Tag: Neatorama

Amusing

Man Looking For A Wife In 1865

Man Looking For A Wife In 1865

We don’t know the provenance of this delightful newspaper ad posted at reddit. We can assume that it was published around 1865, as the young man was a fan of Andy Johnson, or president Andrew Johnson, who served from 1865 (upon the death off Lincoln), was impeached in 1968, and remained in office until 1969. For an 18-year-old, the writer seems to have his life together, but was probably working too hard so far to meet many young woman. When he says he wants to buy waterfalls, he is most likely referring to a waterfall bustle, as was the style at the time. I would bet that he got responses to this ad. The last line makes him seem cute as well as successful.

 
 
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The South Pole Of Jupiter

Jupiter's South Pole
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

NASA’s Juno probe entered orbit around Jupiter a year ago, and has been gathering data ever since. Now the space agency is releasing spectacular images, such as this one showing Juptier’s south pole. It is a composite of several images, and shows multiple cyclones up to 600 miles in diameter raging around the pole.

From NASA:

Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought.

“We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey.”

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, entering Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. The findings from the first data-collection pass, which flew within about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) of Jupiter’s swirling cloud tops on Aug. 27, are being published this week in two papers in the journal Science, as well as 44 papers in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We knew, going in, that Jupiter would throw us some curves,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “But now that we are here we are finding that Jupiter can throw the heat, as well as knuckleballs and sliders. There is so much going on here that we didn’t expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.”

Among the findings that challenge assumptions are those provided by Juno’s imager, JunoCam. The images show both of Jupiter’s poles are covered in Earth-sized swirling storms that are densely clustered and rubbing together.

“We’re puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn’t look like the south pole,” said Bolton. “We’re questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage, and over the next year, we’re going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?”

Another surprise comes from Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR), which samples the thermal microwave radiation from Jupiter’s atmosphere, from the top of the ammonia clouds to deep within its atmosphere. The MWR data indicates that Jupiter’s iconic belts and zones are mysterious, with the belt near the equator penetrating all the way down, while the belts and zones at other latitudes seem to evolve to other structures. The data suggest the ammonia is quite variable and continues to increase as far down as we can see with MWR, which is a few hundred miles or kilometers.

Prior to the Juno mission, it was known that Jupiter had the most intense magnetic field in the solar system. Measurements of the massive planet’s magnetosphere, from Juno’s magnetometer investigation (MAG), indicate that Jupiter’s magnetic field is even stronger than models expected, and more irregular in shape. MAG data indicates the magnetic field greatly exceeded expectations at 7.766 Gauss, about 10 times stronger than the strongest magnetic field found on Earth.

“Juno is giving us a view of the magnetic field close to Jupiter that we’ve never had before,” said Jack Connerney, Juno deputy principal investigator and the lead for the mission’s magnetic field investigation at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Already we see that the magnetic field looks lumpy: it is stronger in some places and weaker in others. This uneven distribution suggests that the field might be generated by dynamo action closer to the surface, above the layer of metallic hydrogen. Every flyby we execute gets us closer to determining where and how Jupiter’s dynamo works.”

Juno also is designed to study the polar magnetosphere and the origin of Jupiter’s powerful auroras—its northern and southern lights. These auroral emissions are caused by particles that pick up energy, slamming into atmospheric molecules. Juno’s initial observations indicate that the process seems to work differently at Jupiter than at Earth.

Juno is in a polar orbit around Jupiter, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the gas giant. But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a two-hour transit (from pole to pole) flying north to south with its eight science instruments collecting data and its JunoCam public outreach camera snapping pictures. The download of six megabytes of data collected during the transit can take 1.5 days.

“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,” said Bolton. “On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system — one that every school kid knows — Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it’s Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for NASA. The principal investigator is Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, in Denver, built the spacecraft.

More information on the Juno mission is available at:

https://www.nasa.gov/juno

http://missionjuno.org

As the New Horizons spacecraft approached Jupiter en route to Pluto in February 2007, Chandra took exposures of the gas giant. In this composite image, Chandra data from three separate observations were combined, and then superimposed on an optical image of Jupiter from the Hubble Space Telescope. The purpose of the Chandra observations is to study the powerful X-ray auroras observed near the poles of Jupiter.

 
 

Related:

The Hollow Earth: The Greatest Geographical Discovery In History Made By Admiral Richard E. Byrd

 
 
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Whiten Your Teeth By Wrapping Them In Aluminum Foil

Now you don’t have to spend a fortune on expensive appointments at the dental hygienist! Just repeat this simple process twice a week and watch as you get whiter teeth.

The internet is full of life hacks people swear by even though they don’t really understand how the hacks work, and at first glance many of these tricks seem like they won’t work as advertised.

So I was naturally a bit skeptical about a tip involving whitening your teeth by wrapping them in aluminum foil, as anybody who has ever chewed foil would be.

But apparently if you mix some baking soda together with toothpaste, apply the paste to your teeth then wrap your teeth tightly in aluminum foil twice a week the combo will whiten your teeth.

Source…

 

Amusing

The Psychology Of Creepiness

Creepiness ratings by occupation.

Clowns… of course, are at the very top.

The Psychology of Creepiness

What does it mean to be creepy? We recently looked at cartoon illustrations. Now let’s look at the science of creepiness. Francis T. McAndrew and Sara S. Koehnke of Knox College recently published an article on the subject in New Ideas in Psychology. They define creepiness as not obvious danger, but the ambiguity of danger:

A mugger who points a gun in your face and demands money is certainly threatening and terrifying. Yet, most people would probably not use the word “creepy” to describe this situation. It is our belief that creepiness is anxiety aroused by the ambiguity of whether there is something to fear or not and/or by the ambiguity of the precise nature of the threat (e.g., sexual, physical violence, contamination, etc) that might be present. Such uncertainty results in a paralysis as to how one should respond. In the mugging situation, there is no ambiguity about the presence or nature of threat.

You know what the stranger pointing a knife at you wants. But you aren’t sure about the guy at work who touches you just a bit too much. In modern civilized life, you can’t simply punch him. But neither can you ignore what’s going on. You don’t know how to respond, which is the core problem in creepiness:

It would be considered rude and embarrassing to run away from an odd person who has done nothing overtly threatening, but, on the other hand, it could be perilous to ignore your intuition and remain in an interaction that is dangerous. This ambivalence leaves you frozen in place, wallowing in unease.

Source…

 

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