keep up with astrophysics news and improve your cultural literacy 
.... now  starting its 8^th year

solar system	stars and in between	exoplanets (and ET life)	galaxies & cosmology	relativity, particle & quantum physics	cultural literacy	teaching/education, science & tech
late August 2020
moons How did Pluto's moons form? (Sky & Telescope) How Triton, a captured KBO, destroyed many of Neptune's original moons (Starts with a Bang)   Io's stealth volcanoes (Physics Today) so hot they emit pure vapor A huge shift in Europa's icy shell (USRA) solid evidence for a subsurface ocean Winds and tides drive ocean waves on Titan (Sky & Telescope) asteroids & meteoroids A new candidate for the origin of Earth's water? (Sky & Telescope) enstatite chondrites 2018VP1: the asteroid that will have a close encounter with Earth one day before the election (The Conversation) roughly 15 Earth radii at close approach... asteroid size ~ 2 meters 0.0041% chance of impact with Earth the NASA data Pristine meteorite found with more LH amino acids than RH ones (NASA) Asuka 12236 Micrometeorites: clues to the solar system's past (Astronomy) what the Mn? Earth's closest known asteroid encounter (Caltech) on 8/16,  SUV-sized 2020 QG came within 1830 mi of the surface Oumuamua is not molecular hydrogen ice (Harvard CFA) but some still hoping it's aliens (LiveScience) planets Did Jupiter's Grand Tack rob Venus of water? (Universe Today) and push it into a runaway greenhouse Did a nearby supernova cause the late Devonian mass extinction? (U of Illinois) cosmic rays could have triggered ozone depletion based on research article (PNAS) Inspiring Mars' photos (Earth & Sky) on the 15th Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter anniversary moons & planets The 5 best places to explore in the solar system (besides Mars) (MIT Tech Review) Venus, Europa, Ceres, Titan, & Pluto   🔥 climate crisis🔥 how we know the planet is warming the big picture climate warnings The dangerous climate feedback loop (Axios) explained in 7 short lessons What global warming does to the human body (Scientific American) increase in heat exhaustion, heat stroke, asthma, pollution, economic costs but not one word about an impending climate disaster at the RNC 60% of Antarctica ice shelves are vulnerable to hydrofracture (The Guardian) and collapse Nature has more details Global warming in action: wildfires & drought in the West; 2 Gulf hurricanes; a much warmer Atlantic Ocean (Washington Post) Wildfires: CA is the new Australia (New York) the herald of climate change Greenland ice sheet is now toast? (Ohio St U) snowfall can no longer replace melting ice published article (Nature Communications) The first undeniable climate-change deaths (Eos) 1000+ people in a Japanese heat wave What ancient mass extinctions tell us about the future (Scientific American, Sept 2020 issue) CO2 has done plenty of damage before paywall climate solutions Limiting warming not likely without CO2 removal (Carbon Brief) despite its past contentiousness Storing carbon in the prairie grass (Washington Post) Why renewables are not responsible for CA's blackouts (Gizmodo) look to human planning error instead Who is responsible for removing CO2 from the atmosphere? (Carbon Brief) those that are capable?  or those that are responsible for producing the excess? environment What it will take to reverse Trump's environmental damage (NY Times) no small amount of work	Fine structures in the HR diagram (AAS Nova) with Gaia data The first-ever map of the solar corona's magnetic field (Science News) Kepler's supernova remnant: still speeding after all these years (Chandra) knots still traveling at ~4500 km/s 400 yrs after explostion The sun formed with a binary companion? (Harvard CFA) which might explain a captured Oort cloud & Planet 9 the companion was lost in an early encounter with one of its birthmates Gizmodo comments the former companion could be anywhere by  now ~100 brown dwarfs found in Sun's backyard (NOIR) by Backyards Worlds, a citizen	The impact of continent size on the habitability of ocean worlds (AAS Nova) ET life Brave new worlds (New Scientist) the search for ET life has focused on Earth-like planets... time to rethink? paywall Fermi Paradox VII: the planetarium hypothesis (Universe Today) humanity is being kept in a planetarium... so that we think the universe is empty desperation squared?... and how is this different from living in a simulation? Fermi Paradox VI: the Berserk Robot hypothesis (Universe Today) desperation reigns?	Have astronomers misjudged the luminosity profile of spiral galaxies? (IA, Portugal) Remains of Star shredded by SMBH rapidly form accretion disk (UC - Santa Cruz)   Heart of darkness (Nature Astronomy) SS433, still "a-comin' and a-goin'" 41 years after its Saturday Night Live appearance Invisible magnetic fields made visible (Sky & Telescope) How astronomers revolutionized our view of the cosmos (Scientific American, Sept 2020 issue) bigger and weirder than imagined 175 years of cosmology paywall Why the beginning of the universe was erased (Starts with a Bang) it's just physics!	Why don't there seem to be many slow-moving neutrinos? (Starts with a Bang) they always seem to be traveling near c the real answer is that the neutrino interaction cross-section is proportional to the square of the neutrino energy... not that you'd know from reading the above Are protons lighter than thought? (Physics World) Positronium's energy levels are a puzzle (Science News) experiment & theory differ by 0.02% The LHC as a photon collider (CERN Courier) photon production of W+ and lepton pairs observed for first time A mathematical structure underlying particle collisions (Quanta) Stronger constraints on quantum theory? (Nature Physics) with Wigner's paradox Science comments but quite poorly Scientific American does much better Ars Technica comments quantum reality either is weirdly different or it collapses view with extreme caution Fundamental lessons from string theory (World Science Festival) maybe don't go down a rabbit hole like string theory? Vafa gives string theory an A+ for theory but "less" for experimental verification... no sir! you guys get a F for experiment	the state of America post-conventions A tale of 2 videos (The Guardian)  and two policings: one for blacks (Jacob Blake) and one for whites (Kyle Rittenhouse)  an unarmed black man is shot in the back; a white boy with a rifle who had just killed 2 people was ignored Trump officials to stop briefing Congress about foreign election interference (Washington Post) because word has gotten out Does fact-checking Trump serve any purpose? (Washington Post) if the right-wing believes in an alternate reality? A country now exhausted by GOP lies and illegal behavior (Vox) Say 'no' to Trump's reveling in white violence (Washington Post) Donald Trump minister of fear, violence, and resentment (NY Times) A coterie of criminals (NY Times) the Trump administration Mike Pompeo: worst Secretary of State in history (Washington Post) flouting the law, constant chaos, zero accomplishments How Biden loses (The Atlantic) complacency and hesitancy ------------------- Trump just stole $44 billion from FEMA in the midst of a record-setting hurricane season (Rolling Stone) hope you're not living in LA or TX this week Senate on vacation while millions go hungry (NY Times) GOP convention Speaker lineup and how to watch (Politico) A convention that was all about fear and resentment (Washington Post) 3 takeaways from night 4 (Washington Post) it's NYC's fault? Winners & losers, night 4 (Vox) Fact check, night 4 (Washington Post) Trump's speech: a tidal wave of lies and revisionist history A White House celebration without masks or social distancing (Washington Post) while Trump claims he followed science to save lives "because we're all going to get in eventually" 4 takeaways from night 3 (Washington Post) questioning others' faith when you behave as if have none Winners & losers, night 3 (Vox) the pandemic 'leader' mingles maskless with maskless others, again Fact check, night 3 (Washington Post) a cascade of false claims Pence: America won't America without Trump (New York) a horrific thought What country does Mike Pence live in? (Washington Post) a fantasyland where 'thoughts and prayers' are the solution to everything Night 3: a whirlwind of lies, great and small (The Guardian) Kellyanne Conway, alternate-fact purveyor (Washington Post) enabled by journalists 4 takeaways from night 2 (Washington Post) Winners & losers, night 2 (Vox) winner: nepotism; loser: government ethics The best worst night (NY Times) lies, lies, lies Night 2, fact checks (Washington Post Fact Checker) a tsunami of untruths   Rewriting history: Trump as lifesaving hero of coronavirus (Washington Post) 3 takeaways from night 1 (Washington Post) optimism abandoned & rewritten history Winners & losers, night 1 (Vox) how do you get to be a winner if you make stuff up and distort the truth?   