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#91
Laid Back Lounge / weird holidays
Last post by billy rubin - November 27, 2025, 07:44:28 PMin america, we celebrate thanksgiving.
nobody knows why we do it, and if you look atthe history, its never made very much sense.
its a day when millions of americans travel and die on the highways in order to arrive at a family feast where where they have legendary political arguments with people we never see at any other time.
in my own prairie past, the meal transformed from women in the kitchen and men on the porch to women anywhere talking about cooking and babies, and men anywhere talking about automobiles and football. the kids had their own little cardtables to fuss at each other.
then th emen wander off and the women clean up.
somewhere theres a reason for this.
right now, im not attending anybody else's event. im old enough to do my own now. everybody else is dead. now im the receding wave, running backwards down from the strand into the surf, there to be absorbed into the zeitgeist..
i have my number three and number two son, my number two daughter and her husband, and a visitor from south afrcica, zulu i imagine, who has been abandoned by the local quaker school for a week or two. the wife is in the borderlands up north, with her mother who has had abdominal surgery and needs an offspring from a thousand miles to the south because the two kids close enough to get there in an hour are too busy.
isnt that how the world works?
anyway, here in appalachia, its a multi cultural extravaganza, complete with my live in son not talking to me except in profanities, because i am imperfect.
oh well.
i went through that too when i was 21 years old. eventually he will discover that ive learned a great deal, and it will be better.
but in the meantime, theres roast ham, aqua fresca, fried rice, oklahoma cornbread, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, chickasaw succotash, and whatever else. with mexico, america, south africa, and oklahoma, theres no telling what will show up on the table.
ill take what i can get. my kids are important to me, whether they like me right now or not.
nobody knows why we do it, and if you look atthe history, its never made very much sense.
its a day when millions of americans travel and die on the highways in order to arrive at a family feast where where they have legendary political arguments with people we never see at any other time.
in my own prairie past, the meal transformed from women in the kitchen and men on the porch to women anywhere talking about cooking and babies, and men anywhere talking about automobiles and football. the kids had their own little cardtables to fuss at each other.
then th emen wander off and the women clean up.
somewhere theres a reason for this.
right now, im not attending anybody else's event. im old enough to do my own now. everybody else is dead. now im the receding wave, running backwards down from the strand into the surf, there to be absorbed into the zeitgeist..
i have my number three and number two son, my number two daughter and her husband, and a visitor from south afrcica, zulu i imagine, who has been abandoned by the local quaker school for a week or two. the wife is in the borderlands up north, with her mother who has had abdominal surgery and needs an offspring from a thousand miles to the south because the two kids close enough to get there in an hour are too busy.
isnt that how the world works?
anyway, here in appalachia, its a multi cultural extravaganza, complete with my live in son not talking to me except in profanities, because i am imperfect.
oh well.
i went through that too when i was 21 years old. eventually he will discover that ive learned a great deal, and it will be better.
but in the meantime, theres roast ham, aqua fresca, fried rice, oklahoma cornbread, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, chickasaw succotash, and whatever else. with mexico, america, south africa, and oklahoma, theres no telling what will show up on the table.
ill take what i can get. my kids are important to me, whether they like me right now or not.
#92
Science / Embryonic Star Baby
Last post by Recusant - November 26, 2025, 11:20:20 PM. . . As in 2001: A Space Odyssey. At least that's what I see in the image. Big eye spot and a tail, essentially an unhatched tadpole sort of thing. I haven't gone in search of reactions but I'd be surprised if I were the only one to have got that idea.
"A Natural Laboratory Of Spiralling Dust Shells" | Universe Today
The paper is open access:
"The Formation and Evolution of Dust in the Colliding-wind Binary Apep Revealed by JWST" | The Astrophysical Journal
"A Natural Laboratory Of Spiralling Dust Shells" | Universe Today
Quote
Dust shells like coiled serpents wrap themselves aroud Apep, a triple star system dominated by a pair of Wolf-Rayet stars. The JWST revealed their presence for the first time. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Yinuo Han (Caltech), Ryan White (Macquarie University); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
In multiple ways, the JWST is opening our eyes to the Universe. It's enriching our understanding of the cosmos by showing us things we didn't think were possible, and by uncovering more details in things that have been observed many times by lesser telescopes.
