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Uranus is Leaking

From NASA Goddard:

Uranus is (very, very slowly) losing “weight.” Our 7th planet’s tiny mass loss was known only to Voyager 2 — until Goddard scientists Gina DiBraccio and Dan Gershman did a double-take on the satellite’s data, more than 30 years later.

Uranus’ twisted magnetic field allows tiny amounts of the planet’s atmosphere to leak out into space, potentially taking billions of years for significant loss to occur. This behavior has been observed at other planets, like Venus, Earth and Jupiter, but never at distant Uranus until now.

How much of an effect has this had on Uranus? The data from Voyager 2 is the one time Uranus has gotten on the scale, so to speak, so that’s a hard question to answer. But the remaining mystery is part of the draw. “It’s why I love planetary science,” DiBraccio said. “You’re always going somewhere you don’t really know.” Image: Voyager 2 took this image as it approached the planet Uranus on Jan. 14, 1986. The planet’s hazy bluish color is due to the methane in its atmosphere, which absorbs red wavelengths of light. 

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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I Absolutely Believe He Would

The French of the late 1700s absolutely had the right idea of how to deal with a government that no longer had their interests at heart. I want nothing more than to see this bastard dragged from the White House and either strung up on a tree on its front lawn or to have his head forcibly removed from his body. But even more than that, I want to see him and his equally reprehensible spawn stripped of all their assets and thrown into 7×9 cells for the rest of their goddamned lives.

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Inside a Globular Cluster

Since I was a nerdy 12-year old just venturing into amateur astronomy (and having just read Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall—great short story, horrible movie) I’ve wondered what the night sky of a planet inside a globular cluster would look like. Glad to have found this picture, as it seems I wasn’t the only one who’d been wondering.

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Time Slows Down

Am I the only one who feels like the last two weeks—and this week in particular—have been the longest year in memory? I think I’ve finally figured out why, and it’s not just the stress.

Our daily routines, our “loops” or “narratives” in Westworld parlance, have been disrupted. We are so used to going through life primarily on autopilot, that these past couple weeks have forced us to adopt new routines. This causes our perception of the passage of time to slow since we now have to examine and process pretty much every. single. thing that we come across.

It will be interesting to see if our perception returns to “normal” the longer we’re all forced into these new routines.

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Responsible Social Distancing

We were both suffering a bit of cabin fever yesterday, so I suggested to Ben that after dinner we take a drive. Not actually go anywhere, but just take Rabbit out for a run (since the most I’ve done with the car has been a week’s worth of seven mile round trip commutes, a few trips to Target,  and my daily runs to Starbucks, which is about five minutes from the house).

Neither Ben or I had been on the new 202 freeway, so we decided to check it out.

Traffic was light. I’d compare it to a Sunday night on a -day holiday weekend when everyone’s out of town. We ended up doing a loop through the southeast valley and then headed home.

It was a much needed escape.

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Just in Case…


Yep. If you’re still stuck indoors in 3 months, blame those idiots on the beach in CA and so many others like them.

P.S. Don’t believe a THING that orange shitstain in the White House says.

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