The images used to create this view of Venus were acquired by the Mariner 10 craft on Feb. 7 and 8, 1974
This is kind of a big deal. It could mean just mean that there’s a smelly deadly gas out there, that can be created in ways that we don’t understand much. Yawn, right?
Of course, the excitement is that it could also mean that the gas came to be on Venus through means that we already understand … from life.
As Carl Sagan, who also hypothesized about ways for life to exist on Venus, said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". To be clear, humans have not discovered life on Venus … yet. But, this is evidence that might indicate that there’s life on Venus. Following up on that evidence will be a huge challenge, and we might well find life, or proof of past life, on Mars first.
It seems that a post-coital female ostracod became trapped in tree resin about 100 million years ago, and was recently discovered by scientists. The sperm within her body is likely twice as old as the next oldest known animal sperm specimen, but it is also nearly five times the size of the male ostracod that produced it! according to a co-author of the study:
"This is equivalent to about 7.30 metres in a 1.70-metre human, so it requires a lot of energy to produce them"
While the article suggests that the next oldest sperm sample is a mere 17 million years, an article in The Independent highlights a 50 million year old find.
Possibly in revenge for the indictments of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of the deadliest bombings on U.S. soil, up to that point, took place one hundred years ago today on 16 September 1920. At 12:01pm a horse-drawn wagon, carrying 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of cast-iron sash weights, exploded in front of the headquarters of the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street. The blast killed 40 people and injured hundreds.
Among other things, this led to an expansion of the General Intelligence Division of the BOI (later the FBI), which was led by J Edgar Hoover.
Much of the later analysis suggests that Mario Buda carried out the bombing, though officially the case was never solved.
For the second decade in a row, humanity "failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems in the last decade", according to the United Nations.
“Earth’s living systems as a whole are being compromised. And the more humanity exploits nature in unsustainable ways and undermines its contributions to people, the more we undermine our own wellbeing, security and prosperity,” she said.
Ten years ago, my friend Glenn was staying at my place around the time that he was dropping his daughter off at college. After he left, I noticed that he’d left his final parking sticker on my fridge.
The parking sticker was actually a bit of an inside joke, albeit with a significant number of insiders. At least back in the 80’s when I was there, WRCT radio would play Dylan’s Bob Dylan – Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 and many of us would celebrate appropriately. It was basically like 4:20 except (a) none of us had heard of 420 at that point and (b) 10:47 works better for twice-a-day celebrations.
A view of excavations in the Nachcharini Cave taken at end of the season in the summer of 1974
What was the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural settlements like? Among other things, it seems that humans got more specialized in their hunting, and adapted their approach, using temporary encampments as outposts while hunting in support of more substantial villages elsewhere in the region.
“We are not saying that hunters at Nachcharini were engaged in early stages of this domestication,” [Stephen Rhodes] said. “But the evidence of a local tradition makes this area a possible center of sheep domestication later on.”
This was around 6pm … well before sundown. None of the trees are far at all. Even that sort of third layer back is just a few hundred yards away at most.This one is from Sunday, September 13, around 10:20am, Things are smokier than ever, but you can still make out the sun.
These photos give some idea of what the sky is like, but of course can’t really capture the full effect. At home, for example, standing at the front door, smoke affects my view of the shrubbery that’s between me and the street, but not in a way that I’ve been able to see in any photos that I’ve taken.
At about 8:55am, Joe called me at my desk from his car to say that the Trade Center was on fire. I worked on the 37th floor of a building in midtown Manhattan, about 4 miles north of WTC. I didn’t get a direct view of ground zero until I made it to New Jersey in the early evening.
After speaking with Joe briefly, I talked to others on the floor. The large conference room on our floor had a large TV and just about everyone who had arrived at the office already was in watching as the the second plane hit the tower.
I called home and told my wife what was happening. As the first plane looked like it hit right where our friend Kamran worked, she packed the kids in the car and headed over to his house, to be with his wife, Jennifer. As it turned out, the first plane hit a few floors above Kamran’s. After running through burning hallways with falling ceilings, he made it down 83 flights of stairs and was about 100 feet out when WTC 2 fell. Of course, several hours went by before news of his escape made it home.
Shortly after the WTC 2 collapsed, there was an alarm sounded on the 35th floor of my building. While it turned out to be a false alarm, most of us decided that it was time to leave the building.
After walking down the stairs, we gathered outside and discussed plans. Some people wanted to head toward Central Park (to be away from buildings). I took a smaller group that wanted to get away from the center of the city. We headed east and slightly north, ending up around Lexington in the low 50s. We found a hotel with a ground floor restaurant and got a table. We ate breakfast, hung out for a few hours and eventually ordered lunch. In the meantime, a couple of people in our group had met up with friends and family. After lunch, we split up to try to get home.
I decided to stop by the office first so that I could tell my wife my plans, which boiled down to: Try everything possible to get home. I walked with a co-worker down to Port Authority, which was closed and had lots of people milling about. From there we walked over to the ferry to Weehawken. The dock’s at about 42nd street, but the line extended up to 51st. I later learned that a second line extended down to the low 30s. Rather than waiting the estimated 8 hours to get to a place where I understood that no one would be able to get in to pick me up, I headed back to the office again.
When I got back, I met up with another co-worker, Leonid, who’d been hammering the New Jersey Transit web site and had gotten some indication that there might be some emergency transportation at Penn Station. We took the subway there and arrived at the PATH station around 5pm, about 5 minutes before they opened for the first time since the attack. Leonid and I split up and he headed off to try his luck with LIRR.
The PATH skipped all of the New York stops, but made all of the Jersey stops. I got off at Newark and caught the Raritan line train which I knew had a stop that was about a 20 minute walk from where I’d parked to catch the bus in the morning. As it turned out, there were police at the train station who were offering rides, so I rode over to my truck, drove home, and called over to Jennifer’s at around 7:30pm.
Then I spent the next hour calling people who’d left messages asking whether I was ok. I finished up around the time that my wife got home with the kids. I poured myself a scotch and started decompressing.
In the aftermath, I’ve learned that my old office in 4 WTC was destroyed and the one before that, in 3 World Financial Center, will be unusable for a long time. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have been able to contact a good number of the people that I know who might have been directly affected and learned that everyone that I know escaped direct harm.