One of these subjects is called Apep, a triple star system about 15,000 light years away. Apep is home to a binary pair of Wolf-Rayet stars and a third supergiant star. The WR stars orbit each other about once every two centuries, while the much smaller companion is about 1,700 au away and takes more than 10,000 years to complete a single orbit.
The JWST's MIRI instrument captured new images of Apep that show four serpent-like dust swirls around the system. In the image, the fourth one is nearly transparent and is at the edge of the frame. Previous images showed only a single shell.
[Continues . . .]
The paper is open access:
"The Formation and Evolution of Dust in the Colliding-wind Binary Apep Revealed by JWST" | The Astrophysical Journal
QuoteAbstract:
Carbon-rich Wolf–Rayet (W-R) stars are significant contributors of carbonaceous dust to the galactic environment; however, the mechanisms and conditions for formation and subsequent evolution of dust around these stars remain open questions.
Here we present JWST observations of the W-R+W-R colliding-wind binary Apep, which reveal an intricate series of nested concentric dust shells that are abundant in detailed substructure. The striking regularity in these substructures between successive shells suggests an exactly repeating formation mechanism combined with a highly stable outflow that maintains a consistent morphology even after reaching 0.6 pc (assuming a distance of 2.4 kpc) into the interstellar medium.
The concentric dust shells show subtle deviations from spherical outflow, which could reflect orbital modulation along the eccentric binary orbit or nonsphericity in the stellar wind. Tracking the evolution of dust across the multitiered structure, we measure the dust temperature evolution that can broadly be described assuming an amorphous carbon composition in radiative thermal equilibrium with the central stars. The temperature profile and orbital period place new distance constraints that support Apep being at a greater distance than previously estimated, reducing the line-of-sight and sky-plane wind speed discrepancy previously thought to characterize the system.
#93
Laid Back Lounge / Re: rewilding, or, turning bac...
Last post by billy rubin - November 26, 2025, 01:04:33 PMtbink locally, act locally. i cant change a lot, but i can change whats within my reach.
i live i a place where mowing ones lawn is a cultural necessity. i havent cut the grass in years. so my neighbours have the manucured floeer beds, but i have the butterflies, wasps, and bees.
bats too but not enough. im gathering wood to build a major bathouse, one that can hold 200 or 300,00 bats. ive got two telephone poles and need another
i live i a place where mowing ones lawn is a cultural necessity. i havent cut the grass in years. so my neighbours have the manucured floeer beds, but i have the butterflies, wasps, and bees.
bats too but not enough. im gathering wood to build a major bathouse, one that can hold 200 or 300,00 bats. ive got two telephone poles and need another
#94
Laid Back Lounge / Re: rewilding, or, turning bac...
Last post by Dark Lightning - November 26, 2025, 12:23:58 AMGood on ya, Billy! Every little bit helps nature. I know a lot of cynical people, but I what I can...which in actuality ain't much, in a tract home.
#95
Laid Back Lounge / rewilding, or, turning back th...
Last post by billy rubin - November 25, 2025, 10:36:54 PMokay. lookit this
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/25/it-fully-changed-my-life-how-young-rewilders-transformed-a-farm-and-began-a-movement?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
i live on 25 acres of former farmland. it was farmland, then it was strio mined, and then it was cheap hayfield.
my wife and i are rewilding it. from shallow heavy soil and grass hay, we re filling it up with native hardwoods, mast crops for wildlife that we can eat too, and a soil-rebuilding program that will take 100 years to finish.
ive already seen results. in the spring and summer, the property is a riot of butterflies. skimmers, whites, sulphurs, swalliwtails, monarchs, fritillaries (my favourites), as w re ll as mantids, walking sticks, lightninng bugs, noctuid moths, all sorts of things. we have possums (on the porch five minutes ago, in the cat food), raccoons, distant bobcats, coyotes, and skunks. enough deer that im going to blow them away in the spring so i can have a garden.
