Rough Seas Make Good sailors edition
WE ARE ON A SHIP
A Big Ahoy! & A Hearty Arrrrrr! To all the Crew.
(You Know who You Are….)
Notes/News
SpaceX satellites pose new headache for astronomers
It looked like a scene from a sci-fi blockbuster: an astronomer in the Netherlands captured footage of a train of brightly-lit SpaceX satellites ascending through the night sky this weekend, stunning space enthusiasts across the globe.
But the sight has also provoked an outcry among astronomers who say the constellation, which so far consists of 60 broadband-beaming satellites but could one day grow to as many as 12,000, may threaten our view of the cosmos and deal a blow to scientific discovery.
The launch was tracked around the world and it soon became clear that the satellites were visible to the naked eye: a new headache for researchers who already have to find workarounds to deal with objects cluttering their images of deep space.
"People were making extrapolations that if many of the satellites in these new mega-constellations had that kind of steady brightness, then in 20 years or less, for a good part the night anywhere in the world, the human eye would see more satellites than stars," Bill Keel, an astronomer at the University of Alabama, told AFP.
The satellites' brightness has since diminished as their orientation has stabilized and they have continued their ascent to their final orbit at an altitude of 550 kilometers (340 miles).
But that has not entirely allayed the concerns of scientists, who are worried about what happens next.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is just one of a several companies looking to enter the fledgling space internet sector.
To put that into context, there are currently 2,100 active satellites orbiting our planet, according to the Satellite Industry Association.
If another 12,000 are added by SpaceX alone, "it will be hundreds above the horizon at any given time," Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told AFP, adding that the problem would be exacerbated at certain times of the year and certain points in the night.
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-spacex-satellites-pose-headache-astronomers.html
Could be… could be………… kek!
Notables/News
New Zealand removes any reference to Jesus from parliamentary prayer!
In the wake of the Christchurch mosque attack, we come to find out that New Zealand has removed references to Jesus from the parliamentary prayer, sparking outrage among the country’s Christian population.
Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, made the decision to drop references to Jesus in order to make the prayer “more inclusive” for all parliamentarians.
The Guardian reported: A reference to “almighty god” remains, but it is not a specific reference to a Christian god.
The protesters want Jesus’s name reinstated, and held signs reading “Dishonourable Judas Mallard”.
Around 1,000 people protested on the steps of parliament house in Wellington, arguing that New Zealand was a Christian nation and Mallard had no authority to axe Jesus’s name.
“He needs a good kick in his pants, and he needs to actually be removed because this is a Christian nation”, protester Rieki Teutscher told Radio NZ. “We don’t share his atheism.”
Another protester, Carmel Morgan, said Mallard should have consulted with New Zealanders or announced a referendum before changing the prayer.
“This is a land of democracy, this is a land of freedom, you know, we want to be a first world country… he took that choice away from us.”
Politicians such as Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters have said it would have been judicious for the speaker to have consulted more widely before actioning the changes.
“Well the decision as to what should be changed should be made by parliamentarians and not the speaker – that’s our position, I don’t mind telling you publicly”, deputy prime minister Winston Peters told RNZ.
“If you’re going to make a change let’s have parliament decide – not one person.”
Mallard said he had consulted with parliamentarians and the majority had indicated they were in favour of a secular prayer.
The brethren in NZ need anon prayers more than ever it seems!
https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/03/new-zealand-removes-any-reference-to-jesus-from-parliamentary-prayer/
notes/news
What's the betting the greens will use this as proof of our impending doom?
Thousands of Puffins Perished in Alaska in a Massive Mortality Event
The citizens of St. Paul Island off the coast of Alaska are used to finding the occasional seabird washed up on the shore. But until recently, dead tufted puffins were rare finds, especially during the winter months.
Now, something has changed. By the time January drew to a close in 2017, the number of puffin carcasses had spiked into the hundreds, their emaciated bodies pointing to a breakdown in the Bering Sea's food chain.
Sadly, it's a sight the island's citizens might need to get used to.
A study conducted by US researchers determined the high numbers of remains found by volunteer beach combers were just the tip of the iceberg, representing a massive mortality event of up to 8,800 birds.
Members of St. Paul's Aleut community have a history of working with the University of Washington's Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) citizen science program.
Every month the volunteers survey the remains of birds and bits of marine debris left on the island's beaches, providing researchers with a trove of information on the ecological health of the Bering Sea.
The number of dead seabirds washing up from late autumn through winter usually isn't all that high. Among those they do find, tufted puffins might only make up 1 percent of the finds.
Between October 2016 and January 2017, the remains of just under 360 adult and juvenile seabirds were collected, measured, and recorded by St. Paul's COASST members.
What was particularly surprising was nearly eight out of every 10 were tufted puffins (Fratercula cirrhata). The rest were crested auklets (Aethia cristatella), and a handful of horned puffins (F. corniculata).
It wasn't hard to work out the likely cause behind such an unusual surge in deaths. Necropsies on several of the bodies confirmed they were emaciated, with severe loss of mass in their wing muscles.
Ruling out various toxins and illnesses, it was fair to say the birds simply starved to death.
Throw in the seasonal appearance of new flight feathers after a moult, and we get a grim picture of starvation at a time when their bodies were desperate for nutrients.
A few hundred birds mightn't seem like a big deal. But it was what the volunteers didn't see that draws concern.
By analysing the winds and currents in the area and running experiments to determine the direction the floating remains would take, researchers have come up with some broad estimates on how many deaths this small sample might represent.
At the lower end, a little over 3,000 birds might have perished that season due to a food shortage. At the upper boundary, we could be looking at 8,500 individuals.
The amount of tufted puffin remains indicates that more than half of the population living around the local islands may have died. And, if the higher estimates are accurate, it's possible nearly all of the puffins died in this single event.
Large scale mortality events like these aren't unknown. In 1997, hundreds of thousands of emaciated short-tailed shearwaters (Puffinus tenuirostris) were estimated have perished in the south-eastern Bering Sea.
Many events like these have been traced back to changes in the abundance of zooplankton, typically due to localised rises in ocean temperatures.
It's likely that a loss of food off the Alaskan coast was also to blame here. A few more winter storms than usual might have also contributed a final straw for birds already exhausted of energy.
We shouldn't be at all surprised. Warming waters in the far north have been thought to have had a domino effect not just on seabirds in recent years, but declines in the number of newborn whale calves.
SO CALLED Global warming only makes it more likely we'll see more of these kinds of events in the future. How often populations will manage to bounce back is left to be seen.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-climate-crisis-could-be-behind-the-death-of-thousands-of-puffins-in-the-north-sea
Today's shaft award goes to, guess who?
And some folks think nothing is being done.
Just coz booms ain't heard, doesn't mean explosions of justice are happening.
Keep up to date
Arms Control and International Security
Did you miss key foreign policy developments this week? Each week, DipNote recaps the latest U.S. Department of State highlights spanning a wide range of global issues, events, and initiatives in one blog post.
Much more here:
https://blogs.state.gov/stories/2019/05/24/en/week-state-may-24-2019