Gaythia Weis @Gaythia@qoto.org

Today the Parker Solar Probe will get 7 times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft ever has, going faster than any spacecraft ever has - 690,000 kilometers per hour. WHEEEEEE!!!!!!!

But the really cool part is what the newspapers are barely talking about: what it's like down there. The Sun doesn't have a surface like the Earth does, since it's all just hot gas. But it has an "Alfvén surface" - and the probe has penetrated that.

What's the Alfvén surface? In simple terms, it's where the solar wind - the hot gas emitted by the Sun - breaks free of the Sun and shoots out into space. But to understand how cool it is, we need to dig a bit deeper.

After all, how can we say where the solar wind "breaks free of the Sun"?

Hot gas shoots up from the Sun, faster and faster due to its pressure, even though it's pulled down by gravity. At some point it goes faster than the speed of sound! This is the Alfvén surface. Above this surface, the solar wind becomes supersonic, so no disturbances in its flow can affect the Sun below.

But it's even cooler than that, because "sound" in the solar wind is very different from sound on Earth. Here we have air. The Sun has ions - atoms of gas so hot that electrons have been ripped off - interacting with powerful magnetic fields. You can visualize these fields as tight rubber bands, with the ions stuck to them. They vibrate back and forth together!

You could call these vibrations "sound", but the technical term is "Alfvén waves". Alfvén was the one who figured out how fast these waves move. Parker studied the surface where the solar wind's speed exceeds the speed of the Alfvén waves.

And now we've gone deep below that surface!

(1/n)

Cotton was king, and the lives of sharecroppers and tenant farmers revolved around its harvest. It was backbreaking work, with little reward and fewer options for escape. For generations, they remained, not by choice but by circumstance, trapped in the feudal economics of sharecropping and the relentless grip of Jim Crow laws and the vicious coercion it spawned.

Image: 11-year-old girl picking cotton in Oklahoma, 1916.

3/28

Commercial tea bags release millions of microplastics, entering human intestinal cells

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-12-commercial-tea-bags-millions-microplastics.html

Americans: The next time your #HealthInsurance company denies one of your claims, use the #ProPublica (@ProPublica) tool to demand a written explanation, including "internal correspondence, recordings of phone calls, case notes, medical records and other relevant information."
https://projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

Israeli football fans clash with protesters in Amsterdam | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/8/israeli-football-fans-clash-with-protesters-in-amsterdam The Israeli fans instigated the violence ...in the city and attacking Palestinian supporters before the match, an Amsterdam city council member said.

“They began attacking houses of people in Amsterdam with Palestinian flags, so that’s actually where the violence started,” Councilman Jazie Veldhuyzen told Al Jazeera on Friday. (Me: Violence uncalled for by all parties)

💥If you’re planning on getting pregnant, make sure you’re vax’d and try your best to avoid catching Covid while pregnant💥

A new study in Nature found that maternal COVID-19 infection increased the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring.

“#COVID infection during pregnancy disrupted the balance of maternal/ fetal immune environments, driving alterations in astrocytes, endothelial cells, and excitatory neurons.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-024-02822-z #press

The Guardian: This year ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest on record, finds EU space programme

"Copernicus Climate Change Service says 2024 marks ‘a new milestone’ and should raise ambitions at Cop29 summit"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/07/this-year-virtually-certain-to-be-hottest-on-record-finds-eu-space-programme

#climate #climatedisaster #heatwaves

A Dark Reminder of What American Society Has Been and Could Be Again. How an obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women led to the Klan’s rule in Indiana. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/dispatches/a-dark-reminder-of-what-american-society-has-been-and-could-be-again

“Federal judges denied 2 states’ requests to bar the DOJ from dispatching lawyers to monitor adherence to federal voting rights laws on Election Day.

Both #Missouri & #Texas asked federal courts to keep DOJ lawyers away from their polls.”
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4972091-judge-wont-block-doj-election-poll-monitors/

To keep my American brain from exploding today, here are some remarkable new deep-space images from JWST.

First, a celestial smash-up. JWST's infrared eyes reveal cold dust that forms the "skeleton" of these colliding galaxies, known as IC 2163 and NGC 2207.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-136 #space #science #nature #astronomy

Via Kyle Griffin:

#Wisconsin added more than 102,000 registered voters to its rolls just in the month of October, according to the state's election commission.

Dane County had almost 12,000 new voters register. Milwaukee County had more than 14,000.

At some point, we all have to grapple earnestly with the fact that the radicalization of the American Right has recently outpaced what even critical observers thought was likely.

“They are not going to go *that* far” has been proven wrong over and over again.
https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history/113413283493956405

Floods in Spain. In some places "a year’s worth of rain fell in just eight hours"

#climatechange

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/01/nx-s1-5175804/spain-floods-climate-change

Joe Biden called the racist rhetoric garbage, not people. Stop lying about Joe. Get the true story here:

https://www.dworkinsubstack.com/p/no-corporate-media-this-isnt-the

Waking up this morning to find out that an obese 78 year old adjudicated rapist and convicted felon simulated a sexual act on stage in the course of trying to be President. Zero respect for every one of my colleagues who continues to endorse him.

Trump, drunk on madness, threatens Cheney.

"Cheney is "a very dumb individual, very dumb."

"Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face," Trump said.

Gabby Gifford, shot in the face by a man driven crazy by Trump, says this is not by accident.

"Declaring that a person should be shot and killed simply for supporting a different candidate is un-American."

#harris

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2024-election-live-updates_n_671eda18e4b03aa5c1cd83ad/liveblog_6724de77e4b01f6919d9d053

A third of Trump’s campaign funding has come from billionaires, including several he’s pledged to appoint to his cabinet.

Fascism backed by Big Money is one of the most dangerous of all political alliances.

We saw it in 1930s Germany, and we’re seeing it again today.