A high-tech, five-layer sunshield helps the telescope stay at negative 370 degrees Fahrenheit, so it can detect heat signals from very distant objects.Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
In December, NASAwill launch the most powerful telescopeever put into space. The James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study planets outside our solar system with unparalleled detail— including checking to see if their atmospheres give any indication that a planet is home to life as we know it.
The search for life beyond Earth isn’t easy, of course, and this telescope won’t be able to offer up rock-solid evidence that aliens are out there. But some researchers say it’s possible that this telescope could at least find hints of life on Earth-sized planets that…
Sept. 24, 2021, 5:23 AM PDT/UpdatedSept. 24, 2021, 6:01 AM PDTByAndy EckardtandRhea Mogul
BERLIN —Climate activistsallied with Swedish teen campaignerGreta Thunbergwere on Friday demonstrating in some 70 countries to demand global action ahead of a key summit in the United Kingdom.
“We can still turn this around,” Thunberg, 18, told thousands of protesters in front of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, in Berlin.
Thunberg and prominent German climate activist Luisa Neubauer also accused politicians of falling short, saying the programs of the country’s political parties were not far-reaching enough to limit global warming.
“There are natural disasters all over the world,” said fellow protester Quang Paasch, 21. “We are frustrated and angry. We need structural change, a social plan and actions that are based on scientific evidence.”
As the polar ice sheets melt, the process is not just raising sea levels – it’s also warping the underlying surface of Earth, a new study reveals, and some of the effects can be seen across thousands of miles.
What’s happening is that Earth’s crust is rising and spreading as the weight of the ice across Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic Islands gets lifted. The movement isn’t huge, averaging less than a millimeter a year, but it’s there and it covers a lot of ground.
There’s a feedback loop happening too, because as the bedrock under the ice shifts, that in turn affects how the ice continues to melt and break away. A full understanding of how this works is essential in modeling how our world might look in the future.
“Scientists have done a lot of work directly beneath…
(CNN)”The View” host Sunny Hostin and guest host Ana Navarro both tested positive for breakthrough cases of Covid-19 ahead of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.Harris did not interact with Hostin or Navarro before the show, according to a White House official. Harris went on to conduct the interview from a remote location after a delay.The positive results were announced by “The View” host Joy Behar during the show after Hostin and Navarro were asked to leave the set. Hostin and Navarro were seated at the table with the other hosts at the beginning of the program.
The tables were cleaned and disinfected after they left the set, Behar said, who continued hosting the show on set with her co-host Sara Haines. Behar said Hostin and Navarro were both…
Royal Australian Navy submarine HMAS Rankin is seen during a biennial maritime exercise between the Royal Australian Navy and the Indian Navy on September 5, 2021, in Darwin, Australia.
“The United States will compete, and will compete vigorously, and lead with our values and our strength,” President Biden told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. “We’ll stand up for our allies and our friends and oppose attempts by stronger countries to dominate weaker ones, whether through changes to territory by force, economic coercion, technological exploitation or disinformation. But we’re not seeking — I’ll say it again — we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs.”
This was the only part of Biden’s speech where he said the words “Cold War.” They stood out; last everyone had heard, the U.S. was engaged in a “war on terror” that, thanks to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), could conceivably run on until the stars burn out. The Cold War is black-and-white television, duck-and-cover drills, Ike, Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nixon, Ronald Reagan scaring the hell out of everyone, and finally a wall falling on my 18th birthday, seemingly a thousand years ago.
Biden did not say “China” in that particular passage either — though China was mentioned several times elsewhere in his remarks — but that country was most certainly the intended recipient of that specific message. Biden was speaking amid a diplomatic meltdown between the U.S. and long-time ally France over a new Australia/United Kingdom/United States (AUKUS) strategic alliance, and specifically over the sale of at least eight nuclear submarines to Australia by the U.S.
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France was perturbed because it only learned of the new AUKUS alliance after Australia publicly announced it. This was an open-handed slap from Australia’s conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a man any modern U.S. Republican would embrace on sight, to the more left-leaning French prime minister, Emmanuel Macron. France was legitimately outraged over having been excluded from such important, high-level discussions and the French ambassador to the U.S. was immediately called home.