in the end, we ll have a climax ecosystem of deciduous woidlad, with enogh permaculture to keep us fed until we die.
thats the plan, anyway
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/25/it-fully-changed-my-life-how-young-rewilders-transformed-a-farm-and-began-a-movement?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
i live on 25 acres of former farmland. it was farmland, then it was strio mined, and then it was cheap hayfield.
my wife and i are rewilding it. from shallow heavy soil and grass hay, we re filling it up with native hardwoods, mast crops for wildlife that we can eat too, and a soil-rebuilding program that will take 100 years to finish.
ive already seen results. in the spring and summer, the property is a riot of butterflies. skimmers, whites, sulphurs, swalliwtails, monarchs, fritillaries (my favourites), as w re ll as mantids, walking sticks, lightninng bugs, noctuid moths, all sorts of things. we have possums (on the porch five minutes ago, in the cat food), raccoons, distant bobcats, coyotes, and skunks. enough deer that im going to blow them away in the spring so i can have a garden.
in the end, we ll have a climax ecosystem of deciduous woidlad, with enogh permaculture to keep us fed until we die.
thats the plan, anyway
#96
Laid Back Lounge / Re: i was today years old when...
Last post by billy rubin - November 25, 2025, 06:40:24 AM #97
Science / Re: new cosmology stuff
Last post by billy rubin - November 24, 2025, 06:49:37 PMQuoteEven more interestingly, the galaxy itself only appears to be about 2 million years old -
what????
theres a cosmic galaxy generator somewhere still running?
billions, right?
even thats nothing
#98
Laid Back Lounge / Re: i was today years old when...
Last post by billy rubin - November 24, 2025, 06:34:42 PMlookit this
https://i.imgur.com/nrvDzB3.mp4
its a fucking crinoid.
until recently, i had no idea that crinoids even still existed.
today i lerned that some of them move around
this is paradigm shift for me, having assumed crinoids were sessile ever since i were a child.
its like watching a coelocanth crawl up onto a beach
https://i.imgur.com/nrvDzB3.mp4
its a fucking crinoid.
until recently, i had no idea that crinoids even still existed.
today i lerned that some of them move around
this is paradigm shift for me, having assumed crinoids were sessile ever since i were a child.
its like watching a coelocanth crawl up onto a beach
#99
Science / Re: Neanderthals in the News
Last post by Recusant - November 24, 2025, 06:40:44 AMCool. The paper is open access:
"A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing" | Evolution and Human Behavior
However it happened we shared a particular part of our oral microbiome with Neanderthals.
"A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing" | Evolution and Human Behavior
However it happened we shared a particular part of our oral microbiome with Neanderthals.
Quote from: Ibid.While modern humans and Neanderthals diverged sometime between 450 and 750 ka, the oral microbe we share (Methanobrevibacter oralis) only separated into distinct strains between 112 and 143 ka (Weyrich et al., 2017). This suggests that commensal microbial species were transferred between modern humans and Neanderthals for some time after the two species split.
#100
Science / Re: new cosmology stuff
Last post by Recusant - November 24, 2025, 12:12:32 AMA nice more or less tangible mystery: A galaxy that appears to have the characteristics that are supposed to appear in the earliest galaxies, but isn't from the era in which those galaxies are thought to have formed.
"Astronomers Spot 'First Stars' Billions of Years After They Were Supposed to Die" | Universe Today
The paper is open access:
"A Metal-free Galaxy at z = 3.19? Evidence of Late Population III Star Formation at Cosmic Noon" | The Astrophysical Journal Letters
"Astronomers Spot 'First Stars' Billions of Years After They Were Supposed to Die" | Universe Today
QuoteOver the course of billions of years, the universe has steadily been evolving. Thanks to the expansion of the universe, we are able to "see" back in time to watch that evolution, almost from the beginning. But every once in a while we see something that doesn't fit into our current understanding of how the universe should operate. That's the case for a galaxy described in a new paper by PhD student Sijia Cai of Tsinghua University's Department of Astronomy and their colleagues. They found a galaxy formed around 11 billion years ago that appears to be "metal-free", indicating that it might contain a set of elusive first generation (Pop III) stars.