Night 1, fact checks (Washington Post Fact Checker) Presenting an alternate reality (The Guardian) Trump delivered on some promises (AP) but others unmet Not the convention Charlotte hoped for (NY Times) The party of no content (The Atlantic) The party of no principles (Washington Post) they couldn't even be bothered with a platform this year Covering a convention where the lies fly (NY Times) the networks' challenge The Grand Old Party Meltdown (Politico) a party untethered to ideas -------------------- NC bad behavior 0.5 million are unemployed in NC; benefits have dropped 71%... where is the legislature? (NC Policy Watch) immediate action is needed The indecency of giving Rep David Lewis a plea deal for corruption and bribery (NC Policy Watch) the only decent thing he has done: he resigned and how he tried to preserve the racist past of the South (Cardinal & Pine) in promoting extreme partisan gerrymandering GOP leaders should apologize instead of issuing 'unemployment ultimatums' (WRAL) they led the push to enacting the stingiest insurance in the nation What the NC GA needs to do to fix it (NC Policy Watch) --------------------   Democratic convention Speaker line-up and how to watch (Vox) 4 takeaways from night 4 (Washington Post) Winners &  losers, night 4 (Vox) 4 takeaways from night 3 (Washington Post) Winners & losers, night 3 (Vox) in text Harris's acceptance speech Obama's speech 19 minute video or read the transcript 3 takeaways from night 2 (Washington Post) Winners & losers, night 2 (Vox) 3 takeaways from night 1 (Washington Post) Winners & losers, night 1 (Vox) The Democratic Party Platform doesn't go far enough on green energy and climate The Dem platform, explained (Vox) what it means & what's controversial The Democratic Convention's big blind spot (The Atlantic) an economic message for working- and middle-class families The DNC's inability to see the future (New York) in the choice of speakers Biden: an old man trying to lead a young country (Politico) elections & voting Who benefits from mail-in voting: Republicans or Democrats? (Science) neither, it turns out based on The participatory and partisan effects of mandatory vote-by-mail (Science Advances) free for a short time Roy Cooper & Dan Forest on education (Raleigh N&O) How to vote absentee in NC (NC Board of Elections) straight from the horse's mouth ...and if Trump fights the election results (New Yorker) a chilling read Judge orders Trump campaign to show evidence of voter fraud... if fails miserably (The Guardian) it finds near zilch the swing states 538: Are there really 16 swing states? Minnesota: the next state to turn red? How Arizona became a swing state Why Florida could go blue in 2020 Washington Post: The 6 political states of Florida + 3 more to come The 6 political states of NC we're the Triangle The 7 political  states of Wisconsin The 6 political  states of Michigan Which states' electoral college votes correlate with which others (The Economist) with 87% chance of Biden and the other presidential predictors 538 says 73% chance of Biden Crystal Ball: 70% chance of Biden -------------------- 500,000+ ballot were rejected in the primaries: the shape of things to come? (Washington Post) Wrecking the mail (IndyWeek) is the Postmaster General trying to privatize USPS? 20 years later: Florida and the Bush-Gore election (The Atlantic) an oral history (in text) The Women's Vote at 100 (NY Times) a visual history --------------------- GOP-run Senate committee documents 2016 Russian election intervention (Washington Post) "Trump campaign manager was receptive to Russian outreach" with criminal referrals for Kushner, Bannon, Trump Jr. & Erik Prince On trading Puerto Rico for Greenland (Daily Beast) Trump:  "PR is too dirty, too poor" Does American need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? (Politico) Evangelicals: only the best redemption stories will do (NY Books) Enrico Fermi: The Pope of Physics (WW II Museum, 1 hr-videocast) and his role in the Manhattan Project pandemic economics The Big Short 2.0: how hedge funds shorted the malls (NY Times) and the rich got richer A warning from the author of the The Great Influenza of 1918 (NY Times) books Donald Trump v. United States: how democracy came under assault (The Guardian) how the investigation of Trump's crimes failed by Michael Schmidt The new nuclear threat (NY Books) a review of 4 nuclear-themed books art/trips/museums Black Canyon of the Gunnison (Outside) a park of extremes Hitchcock, Munch, and Poe: art in the time of a pandemic (Washington Post) aka the kings of anxiety Great Basin NP has some of the world's oldest trees (Outside) some bristlecone pines are 5000 yrs old In the land of Kush (Smithsonian) a 5000-yr-old civilization that has been forgotten but no bristlecone pines Felix Fénéon, the collector-anarchist (NY Times) a review of Feliix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde (MOMA) from Signac to Matisse and beyond through 1/2/2021 Gauguin and the impressionists --  a dream collection (The Guardian) review of the Royal Academy exhibit through Oct. 18 In the virtual -- and actual -- footsteps of Raphael (NY Times)	No plans for re-opening Duke Gardens (Duke Chronicle) closed since March How to make educational videos with a tablet (Preposterous Universe) Astronomers release statement on danger of satellite constellations to observational astronomy (American Astronomical Society) and a roadmap for mitigation can Astronomy sue Musk & Bezos? NSF funding shifts toward artificial intelligence, quantum information, and computational research (Not Even Wrong) Observing the night sky for beginners (Astronomy) a downloadable e-book The origin of mud (Knowable) and its importance to life and How mud changed the world (The Atlantic) pandemic education local education Meanwhile, large classes continue to meet in person at Duke (Duke Chronicle) pandemic, what pandemic? bet you didn't know that educational institutions are exempt from large-gathering prohibitions 30% of NC schools are opening for in-person education (Cardinal & Pine) why, if it's unsafe? Virtual schools are starting, but  0.5 million NC students don't have the Internet access needed (Cardinal & Pine) UNC is #2!! (NC Policy Watch) in college covid cases not in basketball NCSU changes mind: students must move out of dorms (NC Policy Watch) "the current situation is untenable" Memo to UNC leaders: it's your fault (NC Policy Watch) highlighting the failure of conservative leaders to lead from the NC GA to the President Would things have been different with more diverse leadership at UNC? (NC Policy Watch) What does UNC's botched re-opening say about how it views its students? (Washington Post) ECU becomes 3rd UNC campus to go entirely online (Raleigh N&O) who's next? and UNCC defers in-person learning until early October (Raleigh N&O) ummm...at least Stop blaming teachers for school closings (Cardinal & Pine) blame coronavirus School's out at UNC-CH (IndyWeek) 1 week after school was in NCSU joins UNC-CH with all-online classes (Raleigh N&O) fraternities and other off-campus behavior largely responsible which campus is next? NCSSM Faculty Senate petitions Chancellor to move instruction entirely online (Raleigh N&O) but only the NC Board of Governors gets to decide So it's not OK to have in-person education, but it's OK to have in-person football? (Raleigh N&O) at UNC-CH UNC moves all classes online (Raleigh N&O) after 130 more students infected but will wait 2 more days till wednesday?!? We all saw this coming (UNC Daily Tar Heel) well, all except UNC administrators and UNC BoG If only it (the move to all online) had come sooner (Cardinal & Pine) say faculty and staff 4th UNC Covid cluster: UNC Faculty call emergency meeting (NC Policy Watch) 8/17 @ 4 pm Learning pods in NC: making inequality worse? (Cardinal & Pine) education, in general Are we sending students home to make campuses safe for football? (Washington Post) and Send the students home: making it safe for college football (Greensboro Record) Schools have no good options for re-opening during covid-19 (Scientific American) Is it time to blame the students? (The Atlantic) yes, UNC system president has just done it (IndyWeek) and the students who saw this coming Remote learning is a (bad) joke (The Atlantic) at least for kindergarteners pandemic medical news What happens in China gets a vaccine first? (Politico) the nightmare scenario Quantifying the risk (Nature) how much more deadly if you're older and male Another disaster at the FDA (NY Times) the blood plasma fiasco A new plan to test every American for Covid-19 (The Atlantic) but that depends on the federal government acting never mind Why America is having a coronavirus crisis (Nature) political meddling, disorganization, and years of public-health neglect Trump authorizes convalescent plasma (Washington Post) medical experts say it's insufficiently tested Young people are emerging as primary virus spreaders (Washington Post) bad tech Uber and Lyft don't want their drivers to be employees (Washington Post) fine... then they should just go away
limited time?  read the most interesting & important stories from  early August 2020: 1) coronavirus has re-arisen medical updates local education news pandemic economics 2) elections & voting during the pandemic local voting news general voting sabotaging the USPS  just in time for the election 3)  astronomy news Mars:  past and present are ETs hibernating? video updates:     dark energy & the accelerating universe        black holes doubts about the universe's homogeneity 4)  physics news rethinking physics education the Higgs refuses to misbehave 5)  Hiroshima:  remembrance of things past 6) climate news the bad are rain forests at their CO2-absorbing limit? glacier loss tied to human behavior warming tropical soils are dumping their CO2 rising seas: the danger is not just to the coasts climate change:  far worse than covid the possibly good a green recovery & environmental justice
early August 2020