Why the sudden reversal? Nuclear subs are more expensive to maintain and operate, and New Zealand does not allow anything nuclear within its territorial waters, which from a strategic standpoint leaves a huge swath of Australia’s coast exposed. The Pacific is massive, to be sure, but what set of circumstances exist that would lead Australia — and the U.S. — to believe that nation needs at least eight of the most fearsome weapons platforms ever devised?
Answer: The “pivot to Asia,” an Obama-era recasting of global strategic imperatives which was exacerbated by Donald Trump’s blizzard of nonsense tariffs against China. “Until this week, the so-called ‘pivot to Asia’ by the United States had been more of a threat than a reality for Europe,” reportsThe New York Times. “But that changed when the Biden administration announced a new defense alliance against China that has left Europe facing an implicit question: Which side are you on?”
“We are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs,” Biden said at the UN.
But the sudden new AUKUS alliance (a rigid bloc?), and the placement of U.S.-made nuclear submarines into that portion of the Pacific, seems vividly at odds with the president’s placating words. Indeed, it is beginning to feel as if a new Cold War is off and running.
Deploying U.S.-made subs in that part of the Pacific Ocean is a big, deliberate thumb in China’s eye, an act provocative enough to motivate UN Secretary-General António Guterres to speak words of warning a day before Biden’s speech. “We need to re-establish a functional relationship between the two powers,” Guterres told the Associated Press. “We need to avoid at all cost a Cold War that would be different from the past one, and probably more dangerous and more difficult to manage.”
At bottom, however, the argument between France and the U.S. was as much over money as it was national pride. France had already inked a deal to sell a dozen diesel-powered submarines to Australia, and the AUKUS nuclear sub deal blew that up. The collapse of this arrangement cost France tens of billions of euros — France is the United States of Europe when it comes to global arms sales, and France’s leaders take the arms trade as seriously as U.S. leaders do — which could translate into a whole slew of lost jobs if that money is not recouped. (French defense contractor Naval Group, which is partially owned by France and was already building the diesel subs, intends to bill Australia for the lost revenue.)U.S. politicians and the corporate “news” media have a casually self-destructive way of discussing military spending: They don’t.
It would surprise me not one single bit if the AUKUS agreement, and specifically the sub sale switcheroo from France to the U.S., first came into being after a few phone calls to some officers in “defense” procurement from lobbyists for General Dynamics and/or Huntington Ingalls, the only two shipbuilders in the U.S. with shipyards capable of building nuclear submarines. The cost to build one of these monstrously deadly machines runs, on average, around $3 billion per unit.
“Why are you letting France get that money?” would have almost certainly been the crux of such a call. “Don’t you love America?” And away we go.
Money. Cold Wars, you see, are notoriously expensive (read: wildly lucrative for the various war profiteers that circle the Pentagon like so many carrion birds).
The average military spending during “peacetime” in the Cold War ran about $285.4 billion per year. The first hot Cold War conflict in Korea, according to Richard M. Miller Jr. of Praeger Security International, cost $678 billion. The cost of the Korean Conflict spanning from 1951 to 2000 is over $1 trillion. The Vietnam War cost another $1 trillion. Benefits to the veterans and veteran families of those wars runs into the tens of billions of dollars per year. The total cost of the Cold War from 1948 to 1991 is estimated to be $13.1 trillion, including $5.8 trillion for the development and maintenance of a vast nuclear arsenal.
These eye-popping numbers, all pegged as closely as possible to current dollar values, scarcely tell the tale of the present moment. The “Black Budget” cost of the national security state, born during World War II and massively expanded during the Cold War, is unknown… well, somebody knows, but they ain’t telling. The Pentagon, for its part, currently has a $35 trillion hole in its accounting. Nobody seems to know just where that money went… but somebody knows, and again, they ain’t telling. Meanwhile, despite our “withdrawal” from Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on terror grinds on relentlessly, and expensively.
U.S. politicians and the corporate “news” media have a casually self-destructive way of discussing military spending: They don’t. If someone goes on TV and says we have to feed the poor, ten voices will be raised howling “How much will that cost?” and “We can’t afford it!” A president flips 20 missiles into a foreign country, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars from construction to deployment to launch, and “How much did that cost?” never seems to come up.Among the many things the Cold War is remembered for, inflicted popular fear and mass control stand out.
