Much as I dislike the dumb physics around Λ-CDM and fusion power, I admit some interest in the engineering to (not) get there.
Earlier last week we heard about smaller superconductive magnets. Now I hear about cheaper coolants for those magnets (pdf).
As to my interest - the whole array of magnet-driven theoretic megastructure just got (theoretically) cheaper. The mass-driver. The orbital ring. The directed-neutron fusion drive.
I've been reading Galison's Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps. This reads like book three of a trilogy that starts with Lost Enlightenment. Somewhere in between is missing a volume on Western clockmaking, Galileo's discovery of the four Jovian moons [that matter], and the Longitude.
One chapter is devoted to arguments about the measure of time, which tied into how to measure an angle: degrees, "grads", or some sort of decimal. (The radian was apparently not considered.) Phil Metzger raises another thought: if we should measure temperature in joules. This would render Boltzmann's Constant to 1. We'd then have 4.1 zeptojoules for room-temperature which is, what, 290s K.
Leo Hickman explains the heatwave meme. Rather: Hickman had explained it, last week. This day Ace of Spades decided was a good day to poast the meme.
From my standpoint as one who sees the larger picture of solar warming so doesn't care about atmospheric carbon, the coposter "cob logger" Buck had a real take on atmospheric-sciency shenanigans. Ace should spend more time reading his own co-writers and less time stalking Allahpundit.
In other "news" I caught the movie Vengeance last night. I give it 7/10, from my *ovitz erstwhile-Texan Kinky-voter standpoint; others might mark it down. I did appreciate the MC's anti-yokel rant near the end... although, in the story, MC was ranting against straw. Still. The American Right does have its echo-chamber.
Much as I'm unfamiliar with "Sacred Heart" veneration, I see some Orthodox claiming that it is "Nestorian" so anathema. More specifically it's naturalism, that any focus upon an animal body-part of the man Jesus inflicts a disrespect to Christ's Divinity. Pope Pius XII wrote a whole encyclical defending this veneration, Haurietis aquas: it's symbolic, only.
Pius IX had instituted the Sacred Heart as a feast a century before. I concede: I don't think much of Pius IX. Pius XII's own story is ... chequered.
But should this form of naturalism be dismissed, just because two flawed Popes supported it? I'd think that declaring this symbolic should be the end of the argument. At least as far as the Orthodox should be concerned, praying amongst icons as they do.
As for associating this with Mar Nestorios, well... you've come to the wrong blog for a harrumph against him.
BACKDATE 7/31
To comment upon the actual astronomy at Keck: the higher limit for neutron stars means the stars can, actually, survive as neutron stars - maybe with a few quarks. But they cannot be Quark Soup much less the other exotica.
I don't know if we'll find anything heavier than that, on Hawaii or elsewhere. But, yeah, the heavier the stellar mass gets as a visibly neutronic mass, the fewer quarks are allowed.
I am also unsure what happens if/when some mass limit is breached. Blackhole, sure. But how? does the core collapse into that quark-soup thus raising the eventhorizon? or does the horizon simply appear inside or even outside the radius? If inside, I think we'd be seeing the outer shell of the star simply spin around as relativistic free neutrons, for some centuries as seen from outside. Like a beryllium-11 halo.
Even if interior I suspect that the conversion of a neutron star into a black hole is not as violent as, say, a Type I super-nova nor a Type II gas giant's implosion. Hence why we've not seen any, in the electromagnetic spectrum or in the gravity ripples.
LOW MASS 10/24 This might be a quark star.
Hat-tip to Saraceni: Severan Hispalis.
Something bad happened to Roman Seville in the early 200s. This is now decided to be a storm: a combination of surge and river-flood. Not earthquake.
I am not aware of the Gades / Cadiz corner of Spain, then Baetica and formerly Tarshish, as being hurricane-prone. Back then, the place was like New Orleans with a vast lagoon allowing Roman shipping - so I'll allow that a big wave could do a Katrina. I'd have thought a Lisbon-style earthquake might happen but they say, no.
Other inscriptions of the early 200s have the province as an "Immune" province, that is exempt from Roman taxation. Since Hadrian was long gone, there was supposedly a real reason for not taxing the place. I would think, however, that the crisis should have passed, by the dates corresponding with AD 245 and 253. It may be that the overall Roman crisis commencing AD 238(ish) might have taken the Romans' eye off their western extremities, allowing Baetic Spain to skate.
As Zim noted, the 30-meter telescope is not going to be built. The old Keck 'scope is still doing some science up Mauna Kea, but the TMT is NGH.
TMT is a rabbit in a racecourse. It is dangled in front of dogs, who are American taxpayers. Hawaii will gladly take those taxes. Hawaii might even deserve them. But those moneys are not going to build TMT.
People like Zim who like science but don't get to spend their money on the science they want, could complain about Rent Seeking and about what a shame these Polynesians represent to the spirit of Moana, maybe even about how G-d created Mauna Kea whose heights the Hawaiians never even inhabited; but that is all so much hobbitspeak against the highelves (to channel Yarvin). The Hawaiians have to want the science. Right now they want Zim's tears. Those tears to them are sweeter than a banana daiquiri.
Honestly the Aceribo observatory had similar - but it had one clear advantage: it was expendable. Mauna Kea is a Chile in the northern hemisphere, a mountain surrounded by nothing and over the cloud-layer. This is not easily replaced. What else do we do - erect a 'scope 4.145 km up some Aleutian mountain? I don't know about the cloud-cover. It might have to be raised up a tower.
The only solution is to make Mauna Kea expendable. That is: to build the 'scopes in space.
Meanwhile, don't fund any astronomy in Hawaii. At this point it's nothing but an excuse for nerds to get their unis to pay for their trips to Hawaii - maybe enjoying some, ah, "arr en arr" from the local traffickers. Those nerds can pay their own way.
HE HAOLE HUPO KEIA 10/20: Take it from the source - read the comments.
