Mir Space Station to vote electronically, citing no provision in the law that allowed it. Because these missions generally last under six-months and our two astronauts in question did not complete an absentee ballot application with the county clerk, as is the normal procedure, who then sends a test ballot via the Johnson Space Centre to confirm it can be securely completed from orbit, relaying credentials known only to the voter and registrar so they can vote. Not expecting to still be onboard the ISS come November, however, the astronauts had not planned on this contingency. An exception was granted in this case. While election integrity and security are of the utmost importance in the democratic process, these same byzantine rules often serve to disenfranchise those without resources and a support network like NASA. Cosmonauts either vote by-proxy or forgo the secret ballot and radio their choices to ground control. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus Palestinian embroidery

seven years ago: AI guesses one’s sexual orientation

eight years ago: more links to enjoy

nine years ago: Queen Elizabeth becomes longest reigning monarch, medieval walkable cities, even more links worth the revisit plus alchemy in Prague

ten years ago: Roman campaigns plus the Empire in forty maps