A meteorite more valuable than gold (Science) holding the building blocks of life? the Aguas Zarcas fall Uranus & Neptune: frozen cores of superionic ice? (SISSA Italy) Ceres:  an active ocean world (Astronomy) say 7 published papers other remains unconvinced (Scientific American) Mystery solved: Ceres' bright streaks come from salty water below (NASA JPL) Psyche: the remnant of a planet that never fully formed (Los Alamos National Lab) says a crash simulation Mars The most overhyped planet in the galaxy? (The Atlantic) Seismic data find Mars' crust-mantle boundary 22 km below surface and mantle-core boundary at depth of ~1560 km (Rice U) core-mantle boundary at 54% of Mars' radius Most of Mars's valleys were not covered by free-flowing rivers, but by water flowing under ice sheets (Western U) Sky & Telescope comments was early Mars wet & cold and not wet & warm? Earth & Sky comments 5 possibilities for life on Mars (Starts with a Bang) Does life lurk below Mars's surface? (Earth & Sky) based on published article (Nature Scientific Reports) did cosmic rays promote formation of subsurface organics necessary for life? How NASA found the ideal crater to land in (NY Times) Jezero, a former lake ---------------------- A toxic transformation of Venus? (Scientific American) from habitable to deadly New evidence of solar system's oldest planets -- which no longer exist (Carnegie Science) via iron meteorites from their differentiated cores First image of Ganymede's NP (Earth & Sky) from Juno its ring structures are likely those of an impact remnant (Kobe U) 4 Gyr ago it's the largest impact crater in the solar system Do Jupiter's Galilean moons keep each other warm by raising tides on each other? (Science News) 🔥 climate crisis🔥 how we know the planet is warming the big picture Covid is horrific; climate change could be worse (GatesNotes) climate warnings 2020 will be either warmest or 2nd warmest on record (Carbon Brief) and June 2020 was warmest since record-keeping began CO2 loss from tropical soils increases with warming (Nature) with worrying results for climate change NY Times comments Extreme glacier loss is due to human-caused global warming (Carbon Brief) in Alps & NZ Grand Mesa is a giant climate hot spot (Washington Post) draining water from a huge area including Moab, UT Arctic breaks melting record (Scientific American) fires, heat, & a cyclone Rising sea levels from global warming will imperil millions of non-coastal residents (NY Times) based on published article (Nature Scientific Reports) climate solutions A just green recovery (Rhodium Group) the intersection of covid-19 and environmental justice Saturation point? (New Scientist) will tropical forests continue to absorb CO2? paywall Curbing the carbon footprint in astronomy (Astrobites) the majority of it comes from computing Air pollution costs are much worse than we thought (Vox) ditching fossil fuels would pay for itself through clean air alone climate non-solutions Trump roles back methane limits for oil & gas industry (The Guardian)	A star moving at 8% of light speed (Universe Today) around the Milky Way's SMBH Hunting for phosphorus (Nature Astronomy) the 5th ingredient of life The recent dimming of Betelgeuse: ejection and cooling of plasma (Earth & Sky) Are Mira variables responsible for spreading carbon throughout the galaxy? (USRA) although, more generally, it's the small stars spreading the stuff of life throughout the galaxy (Astronomy) oxygen is produced in exploding stars, but not nitrogen; carbon, some from each? How to predict imminent large solar flares (Science) time & location paywall, despite publicaiton using NASA-funded instruments/data The model predicted 7 of 9 flares in the new cycle (NASA)	RU Lup and its huge spiral.... protoplanetary disk (Earth & Sky) K2-25b: a planet that shouldn't be (McDonald Observatory) 25 MEarth, but smaller than Neptune Can small disks form planets? (AAS Nova) like large ones do ET Fermi Paradox redux: they're just resting & waiting (Universe Today) the aestivation hypothesis waiting for evolution to produce more civilizations? ... or waiting for the CMB to cool so that their megastructures run more efficiently? ... or ? As many as 7 exoplanets in the same system could harbor life (UC - Riverside) Earth & Sky comments	Dark frontiers: the science of black holes (Scientific American, 1.5-hr video conversation) Black dwarfs: ending the universe with a bang, not a whimper (Science) the very last of the supernovae Big Bounce simulations challenge the Big Bang (Quanta) a cosmic contraction generates features present in our universe The Accelerating Universe -- a talk with Brian Greene and Adam Reiss (World Science Festival via YouTube) A metal-poor galaxy just beginning starbirth -- except it's nearby (Keck Observatory) making it extremely rare -- and possibly the last galaxy to ever form? The universe is more homogeneous than expected (Kilo-Degree Survey) 10% more than the Λ-CDM model of cosmology predicts based on weak lensing results of 5% of the sky Sky & Telescope says 8.8% smaller value of σ8 may require new physics Science News comments The Phoenix stream: arising from the ashes of a defunct globular cluster (Nature) with the lowest metal content of any extant one... 0.2% of sun's will it shed light on the Milky Way's assembly? read with caution Can we outrun dark energy? (Starts with a Bang) why 94% of the universe is unseeable -- and more is disappearing daily assuming dark energy's density remains constant... which is currently unknown	Fuzzy dark matter? (AAS Nova) Dreaming of physics' biggest experiments? (BackReaction) but bigger is not always better Higgs boson apparently gives mass to muons (Scientific American) says H →  μ- + μ+ meaning that the Higgs refuses to misbehave (New Scientist) and that there is likely only 1 Higgs Does the Higgs interact with (and give rise to the mass of) lighter particles? (Symmetry) looking for evidence Black holes are hiding movies in their rings (New Scientist) we now know what the image of M87's picture contains paywall read with some caution Twistors and the Standard Model (Not Even Wrong) with a link to a free book draft Science 2.0 comments	mini table of contents elections & voting sabotaging the USPS sabotaging the census Joe Biden's VP Hiroshima's nuclear legacy pandemic economics books ------------------ 538 releases its election forecast and it's not like its competitors Biden wins 72% of the simulations 4 years ago, 538 said Clinton would win 62% of the time "I still believe the President" (Washington Post) Thom Tillis:  avatar of the reactionary right (The Intercept) pandemic economics The coronavirus economy: how  big data points to a recovery (OnPoint Radio, 1-hr podcast w/Raj Chetty) the best economic tool: stop the virus! Big data and pandemic recovery (tracktherecovery) a tool to find where the economic recovery is and isn't, and in what sectors and income groups How did covid-19 & public policy affect employment and spending? (Opportunity Insights) Economy sank because rich people stopped spending (Forbes) How the pandemic is helping the rich get richer (Bernie Sanders, via The Guardian) "it's time to tax their obscene wealth" --------------------- Biden's VP choice Presidential running mates don't usually matter (Politico) why Kamala Harris might ---------------------- The case for Elizabeth Warren (Politico) The case for Kamal Harris (Politico) The case for Karen Bass (Thy Black Man) The case for Gretchen Whitmer (Medium) The case for Keisha Lance Bottoms (Slate) The case for Tammy Duckworth (NY Daily News) The case for Susan Rice (Politico) The case against Susan Rice (NY Times) ---------------------- sabotaging the census Ending the census one month early will undercount the poor & minorities (Washington Post) Why an accurate census count is important (NY Times) Is ending the census 1 month earlier a Trump plan for political gains? (Vox) and a useful map of where the count lags 2010's NC census lags national average (Raleigh N&O) and lags its count 10 years ago -------------------- Unwanted truths: Trump's battle with the intelligence services (NY Times) that caused him to become unglued and that has damaged intelligence gathering College-educated professionals: capitalism's useful idiots? (The Atlantic) the war on the less educated sabotaging the Postal Service Why is the Postal Service deactivating mail-sorting machines? (Vice) just in time for the election Trump needs to stop irresponsible attacks (WRAL) Trump mega-donor in charge of USPS (Center for Media & Democracy) posing a great threat to mail-in election You've got no mail (The Baffler) USPS suffers forced indebtedness to the federal government Death by a thousand cuts (New Republic) The Postal Service becomes a pawn in election in November's election (Washington Post) ------------------------ China wants Biden, Russia favors Trump... will Americans get to be the tie-breaker? (Washington Post) College sports: the bill for greed has come due (Washington Post) forcing students to risk their lives to pay the bills Hiroshima and the nuclear legacy The road to Trinity (Los Alamos National Lab) from the horse's mouth Destroyer of Worlds: the making of an atomic bomb (WWII Museum) The atomic bombings at 75 (WWII Museum) should they have been used without warnings? U.S. hid suffering... then John Hersey went to Japan (Washington Post) John Hersey's New Yorker article that became a book The Enola Gay carried 12 men and a deadly weapon (Washington Post) and 12 cyanide capsules a nerve-wracking take-off... and a bomb not armed till it was airborne The pilot who came to regret his participation (NY Times) Living in the shadow of the bomb (Washington Post) nuclear weapons have kept the peace... we need to learn to live with them "To the best of my ability" (Soundcloud via WWII Museum) 7-part podcast on the aftermath of FDR's death, culminating in the atomic bomb When Goldsboro, NC almost became a Hiroshima (Raleigh N&O) one switch caused a bomb not to detonate why more nuclear reduction is necessary -------------------- elections & voting local elections Have you received your absentee ballot application with Trump's picture on it? (CNN) NC's plans to count votes (Raleigh N&O) NC mail-in voters must be given a chance to fix their mistakes (Raleigh N&O) just like in-person voters can, judge says but 'no' to no-contact drop-off boxes, witness-less voting, & more ----------------------- elections in general Mark Meadows: the lack of evidence for voter fraud is the 'definition of voter