It comes down to this: Every bullet, every bomb, every attack helicopter, every destroyer, every fighter jet, every field meal, every tent, every rifle, every pistol, every grenade, every land mine, every missile, every submarine (!), every uniform, every pair of boots, every body bag, every coffin, every everything that goes into the U.S. war-making machine is money flooding into some “defense” contractor’s bank account and stock portfolio.
It has been 73 years since the onset of the first Cold War, and the “terror” war is not quite the money spigot it was for the last two decades. Still, 53 cents of every tax dollar goes to the fighting of and preparation for war already, and a new Cold War with China would dramatically increase that.
It goes entirely without saying that a new Cold War with China is an astonishingly terrible idea, an undermining of nuclear nonproliferation efforts and a good reason for China to harm the U.S. by way of the massive share of our economy they already own and control. The potential cost in human life is nigh incalculable… but ask yourself this: When was the last time you can remember the warmakers actually thinking things through when massive profits were in play? I’m stumped.
There is also this: Among the many things the Cold War is remembered for, inflicted popular fear and mass control stand out. Here in the “free” U.S., the groupthink inspired by enmity toward the Soviet Union destroyed lives and constrained liberty for decades. It inspired two lucrative shooting wars, one of which technically never ended and another that lasted 20 years, along with a dozen proxy skirmishes around the world. All of this invigorated the fury and paranoia of enforced patriotism, and did great and lasting damage to those who did not take up the standard of war.
As we enter an era of unrest, amid racist police violence and state efforts to repress the popular uprising against it, a fascist authoritarian surge in the halls of government everywhere, and a climate preparing to show us all who is really in charge around here, a new Cold War with all attendant mechanisms of enforced control would be just the ticket for those looking to make a buck while avoiding actual solutions to these concerns.
“If you want a picture of the future,” wrote George Orwell, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” I am forced to wonder if future years will have us looking back on this seemingly insignificant submarine deal between the U.S. and Australia the way historians today regard George Kennan’s “Long Telegram”: One diplomat’s long transatlantic missive that is now widely regarded as the seedcorn for U.S. Cold War policy toward the U.S.S.R. — along with all its consequences — for the next five decades. It had to start somewhere. It always does.
Washington, D.C. — Today dozens of non-governmental organizations and scientists sent a letter to President Biden supporting the candidacy of Michael Phillips for Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
Conservation groups believe that Phillips is the ideal candidate for the position as a respected leader in biodiversity conservation with special expertise in endangered species management. “His vision has resulted in critical ecological restoration of vast landscapes across North America through his leadership of gray and red wolf reintroductions. His ability to direct conservation of some of the most controversial animals, from wolves and grizzly bears to bison and black-footed ferrets and his excellent track record as a Montana Senator and Representative have prepared him well for the challenges of directing the USFWS through unprecedented challenges of biodiversity and climate crises. His demonstrated leadership, ability to coalesce diverse interests toward a common goal and big picture vision with deep knowledge of strategic planning and implementation would serve him well in this position,” the letter states.
The Director of USFWS oversees a budget of over $1.5 billion to conserve, protect, and enhance native species of fish, wildlife, plants, and their respective habitats. “Phillips’ stellar credentials and strong science-based background should make him everyone’s top candidate for this critical role,” said Camilla Fox, Founder and Executive Director of Project Coyote. “Additionally, he served as an elected policymaker and knows the intricate functioning of state and federal governments, and the USFWS in particular,” said Fox. In addition to Phillips’ extensive experience with USFWS-jurisdictional issues, including serving on recovery teams for myriad iconic species, he also has expertise in international conservation, including through his involvement with IUCN specialist groups for bison, wolves, and other canids.
“The Biden-Harris Administration faces monumental wildlife conservation challenges in the coming years. The sixth mass extinction of life on earth has begun and we humans are the cause. The USFWS must provide enlightened, science-based leadership to stem the tide of extinction and protect our country’s diverse wildlife heritage for current and future generations,” said Dave Parsons, a career USFWS wildlife biologist who led the Mexican wolf recovery program from 1990-99. “Reversing existential threats to biological diversity and the health and critical functions of ecosystems will require bold new leadership at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, With his decades of wildlife conservation experience in every region of the country, including Alaska, Mike is the right choice for the job.”
“From species reintroductions to the climate crisis, Mike Phillips has the knowledge needed to inform effective science-based decision-making,” said Dr. William Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University. “Mike is the leader we need to navigate through complex and uncharted territory.”
