#Northern hemisphere problems ig

[sparrowseagles]

it feels so weird to be fixated on the terror rn . like in spring. ?? what do you mean the sun is shining outside, the birds are chirping and flowers are in bloom. all i know is the arctic cold, the horrors, and the pursuit of a pointless goal that only benefits Britain and will cost me my life and the lives of my crewmates after years of suffering & starvation

[copperweave]

Okay, looked at least a little stuff up, and

1) there's MULTIPLE movies in the series, so my idea of the scope of things was a lil off

2) there was a meteor that landed in Shanghai, and the BIGGEST impact was actually in Mexico. Still seems like they are mostly northern hemisphere but alright.

3) They hit with the force of an atomic bomb in Mexico too, ig? So we know nuking them probably isnt gonna work - just have to kill them one at a time with small arms. That's rough, buddy.

4) They eat plants?? And have basic agriculture? Anyway, yeah that's a problem that should be easy to sort - poison the crops and they'll die out too.

5) No wait, actually meteors landed on every major continent except Australia and Antarctica. Many island nations left utterly unaffected, also how tf does that work? Was earth just being peppered by these meteors over the course of over a day? Ig that makes the most sense. Are there critters on the moon? Do they live on mars now too? It feels like this had to be a MAJOR asteroid cluster, like HUGE, but then Mexico got hit the hardest and that's not that big of an impact all things considered?

6) Are there Death Angels on Jupiter now? Like that's probably where most of their lil cloud went yeah?

7) WAIT IT'S JUST THIS ONE FAMILY THAT FOUND OUT THEY ARE VULNERABLE TO SONIC WEAPONS? Police have sonic weapons!! How did no one think to try and hit the "I have very sensitive ears" monsters with sonic weapons?

8) Ok it only took like a year and a half for most terrestrial animals to die? How does that work? If we assume birth rates drop to replenishment levels without aliens, that means that something like 15,000,000 humans have to die every single day to aliens on average. You need to have more than 100x that number to get all the mammals, and fuck me, what about insects, reptiles, and probably a bunch of bird species!

But like supposing that 100,000 of these fuckers landed, they'd have to kill a HUMAN nearly once every second! ON AVERAGE! You'd need MILLIONS for each to only have to kill one or two a day. And I must remind you, this is to make it reasonable that they ALSO kill nearly all terrestrial life too - these "Death Angels" would spend well over 100 times as much time killing CRICKETS as they do humans. Just out there in a field going RAWR RAWR NOISY PLANET and squishing fucking crickets.

7) Did literally no one think of the soniv weapon thing?

So like... is there a reason that the aliens from a quiet place are considered to be an apocalypse? I don't know a ton about the lore, and obviously it's a fucking disaster, but like...

There's only so many, and they landed on the east coast of the united states? They have relatively simple countermeasures against them, can't swim, aren't intelligent enough to make boats... and what, there's like at most a few hundred to a few thousand of them? I get that they'll breed but that's only going to be a major problem in decades worth of time at best.

It'd seriously change the landscape of what humanity thinks about the universe, but like most places would generally be fine, yeah? Is the movie really THAT North-east pilled?

[sciencespies]

Amid protest, Hawaii astronomers lose observation time

https://sciencespies.com/space/amid-protest-hawaii-astronomers-lose-observation-time/

Amid protest, Hawaii astronomers lose observation time

In this July 14, 2019, file photo, a telescope at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest mountain is viewed. Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii’s tallest mountain have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because a protest blocked a road to the summit. Astronomers said Friday, Aug. 9, 2019, they will attempt to resume observations but in some cases won’t be able to make up the missed research. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File)

Asteroids, including those that might slam into Earth. Clouds of gas and dust on the verge of forming stars. Planets orbiting stars other than our own.

This is some of the research astronomers say they missed out on as a protest blocked the road to Hawaii’s tallest mountain, one of the world’s premier sites for studying the skies.

Astronomers said Friday they will attempt to resume observations, but they have already lost four weeks of viewing—and in some cases, they won’t be able to make up the missed research. Protesters, meanwhile, say they should not be blamed for the shutdown.