fraud' (Daily Beast) and black is white USPS warns 46 states (including NC) that it may not be able to deliver ballots on time (Vox) Government report documents Russian disinformation & propaganda campaign for November election (U.S. Dept of State) 77 pages but major results remain classified & kept from the public (Sen. Richard Blumenthal via Washington Post)  Could an Al-Gore-George-W-Bush commission save us from electoral disaster? (USA Today) The fight for vote-by-mail is over? (Washington Post) if only a major RAND report Conducting safe elections in a pandemic a 3-part series: An Assessment of the 50 States' Voting Processes and the 83-page ebook Are States Ready for a Covid Election? a tool to look at each state's procedures Options for Ensuring Safe Elections and the 95-page e-book very long reads ------------------------- election results August 4 primary results (Vox) KS, MI, AZ, MO Another conservative state votes for Medicaid expansion (Vox) MO says yes; NC is just 1 of 11 to say no to free money Is the botched NY primary a sign of things to come in November? (NY Times) 6 weeks later, 2 congressional races are undecided delayed ballot-sending, missing postmarks, mishandled ballots, blame-trading rules... and still counting How Florida Republicans gutted the biggest civil rights advance in recent history (The Guardian) miscellaneous Democrats are trying to defeat a bully... they should stop using bully tactics to win (Washington Post) Why would anyone be going to Disneyland right now? (The Atlantic) an excellent and expensive way to put yourself at risk and no fireworks! Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (Richard Clarke @ Washington Post) and not just b/c DHS produced 'intelligence reports' on journalist and protesters in Portland (Washington Post) then lied about it books 130 degrees: a coming century of crises (NY Books) review of Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency by Mark Lynas free to read for a short time Evil Geniuses: the Unmaking of America (The Atlantic) have educated professionals become the useful idiots of capitalism? a book excerpt by Kurt Anderson The lies that textbooks taught generations about slavery (Washington Post) and how good it was for the enslaved The End of Everything (Aeon) an essay based on the author's book by Katie Mack and a rollicking tour of the wildest physics (New Scientist) a review of the above Why the working class votes against its economic interests (NY Times) a review of 2 books 'The System' by Robert Reich and 'Break 'em Up' by Zephyr Teachout To Start a War (LA Times, via N&O) the lies and mistakes that led us into Iraq by Robert Draper White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (Washington Post) how white supremacy infected Christianity and the Republican party an interview with author Robert P. Jones art/trips/museums Oyster world (NY Times) aka Cape Cod 61 national parks, ranked (Discovery) based on accessibility, facilities & accomodations, trails, attractions, crowds, & 'wow' factor except 'crowds' seem a plus and not a minus, as Yosemite rates 1st and Yellowstone, 5th, yrt Joshua Tree & Hawaii Volcanoes are in the bottom half?	quasi-science Two decades of pandemic war games failed to predict Donald Trump (Nature) Nature?!? The danger of putting scientists on a pedestal (Undark) the danger is likely just the opposite Native Hawaiians attempt to 'protect' Mauna Kea goes on during the pandemic (Vox) superstition keeps winning science Statistical literacy (New Scientist) in the time of covid paywall Social distancing shuts down some  astronomical observatories (Quanta) even though they're operated remotely Arecibo dish damaged by rogue cable (Earth & Sky) 30-m gash in dish while still undergoing repairs from 2017's hurricane Maria Life's Big Bang (New Scientist) simple explanations of life's origin don't add up? so maybe a Goldilocks chemistry instead: life emerged fully formed? paywall How deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likely (Nature) So hot water can freeze faster than cold? (Science News) Ammonium nitrate, the chemical that exploded in Beirut (The Conversation) although no one should be above reproach and correction Plate tectonics began ~ 2Gyr ago (The Conversation) says new evidence along with birthmark of the first supercontinent based on published article (Science Advances) free for a short time Does new physics lurk inside living matter? (Physics Today, August 2020 issue) by Paul Davies, still crazy after all these years The unlikely rise of the dinosaurs (New Scientist) and the invisble superpower that helped them conquer the world paywall anti-science UFOs, aliens,  & ESP New Republic embarrasses itself physics education  How to improve science credibility and physics education in a post-pandemic world (American Journal of Physics) the changes that are necessary and how to get them done Herd incredulity (American Journal of Physics) the connection between quantum mechanics and covid-19 Teacher harassment is not new (Physics Today) harassment protection is not just for students bad education UNC corruption keeps chugging along (Indyweek) 3 more examples pandemic education local education NC's virtual charter schools earned Ds for performance -- now they want to expand (NC Policy Watch) Big Business gets big covid handouts while schools ignored (Cardinal & Pine) Students & workers spoke about re-opening (UNC Daily Tar Heel) UNC didn't listen What Duke life will look like in the midst of a pandemic (Duke Chronicle) the rules, what happens when they're violated, lockdown-vs.-sending-students-home if pandemic restarts and how Duke dining will work re-opening with reduced seating 6 myths about the re-opening of UNC (Indy Week) none of them shed a good light on it UNC campus workers sue due to unsafe pandemic working conditions (Raleigh N&O) school goes on UNC is creating a campus-wide  dashboard to monitor Covid-19 -- but not open to the public (NC Policy Watch) because UNC is not a public university?!? As schools re-open, rolling the dice with peoples' lives (NC Policy Watch) as UNC students move in, 173 infections already 80% are students UNC move-in: no masks, no distancing... (Washington Post) ...custodians, housekeepers a bit concerned UNC Chair: UNC committed a serious break of trust (NC Policy Watch) in not notifying faculty of Orange Co.'s request for UNC to not open for in-person learning Why is NC Schools Superintendent pushing standardized tests during a pandemic? (Cardinal & Pine)   The shocking number of students unable to learn online (NC Policy Watch) due to lack of broadband or inadequate equipment teachers too! Durham teachers say much more needs to be done before in-classroom education is safe (Indy Week) UNC releases worst-case budget cuts (NC Policy Watch) The risk that a student might come to school with coronavirus (NY Times) estimates for all U.S. counties in Durham & Wake: 3 students in a school of 500 during the first week; in Orange, 2 students general education Our kids belong in school (The Atlantic) at least where the curve has been flattened How to buy -- and use -- a laptop for distance learning (Washington Post) How to go to college during a pandemic? (NY Times) the entirely-on-line Minerva What will schools do when a teacher gets Covid? (NY Times) pandemic medical news Do you really have to wash your mask after each use? (Vox) the short answer: yes How to take care of your mask (Washington Post) football (under medical??) Football's con exposed (Washington Post) why does the South continue too be so stupid? is it a surprise that the SEC and ACC will play football? "because college football is essential" (AP) says MS governor what else is there to do in MS? and despite NCAA doctors saying playing football is  a bad idea (NY Times) ------------------------- Which state are managing (or not) the pandemic effectively (Vox) in 5 charts even though the South is the places where the pandemic is worst How to crush the coronavirus and save the economy (NY Times) another lockdown Phase 2 restrictions continue in NC (Raleigh N&O) How the pandemic defeated America (The Atlantic) 4% of world's population; 25% of the cases and still careening between inaction and ineptitude a very very long read another version of how it happened (NY Times) and another (Washington Post) How the pandemic might play out in 2021 and beyond (Nature) what happens when it gets cold?  how long does immunity last?  what happens with flu and pandemic? bad tech 3 years of misery inside Google (Wired) apparently not 'the 'happiest company in tech' F***book doing something positive about the Nov election? (Vox) uh, no but, as usual, it thinks it is Finally, finally! F***book removes a Trump post for 'misinformation' (Vox) aka 'lying'
limited time?  read the most interesting & important stories from  late July  2020: 1) coronavirus stays dangerous medical updates education back to school what the medical experts say what the teachers say local education re-openings pandemic economics 2) elections & voting during the pandemic are big concerns 3)  the invasion of America's cities by federal blackshirts 4) astronomy news Earth  &  Moon:  past and present Mars a younger universe? commentary on the new CMB map continues 5)   climate models narrow range of future warming 6)  big bad tech embarrasses itself....again 7)  will humanity travel to the stars?  .....using known physics? 8)  UFOS: the hydrochlorquine of skywatching
late July 2020