Phillips’ tireless efforts for wildlife and wildlands have been recognized by numerous entities over the years, including most recently by The Wildlife Society who awarded him the prestigious 2021 Aldo Leopold Memorial Award, in recognition of his distinguished service to wildlife conservation.
“Mr. Phillips has been an exceptional conservation leader for decades and an effective legislator for his diverse constituents,” said Nuna Teal, PhD, Program Director of One Earth. “No one is better equipped to lead USFWS through the biodiversity challenges we are facing today.”
Washington, D.C. — Today dozens of non-governmental organizations and scientists sent a letter to President Biden supporting the candidacy of Michael Phillips for Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
Conservation groups believe that Phillips is the ideal candidate for the position as a respected leader in biodiversity conservation with special expertise in endangered species management. “His vision has resulted in critical ecological restoration of vast landscapes across North America through his leadership of gray and red wolf reintroductions. His ability to direct conservation of some of the most controversial animals, from wolves and grizzly bears to bison and black-footed ferrets and his excellent track record as a Montana Senator and Representative have prepared him well for the challenges of directing the USFWS through unprecedented challenges of biodiversity and climate crises. His demonstrated leadership, ability to coalesce diverse interests toward a common goal and big picture vision with deep knowledge of strategic planning and implementation would serve him well in this position,” the letter states.
The Director of USFWS oversees a budget of over $1.5 billion to conserve, protect, and enhance native species of fish, wildlife, plants, and their respective habitats. “Phillips’ stellar credentials and strong science-based background should make him everyone’s top candidate for this critical role,” said Camilla Fox, Founder and Executive Director of Project Coyote. “Additionally, he served as an elected policymaker and knows the intricate functioning of state and federal governments, and the USFWS in particular,” said Fox. In addition to Phillips’ extensive experience with USFWS-jurisdictional issues, including serving on recovery teams for myriad iconic species, he also has expertise in international conservation, including through his involvement with IUCN specialist groups for bison, wolves, and other canids.
“The Biden-Harris Administration faces monumental wildlife conservation challenges in the coming years. The sixth mass extinction of life on earth has begun and we humans are the cause. The USFWS must provide enlightened, science-based leadership to stem the tide of extinction and protect our country’s diverse wildlife heritage for current and future generations,” said Dave Parsons, a career USFWS wildlife biologist who led the Mexican wolf recovery program from 1990-99. “Reversing existential threats to biological diversity and the health and critical functions of ecosystems will require bold new leadership at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, With his decades of wildlife conservation experience in every region of the country, including Alaska, Mike is the right choice for the job.”
“From species reintroductions to the climate crisis, Mike Phillips has the knowledge needed to inform effective science-based decision-making,” said Dr. William Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University. “Mike is the leader we need to navigate through complex and uncharted territory.”
Phillips’ tireless efforts for wildlife and wildlands have been recognized by numerous entities over the years, including most recently by The Wildlife Society who awarded him the prestigious 2021 Aldo Leopold Memorial Award, in recognition of his distinguished service to wildlife conservation.
“Mr. Phillips has been an exceptional conservation leader for decades and an effective legislator for his diverse constituents,” said Nuna Teal, PhD, Program Director of One Earth. “No one is better equipped to lead USFWS through the biodiversity challenges we are facing today.”
PETA India’s request to Kerala on Tuesday comes within two months of the group installing a warning billboard in Delhi about the meat industry’s link to the spread of bird flu
IANS | Thiruvananthapuram | September 22, 2021 10:40 am
Photo: IANS
The death of a 12-year-old child in Kerala from the Nipah virus has prompted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India to urge Kerala’s minister for animal husbandry and dairy development, J. Chinchrani, to close down pig farms in the state to prevent further spread of the infection and a potential epidemic.
PETA India’s request to Kerala on Tuesday comes within two months of the group installing a warning billboard in Delhi about the meat industry’s link to the spread of bird flu. In Delhi, an 11-year-old boy had succumbed to complications from H5N1 bird flu, an infection with a 60 percent mortality rate, in July.
“The crowded animal farms of the meat industry create hotspots for zoonotic diseases. These killer facilities need to be shut down immediately and permanently before they cost more lives,” said PETA India Vegan Foods and Nutrition Specialist Dr. Kiran Ahuja.
