tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

An astronomer team has observed some of the youngest planetary disks ever seen. Designated as Class 0 and Class 1, these are planetary systems younger than 300,000 years old. Even at this early stage of star formation, the protesters are surrounded by disks with rings and spiral structures that indicate where new planets could be forming. It was previously believed that planets couldn't form before the first million years, but there they are.

https://public.nrao.edu/news/early-evolution-of-planetary-disk-structures-seen-for-the-first-time/

The IPCC should hire the BBC’s graphics team for AR7.

I opened the first IPCC report, released in 1990, and copied their scenario graphs for CO2 and CH4 emissions.

I marked the latest data with a red dot. Methane emissions in 2022 were 580 Mt and carbon dioxide emissions in 2023 were 40.7 GtCO2 (= 11.09 GtC).

Whatever you think about the IPCC you must admit their business-as-usual calculations were pretty robust.

#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Climate #IPCC

#ClimateCrisis #climate

I often criticize Bill McKibben's newsletter "The Crucial Years", but this time I'm just going to quote large blocks of test from the Jan 9 2024 one because I agree with them. This is about US #LNG exports:

1. They produce an ungodly quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. Just the next proposed plant, CP2 in Louisiana, will produce 20 times more emissions than the controversial Willow oil complex over its lifetime. If the industry gets everything they’ve asked for, US LNG exports will produce more greenhouse gas emissions than…Europe. All of it. This is the biggest fossil fuel expansion project currently underway on planet earth.

2. It’s even dirtier than coal—you get carbon when you burn it, and methane when it leaks before you burn it. And since we now live in a world where solar and wind energy—which produce no greenhouse gas emissions—are the cheapest power, that’s almost criminally dumb.

3. We told the world in Dubai last month that the time had come to “transition” off fossil fuels. No possible definition of transition includes building giant terminals for the export of fossil fuels that are designed to last a half century."

(omitted 4-6 for length)

Eric Schmidt, long time top dog at Google and Alphabet, considered Henry Kissinger to be his best friend.

(Photo shows text from Wall Street Journal opinion page)

The X-ray telescope XRISM just released two high-quality images taken at the end of its commissioning process (aka first light).
Launched on Sep 7, 2023, the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM, pronounced "crism") is an X-ray space telescope mission developed by JAXA in partnership with NASA and participation from ESA and other international orgs. It is similar to but more sensitive than the aging 24-year Chandra X-ray space telescope.

https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2024/01/20240105-1_e.html
#XRISM
1/n

Like in real life, also in extragalactic astronomy there are VIPs*. If you are into clusters of galaxies, the top of the VIP probably is the
Coma clusters of galaxies, aka Abel 1656.

Let's do a small #AstroPhysicsFactlet to see why

#astrodon
#astronomy

*=Very Important Potential (wells)

PFFFF :D

It also implies there is still something worth considering about Nazism, something that has not been defeated yet – as an idea, as a way of ordering society. But, look, no ideology has been studied more, and the first half of the twentieth century actually happened. 9/

The temperature widget for Apple Weather is not able to show double-digit low and high temperatures at the same time.

Designed by Apple in California where there’s no winter.