Mars future The robot trying to find life on Mars (Vox) Perseverance launched today, 7/30 Mars present We're going to Mars (Wired) Updates on 3 Mars' missions launched this month (Sky & Telescope) and pictures of the vehicles sent (NY Times) Giant waves of sand are moving on Mars (Science) for the first time since formation at ~ 10 cm/yr Mars past Three great mysteries about life on Mars (NY Times)  Why the fuss over Phobos & Deimos? (NY Times) Mars's mini-moons ------------------ ------------------ Pluto's dark side spills its secrets (Nature) with hints of a submerged ocean At least 37 recently active volcanoes on Venus? (U Maryland) based on modeling How to bring samples of solar system objects back to Earth (Nature) already done: Moon, an asteroid, a comet, the solar wind... next up: Mars? 2020OY4, the asteroid that came within 3 Earth-diameters of us on 7/26 (Earth & Sky) 2.3 - 5.2 m across Al26 in the solar system: an origin story that doesn't include a nearby supernova (McDonald Observatory) shock-wave generation & interaction with the protoplanetary disk Sky & Telescope comments An evening comet, binoculars needed (Sky & Telescope) Comet NEOWISE, has moved to the evening sky -- and is now fading 'dazzling' and 'spectacular'?.... not A Comet NEOWISE livestream event (Lowell Observatory) Thursday  7/23, 11:30 pm EDT   An origin story for IIE iron meteorites (MIT) from a partially differentiated planetesimal based on published article (Science Advances) JWST delayed again (NASA) new target: 10/31/20 How to bring samples of solar system objects back to Earth (Nature) already done: Moon, an asteroid, a comet, the solar wind... next up: Mars? 2020OY4, the asteroid that came within 3 Earth-diameters of us on 7/26 (Earth & Sky) 2.3 - 5.2 m across Al26 in the solar system: an origin story that doesn't include a nearby supernova (McDonald Observatory) shock-wave generation & interaction with the protoplanetary disk An evening comet, binoculars needed (Sky & Telescope) Comet NEOWISE, has moved to the evening sky -- and is now fading 'dazzling' and 'spectacular'?.... not A Comet NEOWISE livestream event (Lowell Observatory) Thursday  7/23, 11:30 pm EDT   An origin story for IIE iron meteorites (MIT) from a partially differentiated planetesimal based on published article (Science Advances) JWST delayed again (NASA) new target: 10/31/20 ----------------- Earth & Moon  η Corvi: a window into the solar system's past? (Astronomy) Did a supernova cause the late Devonian extinction? (Physics World) via cosmic-ray depletion of the ozone layer no evidence presented, although a test, using long-lived radioactive  Sm/U/Pu isotopes, is Asteroids bombarded  the Earth-Moon system 800 Myr ago (New Scientist) but no complex life around to experience it A southern hemisphere magnetic anomaly (The Conversation) a clue to Earth's magnetic reversals? A slightly younger Moon? (DLR Germany) 4.425 + 0.025 Gyr, based on a a longer solidification time for the Moon's magma 0.10 Gyr younger than the standard value Longer-lived magma points to younger Moon  Sky & Telescope comments published article (Science Advances) free for a short time The asteroid strike killed the dinosaurs  --  not vulcanism (Science News) by destroying dinosaur habitats published article (PNAS) and volcanic warming almost helped them survive Were Snowball Earth episodes triggered by rapid decreases in solar irradiation? (MIT) cloud formation? volcanic emissions? triggering an ice-albedo runaway The faint young sun problem has been solved? (Astrobites) how to have liquid water on Earth with a Sun half as bright preprint (arXiv) higher CO2 concentrations kept Earth warm enough ----------------- How to bring samples of solar system objects back to Earth (Nature) already done: Moon, an asteroid, a comet, the solar wind... next up: Mars? 2020OY4, the asteroid that came within 3 Earth-diameters of us on 7/26 (Earth & Sky) 2.3 - 5.2 m across Al26 in the solar system: an origin story that doesn't include a nearby supernova (McDonald Observatory) shock-wave generation & interaction with the protoplanetary disk An evening comet, binoculars needed (Sky & Telescope) Comet NEOWISE, has moved to the evening sky -- and is now fading 'dazzling' and 'spectacular'?.... not A Comet NEOWISE livestream event (Lowell Observatory) Thursday  7/23, 11:30 pm EDT   An origin story for IIE iron meteorites (MIT) from a partially differentiated planetesimal based on published article (Science Advances) At least 37 recently active volcanoes on Venus? (U Maryland) based on modeling JWST delayed again (NASA) new target: 10/31/20 🔥 climate crisis🔥 how we know the planet is warming the big picture Coal production in U.S. down to lowest since 1978 (Washington Post) it needs to disappear Best- and worst- cases for global warming now less likely (Scientific American) based on published article (Reviews of Geophysics) paywall The climate migration has begun (Pro Publica) where will everyone go? 2020 Arctic summer climate goes south (Washington Post) wildfires, heat waves, rapidly melting ice The prolonged Siberian/Arctic heat wave of 2020 was nearly impossible without global warming (World Weather Attribution)   Record locust swarms (Eos) what's to come with climate change The 4 types of climate denier (The Guardian) all of which should be ignored the shill, the fixer, the egomaniac, & the ideological fool environment Congress passes major environmental bill (Washington Post) more money for National Parks & wilderness areas but only a small band-aid on Trump's anti-nature policies (The Guardian) say two former Secretaries of the Interior Now that half of Oklahoma is an acknowledged reservation... (Washington Post) ... oil drillers will have to contend with Native Peoples and the federal government	At long last, indirect evidence for a Supernova 1987A neutron star remnant? (NRAO) from its heating of nearby dust but if so, it's not a pulsar Sky & Telescope seems more sure it's real Starts with a Bang comments Evidence of quantum physics in observed white-dwarf mass-radius relationship (Johns Hopkins U) using GR's gravitational redshift Disrupted metal-poor globular cluster upends theory of cluster formation (Carnegie Science) A pulsar that doesn't fit into the 3 normal categories (AAS Nova) rotation-, accretion-, and magnetic-powered Death knell for the Hyades? (Science News) disruption by expansion in 30 Myr Why 8% of red giants have starspots (Physics World) they acquired angular momentum from planetary or stellar companions or didn't lose it during their main sequence phase              A rare uv flash in a type Ia SN (Northwestern U) none of 4  scenarios fits the observations perfectly another year needed? Solar convective-driven turbulence confined to equatorial regions (Science Advances) free for a short time Those campfire flares on the Sun (NY Times) 10-6 - 10-9 size of flares typically seen from Earth	The first image of a multiplanet system around a sun-like star (ESO) 'multi' = exactly 2! ET Which planets should we search for alien life? (Astronomy) if only we knew The science behind searching for ET signals (Ars Technica) looking for 'technosignatures' How many aliens in the Milky Way? (Scientific American) what Bayesian statistics says	read with caution a younger universe? Globular clusters say: 13.35 Gyr (Universe Today) but since they weren't around at the beginning, how do they know? no, it's 12.6 Gyr old (phys.org) based on "mathematics and computer modeling"... what isn't? H0 = 75.1 + 2.3 km/s/Mpc and a reminder that everyone else says it's 13.8 Gyr , e.g., How we know the universe is 13.8 Gyr old (Starts with a Bang) incorporating the latest Atacama CMB results ------------------- Brightness periodicities in SMBHs? (AAS Nova) more about ORCs in space (Earth & Sky) What it's like as you approach the time of the Big Bang (Starts with a Bang) more commentary on new CMB map A history of the first 11 Gyr of our universe's expansion (SDSS) see what your universe has been up to -- based on baryon acoustic oscillations largest-ever map of the universe released... with 4 videos Starts with a Bang summarizes the surprises and not-surprises unsurprises: dark energy is constant in time and space; neutrinos contribute negligible mass to the universe; universe is flat to within 1 part in 500 Sky & Telescope has more commentary ------------------- Classifying gamma-ray bursts (U Copenhagen) an AI classification breakthrough by undergrads How galaxies die (UC - Santa Cruz) quantitative insights into the battle between galactic halos and central black holes How we know that the Big Bang didn't produce any black holes (Space)	GNOMEs search for exotic fields (CERN Courier) with optical magnetometers is this desperation or good science? What is 'spin'? (Not Even Wrong) spoiler alert:  the electron is not a ball and it's not spinning The properties of the universe that allow us to exist (Starts with a Bang) On complete interpretations of quantum theory (Medium) by a Bohm  evangelist What dark matter is (probably) not (Symmetry) MACHOs & MOND and see just below read with caution Loop quantum cosmology claims it can explain 2 anomalies in CMB inhomogeneities (Penn St. U) with a future test is proposed read with intense skepticism MOND thinks it made progress by 'explaining' the CMB (Quanta) but it can't explain BAO data, the bullet clusters, and large-scale galaxy motions and it fails the Occam's razor test: "it's baroque" and the details of why you should be very skeptical of MOND (arXiv) Still pretending there are wormholes (Science News) looking for gravitational waves from a black hole orbiting such	It must sting to still be defending Trump (Washington Post) but maybe he'll resign? (NY Times) The age of mass surveillance will not last forever (Edward Snowden  @ Wired) wish I were as confident pandemic news Trump tweet floats "delay(ing) the election" (Washington Post) until it's 'safe' to vote in person fortunately he doesn't have the Constitutional power to do it the law is clear (Vox) The economic gulf between Dem & GOP pandemic-relief plans (NY Times) in 9 charts 37 Meatpacking coronavirus clusters in NC: 3200+ workers infected (Indy Week) and a wholly