১২ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১৯

About 10 minutes before sunrise, the gray sky took on lovely stripes of pink.

1. But I didn't stop to get a photograph. I kept running to my vantage point, but the pink was fading, and it was gone when I got there, still 2 minutes before sunrise.

2. Here's how it looked at 7:19:

ADB727D7-6BE0-429F-8869-8336489CC605_1_201_a

3. I need to learn to understand the sunrises that peak early and how quickly the color fades. If it's one with pre-sunrise pink, I need to stop and get the photograph... or just do what I did today, which is to watch it come and go in real time — a transient show just for me.

4. The ice was forming along the shore and beginning to build its way out. I got this photo at 7:23:

35E6B0A1-E14E-48B9-A55E-426CEEE9AAD3_1_201_a

5. It looked like crowded lily pads of ice. At 7:24:

0B6D0A3A-9192-4028-81E9-2E24742CF97E_1_201_a

6. I was listening to this Joe Rogan podcast, which was kind of entertaining while I was walking, but once I started running and they got to going on and on about how the moon does not rotate, I couldn't take it anymore and switched to music — the usual playlist.

7. It was 27° — warmer than yesterday, but it felt colder. It wasn't windy, though. It was humid. Somehow humidity makes you hotter on a hot day, but it also makes you colder on a cold day. Water is crafty!

8. I got home and saw my front right tire had gone flat. So that was that flubbidy-dub sound we heard yesterday when we went out to buy bread. Nothing about the driving seemed wrong went I went out for my run. Ah, well!

9. The moon does rotate, and the tire will rotate, and everything will turn in its own good time.

৪৬টি মন্তব্য:

Shane বলেছেন...

"The moon does rotate, and the tire will rotate, and everything will turn in its own good time."

WE ALL SHINE ON!

Quaestor বলেছেন...

The moon does not rotate.

There's no minimum information threshold for podcasting.

Quaestor বলেছেন...

I wonder how Joe Rogan's mind processed a lifetime's worth of lunar phase changes.

Drago বলেছেন...
এই মন্তব্যটি লেখক দ্বারা সরানো হয়েছে।
Drago বলেছেন...

OH NO LLR-lefty Chuck!!

More horrific news for you!! (Its just not fair, is it dumbo?)

"Economics
U.S. Reaches Terms of Deal With China, Awaits Trump's Signoff

By Jenny Leonard, Shawn Donnan, Saleha Mohsin, and Jennifer Jacobs
December 12, 2019, 12:30 PM MST
Updated on December 12, 2019, 2:10 PM MST"

This might be the worst day in Chucks life since the Nov 2016 republican sweep!!

Hang in there Chuckie!

Quaestor বলেছেন...

Must have been that big old moon-eating dragon.

Quaestor বলেছেন...

This might be the worst day in Chuck's life...

The worst day in Chuck's life is ever and always his upcoming birthday — a day to regret another wasted year.

rhhardin বলেছেন...

It's actually a really broad rainbow.

rhhardin বলেছেন...

Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away. I used to say that in high school, getting the hang of the science TV genre.

rhhardin বলেছেন...

Tomorrow, Timmy, we'll make battery acid.

Maillard Reactionary বলেছেন...

"I got home and saw my front right tire had gone flat. So that was that flubbidy-dub sound we heard yesterday when we went out to buy bread."

Ann, Ann, Ann. There you go innocently reinforcing stereotypes of womens' hopelessly clueless relationship to mechanical systems, especially cars. (I am in mind of my brother's one-time ride with his wife in "her car" where he asked "How long has the clutch been like that?" and got a completely blank look in response.)

Not to get involved in territory inappropriate to outsiders, but really, Meade should have picked up on this during the ride home.

Unless you were driving, and he was just singing along with the radio. That would be OK.

traditionalguy বলেছেন...

Listen to the jingle and the rumble and the roar as she dashes thro the woodland and speeds along the shore, See her mighty rushing engine, hear her merry bell ring out as they speed along in safety from the lake shore of of Wisconsin to the Whole Foods Store.

Thinking of Ann's morning cannonball run.

Maillard Reactionary বলেছেন...

"...everything will turn in its own good time."

It would be hard pressed to do otherwise, considering the motion of the Milky Way galaxy about its own center of mass.