Astronomers across 11 observatories on Mauna Kea cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing, work they estimate would have led to the publication of about 450 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

“Any one of them could have been spectacular, could have been Nobel Prize-winning science. We just now will never know,” said Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the East Asian Observatory, which operates one of Mauna Kea’s telescopes.

Stormy weather, earthquake damage and maintenance issues have interrupted observations before, but this is the longest all of the observatories on the dormant Big Island volcano have been shut down since its first telescope opened a half-century ago.

In this July 19, 2019, file photo, protesters continue their opposition vigil against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope at Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii’s tallest mountain have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because a protest blocked a road to the summit. Astronomers said Friday, Aug. 9, they will attempt to resume observations but in some cases won’t be able to make up the missed research. (Bruce Asato/Honolulu Star-Advertiser via AP, File)

The observatories’ large telescopes are owned and operated by universities and consortiums of universities including the University of California and California Institute of Technology.

The national governments of Canada, France, Japan and others also fund and operate telescopes on their own or as part of a group. Astronomers around the world submit proposals to institutions they are members of to compete for valuable time on the telescopes.

Mauna Kea’s dry air, clear skies and limited light pollution provide some of the world’s best nighttime viewing, and its number of advanced telescopes makes it an unparalleled place for astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere.

“Some of the best observational astronomy being done today, some of the best and most critical scientific research, is being done on Mauna Kea,” said Rick Fienberg, press officer for the American Astronomical Society.

In 2011, three astronomers won the Nobel Prize in physics for work that relied on data gathered using Mauna Kea’s W.M. Keck Observatory. Their analysis of exploding stars, or supernovas, showed the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

This Jan. 6, 2009, file photo shows astronomy observatories atop Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island where some Native Hawaiians have been peacefully protesting the construction of what would be one of the world’s largest telescopes. Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii’s tallest mountain have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because the protest blocked a road to the summit. Astronomers said Friday, Aug. 9, 2019, they will attempt to resume observations but in some cases won’t be able to make up the missed research. (AP Photo/Tim Wright, File)

Earlier this year, the East Asian Observatory was part of a global team that captured the first image of a black hole, a breakthrough that stirred talk of another Nobel.

Native Hawaiian protesters began blocking the road July 15 to stop the construction of yet another telescope, which they fear will further harm a summit they consider sacred. Hundreds of people have gathered daily to protest the Thirty Meter Telescope, which is being built by U.S. universities, along with Canada, China, India and Japan. The telescope would be Mauna Kea’s biggest yet, capable of seeing back 13 billion years.

Astronomers say the roadblock has denied them regular, guaranteed access to their facilities, which puts their staff and equipment at risk. They suspended observing on the protest’s second day.

The telescopes need to be accessible 24 hours a day to resume regular observations, so staff can to respond to things like changes in the weather, said Doug Simons, executive director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which is owned by the University of Hawaii and the national research institutes of Canada and France.

“You can imagine the rain coming down on a multimillion-dollar telescope,” Simons said.

In this July 23, 2019, file photo, Hawaii governor David Ige, right, watches a kahiko hula performance during a visit to the ninth day of protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope at the base of Mauna Kea on Hawaii Island. Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii’s tallest mountain have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because a protest blocked a road to the summit. (Jamm Aquino/Honolulu Star-Advertiser via AP, File)

On Friday, the observatories said they would attempt to restart operations by providing protesters a list of vehicles going up the mountain and when they will be going.

Protester Kealoha Pisciotta, who was part of a yearslong legal fight against the Thirty Meter Telescope, said it wasn’t right to blame demonstrators when the observatories themselves decided to stop viewing.

“They chose to close down for fear of protesters who are unarmed and nonviolent,” Pisciotta said.

She noted law enforcement was allowing only one vehicle of Native Hawaiians to go to the summit for prayer each day, yet the U.S. and state constitutions guarantee their rights to religious and customary practices.

The state in mid-July blocked all cultural practitioners from going up the mountain when it closed the road to clear the way for construction vehicles, but it began allowing one car up in the weeks after.