inadequate response from the NC Dept of Labor (WUNC) Getting extra jobless benefits does not reduce employment (Yale U) contrary to GOP claims Ohio bans hydrochloroquine  for treatment of coronavirus (State of Ohio) Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Buffoon) takes hydrochloroquine for virus and claims mask gave him the virus Sports must go (Washington Post) prioritize education instead So where are U.S. citizens allowed to travel these days? (Travel & Leisure) about 22 countries half are in the Caribbean or central America  --  but you still have to prove your virus-free, and not even Canada is letting us in ----------------------- Trump's occupation of American cities The hijacking of Homeland Security (NY Times) Why Trump's invasion of cities is both dangerous & illegal (NPR OnPoint, 50-min podcast) an illuminating discussion The sadly-'legal' invasion of Portland (Washington Post) Federal ICE agents employ chemical weapons to disperse protest crowds in Portland (Oregon Live) Is Chicago next? (Chicago Tribune) plans exist to send Homeland Security agents ----------------------- foreign policy America's global standing is at a low point (Washington Post) and the pandemic is making it worse Endangering human rights at home and abroad (Philadelphia Inquirer) Trump & Pompeo Pompeo is wrong (Richard Haas, @ Washington Post) about nearly everything in foreign policy ---------------------- From massive convention bash to no party at all (Politico) Charlotte to Jacksonville and back again Liberals are far more willing to change beliefs in the face of evidence (NY Times) conservatives, not so much on global warming, evolution, vaccines, & more The crisis that shocked the world (Washington Post) U.S. inability to control the pandemic EU infection rate is 20x less; death rate, 10x less elections & voting The hidden election mess that is more likely to cost Dems more than the GOP (NBC News) 5 steps colleges should take to preserve student voting rights (Democracy Docket) 3 tactics the current Supreme Court uses to foster GOP entrenchment (Georgetown Law Review) gerrymandering, naivete, & laundering of motives a long-read academic paper 8 reasons Election Day could be a disaster (Politico) and not b/c Trump could still win Voter-fraud hysteria and partisan bickering at the FEC (Pro Publica) how 2 GOP commissioners were forced out for being 'insufficiently partisan' How 15 states and DC made voting easier during the pandemic (Washington Post) NC did too, but didn't get credit here NC has made voting slightly easier, but more needs to be done (NC Policy Watch) except for online voting NC BoE orders increased number of Early-Voting sites (Raleigh N&O) GOP says it's unfair 1 site for every 20,000 registered voters text of NCBoE's 'emergency order' (NC Policy Watch) includes many safety measures The Plot against America (Rolling Stone) the GOP plan to suppress the vote and sabotage the election John Lewis's legacy is the right to vote...and it's under attack right now (Mother Jones) a bill to restore the Voting Rights Act has been sitting on McConnell's desk for 225 days -------------------- pandemic economics Sleepwalking toward economic catastrophe (Vox) a grim future unless Congress acts We have an income crisis, not just a job crisis (Politico) pay cuts & fewer hours worked are taking a larger toll The next terrifying phase of coronavirus economics (The Atlantic) we prioritized the economy over public health and got the worst of both worlds ------------------------- race, policing, etc. No protesting racial injustice in Graham, NC (Washington Post) protesting is a threat to public safety? they have it backwards The junk science of police using 'excited delirium' as an excuse for brutality (Washington Post) How insidious structural racism works (Politico) how Gov Larry Hogan (one of the 'good' GOP governors) did it in Baltimore by keeping black neighborhoods segregated and poor ----------------------- books The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What's gone wrong and how to prevent it happening again (Washington Post) Trump guilty of "crime against humanity" by Robert Horton, editor of The Lancet ----------------------- art, trips, museums The moose of Isle Royale (NY Times) Hagia Sophia: from cathedral to mosque to museum back to mosque (NY Times) Philip Guston: from figuration to abstraction... and back again (Art News) how he shaped 20th-century painting Battle in the Himalayas (NY Times)	science Interstellar travel with currently known physics? (Starts with a Bang) potentially, via nuclear, space-based lasers, antimatter, or dark-matter propulsion just not in my lifetime, nor probably yours Quantum tunneling is not instantaneous (Scientific American)  How atomic bomb survivors transformed our ideas about impacts of radiation (Science) Still searching for the origins of life (Knowable) and still searching for Cleopatra's tomb (LiveScience) the never-ending controversy The complex chemistry of fire (Chemistry World) Peopling of the Americas began more than 20,000 years ago (Nature) says increasing evidence Ambient lightning is responsible for humans' electrical cell activity? (SyFy) not science falling for the UFO hoaxes... again Vox NY Times Scientific American no, calling it "unidentified aerial phenomena" does not make it better and worst of all, NY Times advocacy in the guise of reporting NYT doubles down ---------------- coronavirus medical updates Trump is sidelining the CDC (Nature) rather than strengthening it Hey, we're doing better than Oman, Bahrain, & Panama (NY Times) but that's it we're 15x worse than EU countries New CDC guidelines promote back-to-school (Ars Technica) tune changes after Trump complains Biden vs. Trump on school re-opening (Cardinal & Pine) a comparison of plans How to get anti-maskers to wear a mask?:  Be nice! (Cardinal & Pine) yep, be nice to people who are evil... got it. Pandemic bad news: we're not getting back to normal soon (Scientific American) there will be rolling waves of restrictions and shutdowns until we have a vaccine Sen. Thom Tillis: why should restaurant workers be required to wash their hands? (NC Policy Watch) clueless to the end Who's wearing masks and who isn't (NY Times) in the Triangle, 80%+ say always... in the rest of NC, it's < 50% in the South and upper Midwest, masks are apparently for sissies pandemic education education idiocy Trump's press secretary: "Science should not get in the way" of schools re-opening (Fox News) what is wrong with these people? even worse, Texas governor says religious schools don't have to follow health guidelines (Washington Post) Pence visits  private NC school while education aid is hijacked (Cardinal & Pine) just plain wrong How America set up schools to fail (New York) no 'question' about it 50 charter schools took PPP money (NC Policy Watch) and also took public school cv relief money double-dipping or just plain greed? ------------------------- back to school? Teachers in fear: making wills, retiring, planning strikes (The Guardian) from the experts (Schools for Heath) What it could look like if schools reopened today (Washington Post) a scary read Risk reduction in re-opening schools 60-page report executive summary introduction 20 questions to ask before sending your kids back to school Wall Street Journal summary ------------------- local education Chapel Hill residents fear return of 29,000 UNC students (Raleigh N&O) Duke limits housing to freshmen & sophomores (Duke Chronicle) leaving upper-classmen in the lurch at the last minute Housekeepers at NC universities  worried about health as students move into dorms (Raleigh N&O) Letter from (some) UNC faculty tell students to stay home (Raleigh N&O) Chapel Hill, Carrboro schools to remain online until 1/15/2021 (Raleigh N&O) UNC re-opening: budget cuts, no tuition/fee refunds,  & other challenges (Raleigh N&O) "students get the same value with in-person and online classes" raises some eyebrows at UNC Governors meeting and some Board members refused to wear masks, while expecting students and teachers to? hypocrisy lives! Virus expert tells Duke its plan for re-opening is reckless (Raleigh N&O) but Duke isn't listening No perfect options for re-opening NC schools (Cardinal & Pine) by 2 NC legislators b/c of "the inadequate support we already provide to public schools after a decade of the current legislative leadership" NC's 5 largest school districts starting school year online (Raleigh N&O) 40% of Wake Co. students sign up for Virtual Academy (Raleigh N&O) gee, I wonder why Each UNC campus asked to prepare budget for 50% cut (NC Policy Watch) if U.S. Senate & President continue to oppose the Heroes Act -------------------- education safety Billions needed to open schools safely; Congress dithers (Carolina & Pine) Why not just have class outside? (The Atlantic) What it will take to re-open schools safely (New Republic) what the science says a long read America's teachers deserve a plan, not a trap (The Atlantic) Schools should open for elementary-age kids and those with special needs (National Academies) depending on local circumstances Free wills for returning teachers during covid (NY Post) one of many firms offering this School closings have exposed an internet access gap (Raleigh N&O) time to close it Doing schoolwork in a parking lot is not a solution (NY Times) internet access as civil right -----------------------   what teachers and students are saying (Carolina & Pine) unless otherwise noted "Stop treating school re-opening as a game" "We desperately coronavirus relief in the Heroes Act" Burr and Tillis: are you paying attention? How to deal with those who think coronavirus is no big deal a 1st-grade teacher explains Demands for in-person schooling are "not grounded in science" "we can't return to in-person instruction  for a long time" A UNC student: "I'm angry and scared" UNC will not tell other students if a classmate gets covid (WRAL) and they think '3 -feet spacing is enough' "Please don't make me risk getting covid-19 to teach your child" (NY Times) "Colleges and universities should open only when safe to do so" (NC Policy Watch) bad tech Why F***book & Twitter won't fact-check Trump's false claims about voting (Vox) profit plus, honesty is not part of their value system When will Big Tech allow its workers to be unionized? (NY Times) and share in the wealth they helped create Why Fbook, Apple, Google, & Amazon are bad for America (Politico) uh, b/c they're monopolies not to mention that they propagate misinformation, harm mental health, promote discrimination, and are unaccountable The pandemic made America's monopoly problem worse (The Atlantic) How digital ads subsidize the worst of the Web (Wired)