Maillard Reactionary বলেছেন...

What a rascal that rhhardin is. His mother must have been a saint.

A teenager can get into a lot of interesting situations with a supply of nitric acid (mysteriously sourced from the railroad yard) and sulfuric acid from Daddy's car.

Don't ask me how I know.

narciso বলেছেন...

I noticed this:


https://www.space.com/19915-milky-way-galaxy.html

pacwest বলেছেন...

The moon does not rotate.

Like everything in life, it's all relative.

readering বলেছেন...

BBC News projecting 86 seat majority for Tories in House of Commons with Labour losing 71 seats. Polls closed 10 minutes ago.

tcrosse বলেছেন...

Meanwhile, exit polls predict huge victory for Boris.

tcrosse বলেছেন...

Meanwhile, exit polls predict huge victory for Boris.

Drago বলেছেন...

readering: "BBC News projecting 86 seat majority for Tories in House of Commons with Labour losing 71 seats. Polls closed 10 minutes ago."

If I recall, you spent some time growing up in Britain.

What are your thoughts assuming the exit polls are close to being accurate.

Owen বলেছেন...

Moon rotates always to keep her known face facing us. Apparently a stable arrangement or we would have observed SOME drift and shift in the image given us overcmany centuries. So: she rotates (around her own axis) exactly once in the time she takes to revolve (around the Earth). Is this inevitable? Extraordinary?

Can we cook up a good sci-fi thriller from this? Ask...Greg Bear or similar talent.

Sorry about the flat. Please let us know if it was an obvious cause. My guess is, you’ll find the shaft of a drywall screw buried in the tread. If you didn’t run far on the deflating tire, you might salvage it.

Maillard Reactionary বলেছেন...

pacwest:

"The moon does not rotate.

Like everything in life, it's all relative."

Maybe not so simple, Grasshopper.

Consider a pail of water on a turntable. Set the turntable into rotation. By and by the water in the pail piles up on the sides of the pail at the expense of the center.

If everything is relative, how does the water know it's rotating? Well yes, its rotation is an acceleration, but if the galaxy is rotating around the pail--which would look the same--how does that make the water pile up?

Newton wondered about this too, as did Ernst Mach and Einstein.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%27s_principle

This issue is not settled to everyone's satisfaction even today, so take heart.

"Nature is subtle, but she is not malicious." --Einstein (in an optimistic moment)

readering বলেছেন...

Looks like Brexit going through next month for sure. Big question from Scottish results (where even Lib Dem leader in doubt keeping her seat) about antoher referndum. Good riddance to Corbyn (I hope. The movement activists who control these things seem to be crazy.)

Kay বলেছেন...

Somehow humidity makes you hotter on a hot day, but it also makes you colder on a cold day. Water is crafty!

Oddly enough I’ve experienced this phenomenon in Florida, of all places.

Rick.T. বলেছেন...

“Thinking of Ann's morning cannonball run.“

With Farrah Fawcett as the Professor and Burt Reynolds as Meade though I’m not sure he likes Rod McKuen.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j2hGFN8NlLQ

stevew বলেছেন...

Winter is coming.

Is it true that in Wisconsin that when winter arrives it sets itself down and remains more or less intact until spring?

Where I live winter sort of meanders in an out through November & December (8 degrees last weekend, 60 degrees on Monday), kind of settles in in January, though we get a January thaw mid to late month, February tends to be solid winter, and then March on goes back to the wide temperature swings of Nov & December.

Maillard Reactionary বলেছেন...

Owen asks: "Is this inevitable?"

Yes. The phenomenon is called "tidal locking". Because gravity becomes weaker as the square of the distance between the mass centers of the Earth and Moon, any small asymmetry in the mass distribution in the smaller body will cause the heavier side to slow down a bit when it passes in front of the Earth. Over millions of years the system settles down with the Moon's rotation such that the fat side of it always faces the Earth.

Interestingly, from the Moon's point of view, the Earth hangs motionless in the sky and just rotates on its axis. Cool, no?

A much more precise and complete explanation can be found e.g. here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking.

This only works for certain orbital systems, e.g., the Earth is certainly not tidally locked to the Sun, but it has been observed elsewhere in the Solar system.

