A Strange Moon

Iapetus, the second moon ever discovered around Saturn back in 1671, has three bizarre properties that science still struggles to explain.  It orbits out of Saturn's plane and has a two-toned appearance, an equatorial bulge, and a giant ridge.  How did it form and develop these strange properties? 350 years later, we still don't know.

After having no superior tools to our naked eyes to explore the universe, the 17th century ushered in a revolution with the adoption of the telescope. With larger apertures and the power to gather more light at once, objects beyond the limits of human visibility — both in terms of resolution and faintness — suddenly transformed from being unobservable to being observable at will. Almost immediately, new objects and features became apparent, including the four major moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the rings of Saturn with many features inside, and much more.

Then in 1671, Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini was observing Saturn, already known to possess a giant moon, Titan, and discovered another moon: Iapetus. While Cassini would go on to make many other discoveries about Saturn, including numerous other moons, Iapetus was one of the strangest things anyone had ever seen in the sky. Cassini discovered Iapetus on the western side of Saturn, but when he looked for it later in its orbit, on Saturn’s eastern side, it wasn’t there. The moon remained missing for decades until, with a significantly upgraded telescope, Cassini finally saw it, a full two magnitudes fainter than it appears on Saturn’s western side, in 1705. As remarkable as that was, it was just the start toward understanding the mystery of Iapetus: our solar system’s strangest moon.

Compared to Earth, or even Earth’s moon, Saturn’s moon Iapetus appears small and insignificant. However, it remains one of only a small number of solar system bodies over 1,000 kilometers in diameter, Saturn’s 3rd largest moon, and perhaps the least understood moon in our solar system. (Credit: Tom.Reding and Ppong.it, Wikimedia Commons)

Compared to Earth, or even Earth’s moon, Saturn’s moon Iapetus appears small and insignificant. However, it remains one of only a small number of solar system bodies over 1,000 kilometers in diameter, Saturn’s 3rd largest moon, and perhaps the least understood moon in our solar system. (Credit: Tom.Reding and Ppong.it, Wikimedia Commons)

Today, we have the luxury of hundreds of years of scientific advances at our disposal, and technologies about which Cassini could have only dreamed. Modern telescope have hundreds of times the light-gathering power of the greatest telescopes of his day, with views that take us into wavelengths that the human eye cannot observe, with numerous observatories located in space, and with a few of them — like the Voyager 1 spacecraft or NASA’s Cassini mission — actually traveling to and imaging these distant worlds in situ.  TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS STRANGE MOON, CLICK HERE...

Car Crash

500 Best Songs

500 Best Songs of All Time - Rolling Stone

Our Great Nation

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A Politician

Irony

 

Facemasks

Dreaming

 

Disrupting Battery History

The Addionics Tream 

“Battery technology hasn’t changed in over 30 years,” Moshiel Biton, CEO of electric car battery startup Addionics, tells ISRAEL21c.

And here is where Biton saw a huge opportunity “as trillions of dollars will continue to be invested in creating better batteries.”

Addionics aims to capitalize on this opportunity by introducing a relatively small change into how batteries are designed. 

Unlike other companies that focus on improving battery chemistry, Addionics is focused on the physics of a specific part of the battery, the electric current collector.

The current collector serves as the substrate of a battery’s electrodes. These small metal sheets, not dissimilar to aluminum foil, are layered around the “active material” – lithium ion, for example.

Think of an electric battery like a sandwich, Biton suggests. “The bread is the electricity collector, and the cheese is the active material.”

Most electric car battery “sandwiches” have the “cheese” only on the top. Addionics layers the “cheese” throughout, along with layers of porous and spongy “bread.”

“Using nanotechnology, we can find space that’s not well utilized and make it more efficient,” Biton says.  READ MORE...

Harvesting

 

Gulfstream Glitter

With holiday shopping season approaching, we thought we’d bring this to your attention. Gulfstream has unveiled two new jets, the G400 and G800, which sit on opposite ends of the lineup of their latest tech jets, the G500 and G600, which Gulfstream has been delivering for a couple of years now. 

The G800 will attract the most attention, as it is the most profitable airplane company in the world’s emerging flagship, taking over the top dog status from the G700. 

Gulfstream launched the G700 in Las Vegas in 2019, boasting remarkable specs, including a 7500-nm range and a maximum speed of Mach .925, but not both at the same time.

The G800 will stretch the limits of the possible even more with an 8,000-mile range at Mach .85 and a 7,000-nm range at Mach .90. 