limited time?  read the most interesting & important stories from  early July  2020: 1) coronavirus is making a comeback medical updates education:  schools thinking about how to re-open (safely?) pandemic economics 2)  Comet NEOWISE has moved to the night sky    3)  Hubble tension seems real a new CMB map (from ACT) agrees with the H0 from Planck 4)  climate good news Biden's new climate plan(s) and climate bad news methane reaches highest atmospheric level ever climate misinformation and denial spreads 5)  America the exceptional  (but not in a good way) the fall election is ramping up why does the Supreme Court think religion trumps freedom from religion? 6)    supernova news 7)  solar news 8)  still looking for lepton CP violation 9)   Mars: past and future
early July 2020
A naked-eye now-evening comet (Sky & Telescope) Comet NEOWISE, has moved to the evening sky but 'dazzling' and 'spectacular'?.... not updated (7/10) charts for the evening sky (Earth & Sky) but it might be better to wait till later in the month (post-sunset) Top 10 things we learned about Pluto from New Horizons flyby (Johns Hopkins APL) 5 years ago Life inside Pluto? (The Conversation) if its subsurface ocean is warm and has been for a while Mars past more evidence for a ancient Martian ocean? Landslide-induced tsunamis on Mars? (Smithsonian) A signature in Martian elevation levels (AAS Nova) but it's still controversial -------------------- Mars future Humanity on Mars? (phys.org) "no progress since 1972" and we've missed GW Bush's promise to be there on 7/20/2019 Countdown to Mars (Nature) 3 missions set to take off in mid-month launched by U.S., China, & UAE Sky & Telescope has the same story with different emphasis and ditto, but without pictures (Scientific American) Perseverance gets its own article (NASA JPL) 7 things to know --------------------- The July4/5 penumbral eclipse of the Moon (Time & Date) bet you can't tell it's being eclipsed Earth is farthest from the Sun on July 4 @ 7:35 am  (Earth & Sky) feel cooler already? 🔥  climate crisis 🔥 how we know the planet is warming the big picture Global methane emissions reach highest level ever (Stanford Earth) on record based on 2 articles Global Methane Budget, 2000-2017 (Earth System Science Data) and Increasing anthropomorphic methane emissions arise equally from agricultural and fossil-fuel sources (Environmental Resource Letters) State of high-tide flooding in U.S. coastal cities (NOAA) and very bad news for 2050 Why the South Pole is warming so quickly (Scientific American) it's complicated The one place on Earth where it's cooling (Science Alert) the Atlantic blob is not easy to explain solutions Biden's "climate" plan summary (Joe Biden for President) which is really a plan "to build a modern sustainable infrastructure and an equitable clear energy future" plan and the details commentary Inside Climate News Washington Post Vox but the oil lobby is already unhappy (Washington Post) ---------------------- Pulling CO2 from the atmosphere is necessary -- not sufficient (Nature) it is not a substitute for aggressive action to cut emissions but CO2 removal by human-enhanced rock weathering holds promise for mitigating climate change (Nature) but is it just tinkering? not solutions How climate change misinformation spreads online (Carbon Brief) social media... duh based on Online Misinformation about Climate Change (Wiley) 20 pages Climate denial spreads on Fbook as scientists face restrictions (Scientific American) Fbook overruled its fact-checking group another reason to shut this treasonous company down The scariest thing about global warming (and Covid-19) (Vox) will we just get used to climate chaos? shifting baseline syndrome How the Trump administration understates the costs of global warming (NY Times) by pinning the cost of carbon at < $7/ton, when the real cost is ~ $50/ton environment A future without cars? (NY Times) is amazing Death of a pipeline (NC Policy Watch) cancellation of Atlantic pipeline: a victory for the environment and a chance to improve NC's energy future (Raleigh N&O)	solar news Our closest-ever photos of the Sun (Astronomy) from Solar Orbiter Solar eruptions trigger earthquakes? (Astronomy) based on correlations between solar proton flux and earthquake frequency -- rather than identifying cause & effect although a 2013 paper found no correlation published paper (Nature Scientific Reviews) Finding the Sun's long lost siblings (Astronomy) now widely separated from us 1 candidate, maybe, so far or identifying its birthplace type (Science News) was it a large loose-knit cluster or a compact violent one? supernova news What the first supernovae (may have) looked like (Academic Sinica) from computer models a hypernova = a supernova without metals The only Type Iax supernova found in the Milky Way (Astrobites) now with chemical abundances a weak version of type Ia Why many supernovae are barrel-shaped and not spherical (Ap. J.) extreme magnetic fields & continuous MHD shocks paywall ---------------------- How stars are born and die (Astronomy, July 2020 issue) a compact  summary by the guy who wrote the book Are asymmetric-mass ratios the reason for bright double neutron star mergers? (Nature) explaining the unexplained features of GW170817 paywall Stars more massive than 1.5 Msun are responsible for the carbon in our galaxy (UC-Santa Cruz) How a nearby kilonova would look... on camera (American Journal of Physics, July 2020 issue) or the year-earlier free, unreviewed version (arXiv) Separating black holes formed by pulsational pair instability and those formed by core collapse (Kavli Japan) at most, 2 of the 20 black holes detected by LIGO are the former A decade in the life of the Sun (Astronomy) 5 videos	Has planetary classification become more complicated? (Science News) in between super-Earths and mini-Neptunes: rocky planets with superheated oceans? Heavy-metal Jupiters (Astrobites) is not about alternative music The first exposed planetary core (U Warwick) a failed gas giant or one that lost its outer layers? is the British version the American version: A dense ice giant is missing its atmosphere (MIT) TOI-849b Vacationing on TRAPPIST-1's planets? (Astrobites) dream on ET life It's in the lava tubes! (PNAS) at least on the Moon and Mars where life moved when the surface conditions got tough?  --  and maybe a habitat for future human colonists Can a tidally-locked planet support life? (Knowable) How many ETs are in our galaxy? (Earth &Sky) ask the new Alien Civilization Calculator! The spark of life (Nautil.us) what finding life on Mars would tell us about its origin here read with caution Life at the top of Venus's clouds? (Starts with a Bang) above the cloudtops: "a paradise planet"?	Hubble tension New independent CMB map confirms Planck's smaller H0 value (Nature) ACT data confirms Hubble tension is real H0 = 67.9 + 1.5 km/s/Mpc and more commentary (Simons Foundation) pre-print article (arXiv) New analysis of 34 Type I SNe used previously to claim brightness-age correlation (and thus resolve Hubble tension) find no such correlation (AAS Nova) new analysis drops 10 Sne from study as failing quality cut plus a new study of 254 Type I Sne with same results Why the hubbub about the Hubble constant? (Physics World, July 2020 issue) a solution to the tension may be ~10 years away Can cosmic magnetic fields resolve the Hubble tension? (Quanta) could magnetic fields in the early universe explain why the universe is expanding faster now? generated during inflation or the turbulent plasma phase of the Big Bang? -------------------- A previously unknown 'South Pole Wall' (NY Times) a curtain of galaxies is hiding behind the Milky Way's plane detected gravitationally, it's beyond Laniakea and  can't be seen and a 7-min video showcasing the discovery (YouTube) What one of the discoverers says (U Hawaii Manoa) ORCs in space (Live Science) aka: odd radio circles ring-shaped and brighter at the edges status: unknown Nyx, a number foreign galaxy star stream (U Texas) the remnant of a dwarf-galaxy merger with the Milky Way no indication of how old the stream is Are IceCube's excess high-energy neutrinos coming from plasma surrounding SMBHs? (Penn St. U) Shootouts at cosmic noon (AAS Nova) do these jets cause or quench star formation?	