Sorry for all the physics today but I enjoy this sort of stuff.

Tommy Duncan বলেছেন...

The recent near full moon has been spectacular behind the foreground of leafless trees here. My dog takes me out every evening at about 9:00 PM and treats me to a view of the moon and a chance to clean up after her.

Alas, my declining vision doesn't allow me a useful interface with my camera. I have no idea what I'm getting until I load the images on my PC and show them on a large monitor.

I use the Windows magnifier feature to inspect the duck species in Ann's pictures.

Ann, was the tire rim damaged by your driving on a flat tire? Or was the tire still partially inflated? Alloy rims can be expensive.

Tommy Duncan বলেছেন...

Blogger stevew said...

"Is it true that in Wisconsin that when winter arrives it sets itself down and remains more or less intact until spring?"

Winter in Wisconsin is like your least favorite relative. It sets itself down uninvited, overstays its welcome and is generally disagreeable while its here.

There are some bonus days along the way when winter teases us with a few warm (40 degrees) and sunny days. But there are many winter days when I marvel at the survival skills of the indigenous peoples.

Pete বলেছেন...

No penis fish on the shores of the lake. I'm sure that means something.

Ann Althouse বলেছেন...

Turns out the tires were old and all needed replacing.

The tread wasn’t gone, because I don’t do a lot of miles, but there’s drying and rotting, apparently, so I am waiting to get all 4 tires put on.

Beasts of England বলেছেন...

I was told there would be no orbital mechanics on this blog.

Fernandinande বলেছেন...

The moon does rotate

What a terrible article at that link...

'The moon orbits the Earth once every 27.322 days. It also takes approximately 27 days for the moon to rotate once on its axis.'

Is "approximately 27" faster, slower or the same as 27.322?

'As a result, the moon does not seem to be spinning but appears to observers from Earth to be keeping almost perfectly still. Scientists call this synchronous rotation.'

No, that appearance is not called "synchronous rotation".

Here's a much better article. (SciAM)

"The moon keeps the same face pointing towards the Earth because its rate of spin is tidally locked so that it is synchronized with its rate of revolution (the time needed to complete one orbit). In other words, the moon rotates exactly once every time it circles the Earth."

Marshall Rose বলেছেন...

Not only does the moon stay in a tidally locked rotation, constantly presenting the same face towards the earth, it also wobbles. Picture it very slowly shaking its head 'No' over the course of its orbit.

Astronomers track this, and moon aficionados try to view/image the extra slivers on the leading or trailing edges when they are visible.

A great visual can be found here:
http://dumbscientist.com/archives/the-moon-wobbles

Bruce Hayden বলেছেন...

Want to get a little scared: Bloomberg to Donate $10 Million to Defend House Democrats in 2020

Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg will continue his unprecedented spending spree by committing $10 million to help vulnerable House Democrats stave off Republican challengers in 2020....

In 2018, Bloomberg spent more than $100 million to help elect a Democrat-led House through his own group, Independence USA PAC. In February, he promised to spend $500 million to deny Trump a second term in 2020.

Since joining the race, Bloomberg has spent more than $100 million on personal campaign ads, while promising $100 million more for anti-Trump ad buys in six swing states during the primaries and at least $15 million for Democratic voter-registration efforts before the general election. He is polling around 5 percent nationally, despite not targeting any of the first four primary states ahead of Super Tuesday.


The $10 million to help the Dems keep the House is peanuts compared to the half a billion he has committed to beat Trump. And I have little doubt that he will be the only billionaire to donate tens, maybe hundreds, of millions to beat Trump. A handful of these hugely rich people can likely outspend ALL of the small donors to Trump, combined.

Maillard Reactionary বলেছেন...

Marshall Rose: Beasts of England shakes his head in exasperation as science geeks threaten to take over the blog.

It's nice to have the upper hand for once, but can we hold it?

walter বলেছেন...

Chris Wallace to interview Shitt and Sancti-Comey,
Good times

Michael McNeil বলেছেন...

Speaking of “minimum information thresholds,” along with some other commentary up-thread here, I'm bringing this forward from yesterday's cafe (where there was a General Relativity discussion), because quite a number here might suffer a similar delusion as a result of (mostly forgotten) undergraduate physics classes where Einsteinian Relativity had been (slightly) encountered….