In this July 21, 2019, file photo provided by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, protesters block a road to the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii’s tallest mountain have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because a protest blocked a road to the summit. Astronomers said Friday, Aug. 9, they will attempt to resume observations but in some cases won’t be able to make up the missed research. (Dan Dennison/Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources via AP, File)

Among the more dramatic research affected is a program to identify asteroids and other “near-Earth objects” like comets. In the worst-case scenario, the objects could be “killer asteroids” on a trajectory to wipe out cities while crashing into our planet, said Canada-France-Hawaii’s Simons.

Canada-France-Hawaii has a longstanding program to spot such objects with the help of two telescopes atop Maui’s Haleakala volcano. The Maui telescopes, called PAN-Starrs, scan vast areas of the sky each night. They send coordinates for items of interest to the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which zooms in to determine their orbits and whether they might pose problems.

This was the method used in 2017 when astronomers using Canada-France-Hawaii did some of the initial work identifying the orbit of Oumuamua, the first object from interstellar space ever documented to have entered our solar system. The oblong visitor turned out to be a comet from a distant star.

PAN-Starrs has continued to scan the sky and has spotted one near-Earth object nearly every night of the observatory shutdown, Simons said.

Astronomers using Keck missed an opportunity to study a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a star outside our solar system July 24. Keck was to have studied the extrasolar planet at the same time as the Hubble Space Telescope and a telescope on board the International Space Station.

In this Aug. 31, 2015, file photo, from bottom left, the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Submillimeter Array, far right, are shown on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea near Hilo, Hawaii. Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii’s tallest mountain have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because a protest blocked a road to the summit. Mauna Kea is one of the world’s premier sites for studying the skies. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File)

The absence of Keck’s data will leave the project incomplete, said John O’Meara, Keck’s chief scientist. That’s because each telescope was to have observed in a different wavelength: Keck in near infrared, the space station telescope in X-ray, and Hubble in ultraviolet. The various wavelengths combined provide a better understanding of the exoplanet.

Every night of Keck observations turns into knowledge humanity didn’t have before, O’Meara said.

“I can guarantee you that some science that would be in a textbook 10 years from now did not get done,” he said.

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope was scheduled to study clouds of gas and dust that form stars as part of a project going back eight years. Astronomers measure the dust and clouds at precise intervals to determine how they are changing.

Missing observations will affect astronomers’ understanding of how baby stars form, said Dempsey, whose East Asian Observatory operates the Maxwell telescope.

In this Jan. 7, 2008, file photo, Thirty Meter Telescope Project Scientist Jerry Nelson, left, and Telescope Optics Group Leader Eric Williams, third from left, inspect a 500 pound glass blank as it is removed from packing by Dave Hilyard, Chief Optician at University of California, right, and Brian Dupraw at the UC Observatory Optical Lab at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Calif. Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii’s tallest mountain Mauna Kea have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because a protest blocked a road to the summit. Astronomers said Friday, Aug. 9, 2019, they will attempt to resume observations but in some cases won’t be able to make up the missed research. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

Meanwhile, workers have been unable to do critical repairs at the Subaru Telescope, run by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Gaps between its dome and main shutter need to be closed to keep water from seeping in, said Michitoshi Yoshida, the telescope‘s director.

Subaru arranged for a contractor to make the fixes during a window between July 22 and Sept. 8, but workers have been unable to access the site due to the protester’s roadblock. The contractor said it could finish the job if it’s able to start by Monday, but otherwise will have to reschedule the work for next year, Yoshida said.

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Telescope viewing suspended as protesters block Hawaii road

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#Space

[pussymagicuniverse]

In (St) Brigid’s Arms: an Imbolc Devotional

The week leading to Imbolc 2018 was probably the darkest end of January in my life, but it was the one where Brigid’s flame burned the brightest in my heart. Brigid had always been an important divine figure to me, as a goddess of poetry and creation, as the saint associated with the coming of spring and new life. She didn’t push her way forward as often as, for example, Ceridwen or the Virgin Mary had, but on 23 January 2018 my daughter Bonnie was born with congenital heart defects, and we sped away to a hospital in another city for a week. I was alone with my delicate, unwell child (who is now turning out to be quite a fierce and fiery child, heart problems or not, which is a relief almost one year on), and Brigid stepped up and made her presence felt when I didn’t know who else to ask for help.  