How massive neutrinos broke the Standard Model (Starts with a Bang) A search for leptonic CP violation (CERN Courier) a short review Do we really need a theory of everything? (BackReaction) the Standard Model works fine without unification with gravity although a quantum theory of gravity is still needed to avoid internal inconsistencies Why black holes can't be the dark matter (Starts with a Bang) probably Quantum fluctuations affect macroscopic objects (Nature) LIGO's 40-kg mirrors jiggled by quantum effects New constraints on GR's Lorentz invariance from a distant GRB (Max Planck) read with caution Glowing gravitons? (Scientific American) gravitons might convert to photons near large compact masses  The fundamental unit of time may be 1010x higher than the Planck time (Live Science) some people have too much time on their hands Starts with a Bang reveals some 'lies' in Hawking's 'black holes evaporate' explanation and reveals some in his own: there is zero evidence for such evaporation read with extreme caution Rethinking gravity (New Scientist) what if gravitons aren't massless? paywall	A history of 2020 (The Atlantic) as written in the future by a historian pandemic economics The good, bad, & alarming of the covid economic recovery (Washington Post) in 9 charts only the stock and housing markets have recovered... i.e., the well off are doing well How Trump is helping tycoons exploit the pandemic (New Yorker) The GOP campaign to help the wealthy cheat on their taxes (Washington Post) Another looming bank crisis? (The Atlantic) lessons not learned: CLOs replace CDOs a long read The end of small business? (Washington Post) will chains and large corporations be all that's left? the winners will be the very rich: people and corporations and Small businesses are  giving up (NY Times) America the exceptional just kidding A checklist for fixing up America (NY Times) The U.S. is lagging behind other rich countries (NY Times) in nearly all the others, people have become richer and enjoy a substantially longer lifetime we're at/near the bottom in share of economy that goes to worker pay, union membership,health-care costs, CEO-to-worker pay, incarceration rate, cell-phone service ,... yep, that's American exceptionalism, alright ...in 10 charts ...but we're #1! (Washington Post) in the pandemic or The U.S. is a 2nd-rate power -- and that's the good news (American Prospect) Unpresidented (NY Books) the mastery of belittlement Do Americans understand how badly they're doing? (The Atlantic) at controlling the pandemic How America lost the war on Covid-19 (NY Times) leadership or culture? some of each Tucker Carlson, anti-patriot (NY Times) but representative of right-wing hate --------------------- and in other news since we live in a country ruled by religion... Religious employers don't have to provide contraceptive coverage to employees (Washington Post) if they object on 'moral' grounds so much for the ACA requirement and religious schools can't be sued for violations of federal discrimination law (NY Times) and State scholarships must be available to religious schools (Education Week) now, for the first time ever will no one rid us of these meddlesome priests?!?  it's 2020 -- not 1170 ---------------------- OK voters pass Medicaid expansion (NC Policy Watch) leaving NC as 1 of 12 idiocracies How dollar stores became magnets for crime and killing (Pro Publica) election news Supreme Court says no to restoring FL felons' voting rights (Miami Herald) NC vote-by-mail requests surging (Carolina and Pine) up by 4x now' by 10x by November? plus, how to do it ACLU files suit opposing witness requirements for NC mail-in ballots (NC Policy Watch) meanwhile NC GOP keeps pushing voter-id requirement Supreme Court: states may ban 'faithless electors' (Washington Post) states may require Electoral College voters to vote for state's popular vote winner The battle in the states for how the November election will be conducted (Washington Post) is far from over wins, losses, & waiting on decisions books Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the  Crisis of American Democracy (The Atlantic) a national emergency: the closing of  local newspapers, one at a time   by Margaret Sullivan and an excerpt, from the author (Washington Post) meanwhile, Raleigh N&O gets auctioned off to a hedge-fund company (Indy Week) and the same one that owns the National Enquirer at least they avoided being sold to hedge-fund Alden  David Bohm: the man who explained quantum mechanics (Physics Today) review of David Bohm: A Life Dedicated to Understanding the Quantum World, by Olival Freire Jr art/trips/museums Masters of the American West (The Autry) 1-hour walkthrough of the exhibit + 1-hour video of 'The New West' Yellowstone during the pandemic (Washington Post) Revisit the 2015 Ai Weiwei exhibit (Royal Academy) in 360 degrees	How one of the greatest questions in quantum physics was solved (Scientific American) the quantum Hall effect free for a very short time Astronomy/art sleuth identifies date/time of Vermeer's  View of Delft (Texas St. U) The physics and chemistry  and other science of fireworks 3 'groundbreaking' experiments aboard the space shuttle (Physics Central) but 3 is about it with or without 'groundbreaking' The physics of river prediction (Physics Today, July 2020 issue) who knew? Bell, Boh, and qubit: EPR remixed (American Journal of Physics, July 2020 issue) Schrödinger's struggles with a complex wave equation (American Journal of Physics, July 2020 issue) his unhappiness with an explicit i disappeared over just one year paywall  not science  Why is NC Lt. Gov. Dan Forest pushing pretend anti-mask science? (Raleigh N&O) to be like Trump duh Why do we still have to deal with flat-Earthers? (Physics World, July 2020 issue) and how scientists should respond a clear and future danger... if these people start running for school boards like 'intelligent design' proponents did  coronavirus medical updates Massive study (17 million) identifies covid-19 risk factors (NY Times) 50% extra risk if you're male or black or South Asian or Hispanic  (multiple risks multiply) if you're over 80, you're at least 20x more likely to die than those in their 50s and hundreds of times more likely than those under 40 based on published article (Nature) The problem with R -- the pandemic's misunderstood metric (Nature) what it can -- and can't -- tell us Coronavirus data resource center (Johns Hopkins) The science behind wearing a mask (Starts with a Bang) it's just physics Mounting evidence suggests that coronavirus infection is airborne (Nature) but health advice has not yet caught up Warmer weather doesn't appear to be dampening covid-19's spread (Washington Post) still another reason it's not the flu Covid-linked DNA inherited from Neanderthals (NY Times) The science of mask-wearing hasn't changed (538)  education in a pandemic back to school? Gov. Cooper's guidelines for re-opening NC schools (Raleigh N&O) but Durham & CH high school students will start entirely online and "some teachers don't want to put their lives on the line" (Raleigh N&O) only "some" ?!? really? America drank away its children's future (NY Times) by prioritizing bars over education UNC faculty appeal to system leaders: don't risk lives to open schools (Raleigh N&O) Re-opening Durham schools:  why we can't get it wrong (Indy Week editorial) 8 steps to re-opening schools (The Atlantic) starts with controling the virus in the community College courses online are disappointing -- and not worth $30,000 per semester (NY Times) how to fix them: a UK-like tutorial system 12 inconvenient facts about kids & schools (Washington Post) for consideration before opening schools Faculty & students shouldn't have to risk their health for a university's bottom line (Raleigh N&O) says an NCSU prof A rising revolt by college professors (NY Times) universities plan on bringing students back; but their teachers are concerned about joining them Duke's plan for fall semester (Raleigh N&O) mass covid testing and a mix of in-person and on-line classes Return-to-Duke has the details NCSSM's framework for re-opening (NCSSM) splitting the school into 2, with only half being on campus at one time Cooper delays decision of how NC public schools will reopen (Raleigh N&O) NC poll: 38% favor students going back part-time; 34%, full-time; 29% online learning (Raleigh N&O) Moving physics labs online (Duke Chronicle) how Duke-Kunshan (thinks they) did it just plain education A college education is no guarantee of a good life (The Atlantic) it's unclear if a college degree pays off in happiness 11 of 12 courses offered by NC Virtual Public School lack required rigor (NC Policy Watch) says a state audit gee, now there's a surprise is it 1957 again?: Post-pandemic education and science (American Journal of Physics, July 2020 issue) addressing "a scientific subculture that seems disconnected from our current political leadership and that appears irrelevant or even threatening to a disturbingly large fraction of the electorate" excellent diagnosis and lots of great goals, but no practical plans for change or improvement practical advice Make your tech last longer (NY Times)  Yes, you can travel this summer... (Vox) the real question is should you?   bad tech Facebook: the new tobacco (Duke Chronicle) as detrimental to humanity as tobacco ever was if you care about social justice, don't work there ... how about don't use it?!? Zuckerberg never fails to disappoint (NY Times) Fbook fails another truth audit (by its own staff!) (NY Times) failing on civil rights, voter suppression, hate speech, ... shut the company down
limited time?  read the most interesting & important stories from late June  2020: 1) coronavirus is still with us medical updates pandemic education pandemic economics 2)  the state of America protests against   black-white inequality   and   policing documenting black-white inequality sanity and insanity in NC the despair of living in Trump's America 3)  massive-star binary mergers the heaviest neutron star  or  the lightest black hole? light from a double black hole binary merger? 4)  particle physics news axions, at last? do we really need a higher-energy collider? 5)  astro news progress in solar physics the case for 36 ET current civilizations in our galaxy H0, more updates, still controversial 6)  climate change news are clouds the key to correct modeling? the immense cost of cleaning up climate disasters  how to manage a sustainable recovery