Chubba Bubba sniffs the camera

Seven seconds in the life of Seven, the cat.

What's up with Pluto?

Pluto, that used to be a planet but got laid off, is giving itself a make over. Hubble imagery analyzed over several years by planetary scientist Marc Buie at the Southwest Research Institute shows rapid color changes between 1994 and 2003. The Hubble is a powerful telescope but Pluto is rather small and very far away so this is still amazing:

Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Buie (SwRI).

The color changes are considered to be the result of methane ice sublimating into the atmosphere as the northern spring progresses. Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams noted this gives rise to a new mystery:

I thought the liveliest part of the teleconference on Pluto yesterday was Marc Buie’s response to what had appeared in his datasets. Buie (Southwest Research Institute) was looking at imagery collected by the Hubble Space Telescope from 2002 to 2003 and comparing it with the results of earlier ground-based observations, as well as with Hubble pictures taken in 1994. The dramatic reddening seems to have occurred between 2000 and 2002, even as the illuminated northern hemisphere continued to get brighter.

Asked about his reactions to the newer Hubble imagery, Buie was candid:

“The color change in such a short period had me scared, because it’s so hard to understand. I’ve been checking absolutely everything I can think of, wondering if I screwed this up somehow and got the wrong answer. If I did, I can’t find the mistake.”

Another key point: In the Hubble imagery, the color of Charon remains the same throughout, whereas the reddening of Pluto is pronounced.

Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Buie (SwRI).

Something weird is going on way out there. The enigmatic object, now considered to be a Kuiper belt object has some stories to tell. Rather than a frozen ball of ice, Pluto is turning out to be a dynamic world, with seasons, an atmosphere and a varied surface silently lurking in the dark.

New Horizons is due to reach Pluto and Charon in 2015 to capture the first close-up images of the frigid ex-planet. In addition it will acquire chemical and spectral data so maybe Pluto will tell us a few of those stories and hint at a few more. Bet on surprises. I can hardly wait.

SOLD to the highest bidder

This week the Supreme Court handed the country to multinational corporations. The Citizens United v. FEC ruling gave corporations unlimited ability to fund candidates. Unlimited. That means they can recruit or seduce their own candidates, give them enough money to blow a billionaire out of the water and buy the U. S. government, a seat at a time. Or all at once.

While constitutional scholars point out that this case actually strengthens First Amendment rights, the effect it will have on our political environment is undeniable.

But it’s one thing for U.S. firms to have their say. What about foreign companies that operate U.S. subsidiaries? Many of these, like American businesses, are owned by ordinary shareholders — but a host of others are owned, in whole or in part, by the foreign governments themselves.

One prominent examples is CITGO Petroleum Company — once the American-born Cities Services Company, but purchased in 1990 by the Venezuelan government-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. The Citizens United ruling could conceivably allow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sharply criticized both of the past two U.S. presidents, to spend government funds to defeat an American political candidate, just by having CITGO buy TV ads bashing his target.

And it’s not just Chavez. The Saudi government owns Houston’s Saudi Refining Company and half of Motiva Enterprises. Lenovo, which bought IBM’s PC assets in 2004, is partially owned by the Chinese government’s Chinese Academy of Sciences. And Singapore’s APL Limited operates several U.S. port operations. A weakening of the limit on corporate giving could mean China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and any other country that owns companies that operate in the U.S. could also have significant sway in American electioneering.

Milton Friedman was wrong. Corporations are not people, and they don't deserve rights as such. Campaign finance needs to be reformed.

Happy New Decade

The first decade of the 21st century is now in the books. It can be remembered as the decade that conservatives were given everything they wanted. They were given all three branches of government by the branch they already owned; the Supreme Court. Osama Bin Laden gave them the war they always wanted with a bonus war, Afghanistan, thrown in. Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan and others gave them the economy they always wanted. They were also given the energy policy they wanted (drill, baby, drill), the gun control policy they wanted, (none), the unitary executive they wanted, and the media they always wanted(Fox Noise).

They went on a binge and we were left with the hangover. We were told that they knew what they were doing and to sit down and shut up. We're now currently enjoying the results. It was only when we ignored that admonition that we could slow the destruction. Something to consider in the upcoming decade.

Ahead of their time

Seems there was a race of super-geniuses. Discovered in South Africa in 1913, fossil skulls showed a brain capacity bigger than modern humans. Not only that, but:

These people had small, childlike faces. Physical anthropologists use the term pedomorphosis to describe the retention of juvenile features into adulthood. This phenomenon is sometimes used to explain rapid evolutionary changes. For example, certain amphibians retain fishlike gills even when fully mature and past their water-inhabiting period. Humans are said by some to be pedomorphic compared with other primates.Our facial structure bears some resemblance to that of an immature ape. Boskop’s appearance may be described in terms of this trait. A typical current European adult, for instance, has a face that takes up roughly one-third of his overall cranium size. Boskop has a face that takes up only about one-fifth of his cranium size, closer to the proportions of a child. Examination of individual bones confirmed that the nose, cheeks, and jaw were all childlike.

Why did they die out? Without more information, scientists can only speculate:

Perhaps, though, it also made the Boskops excessively internal and self-reflective. With their perhaps astonishing insights, they may have become a species of dreamers with an internal mental life literally beyond anything we can imagine.

...

Perhaps the Boskops were trapped by their ability to see clearly where things would head. Perhaps they were prisoners of those majestic brains.

Wonder what they would say about life today?

Passalacqua at it again

What a surprise.

In handing down the punishment for James Luker, 47 of Santa Rosa, Judge Elliot Daum lashed out at the District Attorney's office for what he said was political grandstanding for publicizing the outcome of another repeat drunken-driving sentencing a few days earlier.

Daum said a news release issued by prosecutors complaining about a one-year county jail sentence issued to five-time drunken driver Emilio Guzman Garcia, 35, was politically motivated and filled with “grotesque misstatements and half-truths.”

The judge expressed anger about the ensuing newspaper article, which he said came on the eve of his departure from the criminal bench and the beginning of a re-election campaign for District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua. He said the Luker decision would not be influenced by the publicity.

Sounds like Passalacqua is trying to pump up his record.

The next big thing

Yo, digital artists! You want to go here. 3D fractal rendering. Fantastic landscapes, objects and surfaces.