With seating for up to 19, the wide-body G800 will link previously unlinkable city pairs while offering the same groundbreaking Honeywell Symmetry avionics system as on the G700—Gulfstream expects to make first G700 deliveries in 2022, with the entry of the G800 slated for 2025. Cost of the G800 is rumored to be $71.5 million.

Needing a Beer

 

World Expo in Dubai

Dubai expects 25 million people to visit World Expo

The World Expo is opening in Dubai, and its organisers hope it will attract millions of overseas visitors to the emirate.

World Expos allow countries showcase their latest technology, and they've been drawing in crowds for the past 170 years dating back to Queen Victoria's reign. 

But visitor numbers for this year's Expo may be lower than usual due to Covid as many countries are still putting restrictions on international travel.

On 27 November 2013, fireworks painted the sky from the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, as thousands across the UAE celebrated. A national holiday was even declared for all educational institutions across the country. 

We were overjoyed that we won the bid and would soon be ‘Connecting Minds and Creating the Future’ with the first World Expo to be held in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region.

Psycho

Chemo Day

Every 4 weeks, I am scheduled for an infusion of Opdivo to counteract and prevent the melanoma inside my body from growing...   and, every 4 weeks, either the day before or the day after, I am scheduled for an infusion of IVIG to help boost my immune system back to normalacy...

The Opdivo infusions once started last 30 minutes whereas the IVIG infusions once started last almost 2 and 1/2 hours...  which still seems like a short period of time to me since my previous chemo infusions of Rituxan lasted 5-6 hours.

I am also taking 2 - 140mg tablets of Imbruvica to counteract and prevent my non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from growing as well...  those pills are usually taken in the mornings.

Chemo Day and IVIG Day, are both early morning days as I am up at 5:30 am and leave the house a little after 6:00 am, arriviug at UT Medical about 7:15 am depending upon traffic which can never be predicted, since there seems to be traffic accidents every day of the week, even though their times vary.

Instead of putting an IV into my arm, I have had a port inserted in my upper chest on the right side just below the colar bone...  it is a dual port, so each time it is used, the nurses try to use the other access point to make sure that both openings are constasting flushed and kept from clogging.

I call this chemo day but in reality it is immunotherapy day which has virtually no adverse side effects for me these days but at one point, I was experiencing fatigue, nausea, loss of appetite, and general malaise.

I am in my 14th year so it would appear that something is working.

Democrats Spending Bill

 

Avoiding an Accident

 

Supreme Court Rules

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday advised a lower court to reconsider earlier decisions that blocked an estimated $3.6 billion from being used for construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall championed by former President Donald Trump.

After taking office in January, President Joe Biden has sought to halt funding for the border wall construction that was pushed by his predecessor. The Biden administration had argued that the Supreme Court did not need to weigh in on the border wall funding case because the project was closed down by the new administration.

But the Court's Monday ruling called for a reassessment of the case, given the new circumstances under which the project is being considered and with a different administration in the White House.

The Supreme Court returned the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit "with instructions to direct the District Court to vacate its judgments," the Supreme Court wrote in its Monday order.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the Biden administration in a case dealing with funding for former President Donald Trump's border wall. Above, construction at the wall with Mexico in Sasabe, Arizona, on January 12.       MICAH GAREN/GETTY IMAGES

"The District Court should consider what further proceedings are necessary and appropriate in light of the changed circumstances in this case," the Supreme Court added. The Court did not provide an explanation for its decision beyond mentioning the change in circumstances under which the case has been considered.

Key to the arguments surrounding the future of the border wall's construction is the funding sources Trump's administration directed to support it. Billions in military funding were allocated to the project during Trump's time in office, with the wall's 400th mile celebrated by the former president just days before he left the White House.

In his order pausing wall construction, which he issued the day of his inauguration, Biden mentioned questions that have been raised about the legality of the wall's funding.  READ MORE...

Window

 

China Violates Taiwan's Airspace

Taiwan says a total of 39 Chinese military jets flew into its air defence zone on Saturday - the largest incursion by Beijing to date.

The defence ministry said the planes entered the area in two waves, during the day and during the evening.  It comes after 38 planes, including nuclear-capable bombers, entered the zone on Friday.

China sees democratic Taiwan as a breakaway province, but Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.  Taiwan has been complaining for more than a year about repeated missions by China's air force near the island.

"China has been wantonly engaged in military aggression, damaging regional peace," Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters on Saturday.

The government in Beijing - which is marking 72 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China - has so far made no public comment.

But it has previously said such flights were to protect its sovereignty and also targeted "collusion" between Taiwan and the US.  READ MORE...