As the strongest gravitational force next to the sun, this isn’t that uncommon. But it serves to remind us that, while the Earth isn’t moving in a shooting gallery of apocalyptic asteroids, asteroid detection technology must continue to expand, lest one day we awake to learn it’s the last any of us will ever live before an extinction-level impact.
Jupiter gets punched in the face a lot
On September 13, 2021, at roughly 6:39 PM EDT, amateur astronomers monitored and recorded a colossally bright flash of what seemed to be an impact on Jupiter. Harald Paleske of Germany was recording the shadow of Jupiter’s moon, Io, as it passed in front of the planet. But other astronomers involved included José Luis of Brazil, Michel Jacquesson and Jean-Paul Arnould in France, Simone Gelelli of Italy, and Didier Walliang and Alexis Desmougin of the Société Lorraine d’Astronomie, also on France. Many also filmed the event, and suspect an impact on Jupiter.
While still unconfirmed, the putative event would mark only the eighth impact witnessed on Jupiter since the initial impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994, which disintegrated into separate parts as Jupiter’s immense tidal forces ripped it open, transforming the singular asteroid into a rapid-fire event of glorious mayhem. Sadly, no one on Earth was able to see the explosions, since the impacts happened on Jupiter’s far side. But a 7.2-ft (2.2-m) Hawaii-based telescope photographed the heat signatures of each impact site as they swiveled into view. The Hubble Space Telescope also snapped grim pictures of the dark, bruise-colored smears strewn beneath the clouds, aptly named “scars.”
NASA is upgrading Earth’s planetary defense against NEOs
As of writing, scientists are unsure how often Jupiter is impacted by something so massive or high-velocity that it generates an impact flash we can see from Earth, but the consensus is it’s fairly often; between 20 and 60 times every year. If the Earth experienced significant impacts with the same frequency, its surface might look very different, and so would whatever survived. But luckily, Jupiter’s unconscionably strong gravitational field is gigantic, and accelerates incoming meteorites to unkind speeds, multiplying the kinetic energy of the incoming bodies by several orders of magnitude, which is proportional to the level of energy released upon impact (think of how baseballs hurt more if they slam into you with greater speed).
But Jupiter doesn’t take every cosmic hit headed Earth’s way. Some scientists suspect we’re overdue for another asteroid impact of a similar scale to the one that spelled doom for the dinosaurs. These happen once every 50 to 60 million years. Lucky for us, NASA gave the green light for a new space telescope, called the Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor), in June. And it’s designed to upgrade Earth’s planetary defense network by detecting cosmic bodies with potentially dangerous orbital trajectories. “[W]e think there are about 25,000 NEOs large enough to wipe out an area like Southern California,” said NEO Survey Project Leader Amy Mainzer in a statement from the University of Arizona. “Once they get bigger than about 450 feet in diameter, they can cause severe regional damage. We want to find these, and as many smaller ones as possible.” This could take a few years to launch, and we have other means of detecting NEOs. But whenever a monumental impact flashes from the cloud tops of Jupiter, remember: That might have been us.
Default Mono Sans Mono Serif Sans Serif Comic Fancy Small CapsDefault X-Small Small Medium Large X-Large XX-LargeDefault Outline Dark Outline Light Outline Dark Bold Outline Light Bold Shadow Dark Shadow Light Shadow Dark Bold Shadow Light BoldDefault Black Silver Gray White Maroon Red Purple Fuchsia Green Lime Olive Yellow Navy Blue Teal Aqua OrangeDefault 100% 75% 50% 25% 0%Default Black Silver Gray White Maroon Red Purple Fuchsia Green Lime Olive Yellow Navy Blue Teal Aqua OrangeDefault 100% 75% 50% 25% 0%By Amber RuchPublished: Sep. 21, 2021 at 1:00 PM PDT|Updated: 20 hours ago
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. (KFVS) – A young hunter is accused of killing a man with an arrow during an attempted theft.
According to Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak in a news release, deputies were dispatched to a property in the 100 block of Valley Springs Road around 4:12 p.m. on Friday, September 17 for a report of an assault with a deadly weapon.
When they arrived, they found the body of 40-year-old Michael J. Stotts, of Dittmer. He was pronounced dead at the scene by EMS personnel.
According to statements given at the scene by the family’s attorney, a juvenile was walking to a tree stand on the property to deer hunt. He was carrying a bow and arrows.
Jupiter, with the shadow of its moon, Io.
