motd - 01/##/2024
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01/30/2024 Aurora curls:
https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/photographer-snaps-extremely-rare-aurora-curls-after-magnetic-wave-rings-earths-atmosphere-like-a-bell
https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=203226
"These curls are fine structures in the poleward boundary
of multiple arcs formed by longitudinal-arranged
field-aligned current pairs. It look[s] like to the Auroral
Undulations Triggered by Kelvin-Helmholtz Waves."
01/26/2024 California's duck curve is getting deeper:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880
"As more solar capacity has come online in California,
grid operators at the California Independent System
Operator (CAISO) have observed a drop in net load (or the
demand remaining after subtracting variable renewable
generation) in the middle of the day when solar generation
tends to be highest. When graphed for a typical day, the
pattern created by the midday dip in the net load curve,
followed by a steep rise in the evenings when solar
generation drops off, looks like the outline of a duck, so
this pattern is often called a duck curve. As solar
capacity in California continues to grow, the midday dip
in net load is getting lower, presenting challenges for
grid operators."
01/26/2024 Model Collapse:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/26/what_is_model_collapse/
01/25/2024 The cooling advantage of integrated GPUs:
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/CPUIGPCoolingAdvantage
01/25/2024 Lockable bike helmet:
https://www.core77.com/posts/127567/
01/22/2024 2023 Emoji law review:
https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2024/01/2023-emoji-law-year-in-review.htm
01/22/2024 Apple TV remote case with an AirTag:
https://www.cultofmac.com/747209/siri-remote-airtag-case/
Might need several of these - we keep misplacing our
Apple TV remotes all the time.
01/22/2024 A PRNG that you can do in your head:
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/randomness/
1. Choose a 2-digit number, say 23, your "seed".
2. Form a new 2-digit number: the 10's digit plus 6 times
the units digit.
The example sequence is 23 -> 20 -> 02 -> 12 -> 13 ->
19 -> 55 -> 35 -> ...
3. The 'random digits' are the units digits of the 2-digit
numbers, ie, 3,0,2,2,3,9,5,...
01/19/2024 How the Manhattan project was funded:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/us/politics/atomic-bomb-secret-funding-congress.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OU0.PuSv.SstGkf8GD8nI
"Where exactly in the budget had the [FDR] administration
hidden the money for the bomb?
Finding a bill that passed eight decades ago is harder
than you might think, but after a number of creative
searches, I pulled up a record of a Senate hearing
examining the bill. Attached was a report breaking down
the legislation.
I paged through, stopped and smiled when I saw it. There
it was, the innocuous phrase that hid an $800 million
secret: 'expediting production.'"
01/19/2024 Neptune and Uranus in their true colors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKSWcFCMrU
01/18/2024 Staircase Sunset:
https://fiftyfootshadows.net/2024/01/17/staircase-sunset/
01/18/2024 What Happened to the US Machine Tool Industry?
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-happened-to-the-us-machine-tool
01/17/2024 A dwarf galaxy with no visible stars:
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-primordial-dark-galaxy-stars.html
"J0613+52 is an odd [galaxy] when you compare it to the more
familiar types such as the star-filled spirals and
ellipticals. For one thing, it's a dwarf galaxy with an
irregular shape. Without any obvious stars, it's quite
dim. The most unusual thing about objects like this one is
that dark matter appears to dominate their compositions.
If J0613+52 is like others, it could have up to 95% dark
matter constraining the neutral gaseous hydrogen that we
can detect. ... In addition, J0613+52 lies too far from
any neighboring galaxies to interact with them
gravitationally. That means they can't trigger star
formation through any possible mergers or collisions."
01/17/2024 Early galaxies appear to have been mostly long and thin:
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-webb-early-galaxies-thin-disk.html
01/17/2024 Cepheid variables probably not responsible for the Hubble tension:
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-astronomers-explanation-hubble-tension.html
"In this new study, the team looked at more than a
thousand Cepheid variables and was able to pinpoint the
distance relation for Cepheids with extreme precision.
From this, they proved that Cepheid variable error can't
account for the Hubble tension."
01/13/2024 The 18% O2 solution:
https://bigthink.com/13-8/oxygen-bottleneck/
"Drawing on experiments carried out across disciplines as
varied as combustion engineering to biogeochemistry, we
found that an atmosphere with anything less than 18%
oxygen would not allow open-air combustion. Remarkably,
for most of our planet's 4.5-billion-year history, Earth's
oxygen levels have been way, way below 18%. In fact, only
over the past 500 million years or so has the atmosphere
held enough oxygen for anything to freely burn in the open
air.
Why does any of this matter? Imagine a young and
intelligent species on an alien world with an atmosphere
that's just 1% oxygen. Those clever tool-using creatures
would never get the chance to watch a tree burn after
being hit by lightning and get the idea of using fire for
their own purposes. They would never have the chance to
learn how fire could be used to cook food, clear land, or,
most importantly, melt metals. The poverty of oxygen in
their air would likely box these creatures in forever,
limiting their development."
Older
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##/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/motd.txt
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##/##/2022 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2022/motd.txt
https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2022/index.html
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