Before we get into the discovery itself, some context is necessary. Population III (Pop III) stars are considered to be the first generation of stars that formed early in the universe's history. Importantly, they have essentially no "metal", which cosmological terms means any element other than helium and hydrogen. Since those heavier elements can only be formed in stars themselves (or in the supernovae they create), by definition the first generation of stars can't contain them.
Cosmologists have been searching for examples of these Pop III stars for decades, but so far have ben unable to find them. Typically, they search a time of the universe's history known as the Epoch of Reionization, which took place up to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was very young and we believe the first stars themselves were starting to form.
So imagine the author's surprise when they found a galaxy that appeared about 2 billion years later than the Epoch of Reionization. By that point plenty of stars should have lived and died, with their remnants "infecting" any nearby gas and dust clouds, or other stars themselves, with the metal they created. That was the theory at least.
But, using data gathered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the Subaru Telescope, the authors identified a galaxy they called MPG-CR3 (or CR3 for short). The spectral signature of this galaxy was unique amongst all other galaxies of that era. It had very clean hydrogen and helium lines, and, notably, almost a complete lack of "metals" like oxygen in its spectral signature. In fact, the upper limit of the metallicity of the stars in the galaxy puts them at .7% of the metallicity of our Sun.
Even more interestingly, the galaxy itself only appears to be about 2 million years old - making it relatively young by galactic standards. We are able to see it at such a young age, despite it being formed billions of years ago, because of the expansion of space-time. CR3 also appears to be relatively "dust-free", and have relatively small stars, especially for such an ancient galaxy. Most galaxies during Cosmic Noon have supermassive stars compared to our own.
There is an important feature that is missing from the data for CR3 that is typically considered a key part of the detection of any Pop III stars - the Helium II (He II) emission line. While this critical line isn't visible in the VLT spectral data that would otherwise be able to detect it, the authors offer up two explanations for why. First, there's already a strong "OH" emission line coming from another source in that part of the data, which cancels out the He II signal. Alternatively, the He II signal itself could have petered out, as its amplitude drops significantly only a few million years after star formation.
[Continues . . .]
The paper is open access:
"A Metal-free Galaxy at z = 3.19? Evidence of Late Population III Star Formation at Cosmic Noon" | The Astrophysical Journal Letters
QuoteAbstract:
Star formation from metal-free gas, the hallmark of the first generation of Population III (Pop III) stars, was long assumed to occur only in the very early Universe. We report the discovery of Metal-Pristine Galaxy COSMOS Redshift 3 (MPG-CR3, hereafter CR3), an extremely metal-poor galaxy at redshift z = 3.193 ± 0.016.
From JWST, Very Large Telescope, and Subaru observations, CR3 exhibits exceptionally strong Lyα, Hα, and He i λ10830 emissions. We measure rest-frame equivalent widths of EW0(Lyα) = 822 ± 101 Å and EW0(Hα) = 2814 ± 327 Å, among the highest seen in star-forming systems. No metal lines e.g., [ o ] λλ4959, 5007, C iv λλ1548, 1550, have statistically significant detections, placing a 2σ upper limit on the gas-phase metallicity of 12 + log(O/H) < 6.52 (Z < 7 × 10−3 Z⊙) with strong-line calibration established by JWST, making it the most metal-poor galaxy known at cosmic noon.
Considering systematic uncertainties of ≳0.3 dex in the calibrations, the most conservative 2σ upper limit is set to 12 + log(O/H) < 6.95. The observed Lyα/Hα flux ratio is 13.9 ± 2.5, indicating negligible dust attenuation. Spectral energy distribution modeling with Pop III stellar templates indicates a very young (∼2 Myr), low-mass (M* ≈ 6.1 × 105M⊙) stellar population.
Further, the photometric redshifts reveal that CR3 could reside in a slightly underdense environment (δ ≈ −0.12). CR3 provides evidence that first-generation star formation could persist well after the epoch of reionization, challenging the conventional view that pristine star formation ended by z ≳ 6.