Fernandistein said
“… from another point of view it's perfectly correct to regard the Earth as (not flat!) but a spheroid which lies totally at rest, while the rest of the cosmos including the sun rotates around it, once every 24 hours.”

Bzzt. Relativity uses "inertial reference frames", which the earth isn't because: There is evidence that the earth is rotating: the Foucault pendulum, the coriolis force, etc = 'fictitious forces' = not an inertial reference frame.


Bzzt! Wrong in turn! (I knew I'd get this kind of response — despite my explicitly addressing this particular, ignorant “point” up-thread. It's sad, in general — even though I'm laughing in this case.)

The fact is that the requirement that reference frames be inertial (i.e., non-accelerated) in relativity theory is only a limitation found within Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (1905). Einstein in his succeeding General Theory of Relativity (1915) explicitly removed this limitation. Thus, non-inertial frames certainly are allowed in general relativity. More than “allowed”: in fact it is precisely those kind of (accelerated) reference frames which constitute general relativity's solution for how gravity operates! Thus, general relativity constitutes the modern physical theory (“law”) of gravity.

Speaking of so-called “fictitious forces,” indeed, according to general relativity the “fictitious force” of centrifugal force (the “force” on rotating bodies such as merry-go-rounds that tends to throw you radially off the ride) is actually real, live gravity. (Ditto for being forced back in your seat as your car accelerates — or being pulled to one side as it goes round a corner.)

It's amusing in such cases watching how folks' recollections of their college physics classes (if any!) decades before progressively get dimmer over time, so that terms like special (applied to what one knows) — and general (applied to what one doesn't know) — become harder and harder to recall.

Marshall Rose বলেছেন...

Phidippus, it is rare for the balance to be rooted in rational discussion here.

To many here feed the trolls and surpress other quality commenters.

Drago বলেছেন...

walter: "Chris Wallace to interview Shitt and Sancti-Comey,
Good times"

Comey knows an ally when he sees one.....

whitney বলেছেন...

The moon rotates. It just happens to complete a rotation in the same time it completes an orbit around the Earth so it doesn't appear to be rotating to us because we always see the same side. It's a mystery

walter বলেছেন...

After claiming Trump an expodential threat to journalists, I'm sure Wallace will come out swinging.
Schitt and Comey would agree to nothing less.

walter বলেছেন...

Hank, of Guam capsizing fame, keeps delivering the goods:

Johnson said:

A big chair for President Trump, little chair for President Zelensky. Big, six-foot-four President Trump, five-foot-elecven Mr. Zelensky, President Zelensky. And they’re standing there, President Trump is holding court. And he says, “Oh, by the way, no pressure.” And you saw President Zelensky shaking his head as if his daughter was downstairs in the basement, duct-taped. [Laughter] I mean, there’s an imbalance of power in that relationship. It always has been. And there’s no way that the nation of Ukraine can stand up to the power, the power of the United States of America. And President Trump used that unequal bargaining position. He leveraged his power in that relationship, not for the benefit of the United States of America, but for his own benefit.

Zelensky’s daughter, Oleksandra, is 15 years old.

Most recently, Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Yermak told Time magazine that there had been no link between aid and investigations, destroying a key element of Democrats’ case against Trump.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/12/democrat-picture-zelenskys-daughter-duct-taped-in-trumps-basement/

wildswan বলেছেন...

The moon rotates but at such a speed that the same side faces the earth all the time. If you take two oranges and shine a flashlight on one and turn it and turn the other while moving it in a circle about the first one, you will drop the flashlight.

Happy Birthday, Melania Trump. We have a great First Lady.

Lucien বলেছেন...

Hank Johnson must be right. I mean Zelensky must have known that if he didn’t do what Trump wanted there was no way in hell Ukraine could ever get the aid it wanted. The Power Dynamic is too uneven.

SeanF বলেছেন...

Phidippus: This only works for certain orbital systems, e.g., the Earth is certainly not tidally locked to the Sun, but it has been observed elsewhere in the Solar system.

Mercury is tidally locked to the sun, but it doesn't keep the same face pointing at the sun like the moon does to the Earth. It is locked at a 3:2 resonance - 3 axial rotations for every 2 orbital revolutions.