When you unexpectedly find yourself in hospital with a poorly newborn (and still recovering from a c-section yourself) 35 miles from home, missing your husband and other children, frightened for the baby you’ve just brought into the world, then magic, prayer and ritual have never been more important, but also must be improvised. There is so much value in the meditative and energetic qualities of burning a plain white candle, and in over twenty years of practicing my craft, I didn’t fully appreciate this simple act until I wasn’t able to do it. For me, everything about Imbolc, and all the power of Brigid, can be distilled into a white candle – the purity of a new beginning, the desire to heal, take action, and create, in a single simple flame.

But a hospital is no place for candles, and all I had to hand was a little pouch containing a piece of black tourmaline, a seashell, the tiniest statue of the Virgin Mary I’ve ever seen, and a worry stone made of clear resin encasing a bronze-coloured heart emblazoned with a cross, which was a gift from a devout Christian friend during my pregnancy. I brought these items to hospital with me for the birth because I had anxiety about surviving my planned c-section without major complications (I’d had some problems in three out of my four previous births), but I ended up needing them for my daughter instead. Tourmaline is good for staying positive; seashells always bring me closer to the goddess.

And knowing (St) Brigid’s mythical connections to Jesus and Mary in Celtic Christianity and my own path of christopaganism, the cross and the figure of the Virgin were more than enough to connect with Brigid herself. The legend goes that St Brigid found herself acting as midwife to Mary at the birth of Jesus, and even nursed the newborn boy when Mary was too exhausted to do it herself. The time frame is more than a little muddled in this story – St Brigid lived several centuries after Jesus, though of course the pagan goddess Brigid pre-dates him, so I quite like the idea that maybe she was there… – so it isn’t meant to be taken as anything more than a myth. But it’s the energy of this metaphorical act of midwifery/nursing that I could feel coming from Brigid while Bonnie and I were in hospital: “Here, let me help you with this baby – she’s going to need you for the rest of her life. For now, you rest.” Whenever I wasn’t cuddling or breastfeeding Bonnie, for the long hours she slept in her hospital cot, attached to monitors and oxygen, I was doing my best to remember Brigid was looking after her for me, helping her tiny heart. It wasn’t easy, but I had to believe we’d get through whatever might happen.

But of course Brigid’s warmth and empowering love isn’t just for mothers and newborn babies, it’s for anyone who needs it and will honour it; she holds you, pockets your concerns, your frazzled stray thoughts, and lets you rest – then smooths it all out in front of you when you awaken so your problems are easier to solve, battles are easier to win, and she imbues you with strength to keep going. And that’s in the spirit of Imbolc, too: celebrated on 1-2 February in the northern hemisphere, halfway between the longest night and the spring equinox, it’s the border between winter and spring, a planning time, a chance to rest before launching fully into whatever it is you need to do as the light increases, gains strength.

If you feel Brigid’s call or need her assistance, there are so many things you can do to thank her; relationships with deities and/or saints must be personal, but there are tried and tested ways to start if you’re stuck. Create something – poetry, art, a Brigid’s cross – whatever it is, make it sincerely. Do something kind for new mothers or mums-to-be or babies – even mama and baby animals if you prefer them to humans (I know plenty who do). Light those white candles. Go out walking, look for snowdrops or other signs of life, even if you’re still surrounded by snow and ice. Find your own connection to the cross-quarter magic that drifts gently at Imbolc, slowly smudging dormant and dark into bright and alive, and grow with it, whatever that means for you. And I hope you grow well, as my Bonnie has grown.

Born in Southern Ohio, but settled in the UK since 1999, Kate is a writer, witch, editor and mother of five. She is the author of several poetry pamphlets, and the founding editor of four web journals and a micropress. Her witchcraft is a blend of her great-grandmother's Appalachian ways and the Anglo-Celtic craft of the country she now calls home – though she incorporates tarot, astrology, and her ancestors, plus music, film, books, and many other things into her practice. Her spiritual life is best described as queer Christopagan with emphasis on the feminine and the natural world. She believes magic is everywhere. Find Kate on twitter and IG - @mskateybelle - and at her website.