CaaC (John)

Looking forward to this landing if successful I wonder if they will find or discover something new and mysterious

Manchester United: Shola Shoretire becomes youngest Uefa Youth League player 1 hour ago | Man Utd Manchester United's Shola Shoretire has become the youngest ever player to appear in the Uefa Youth League at the age of 14 years and 314 days. The winger was introduced as a substitute during the Reds' 2-1 win at Valencia on Wednesday. Harvey Neville, the 16-year-old son of England women's manager Phil Neville, also made his debut in the competition. Nicky Butt's Under-19 team won five and drew one of their Group H fixtures to qualify as winners ahead of Juventus. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/46544354

Science & Environment Climate change: Arctic reindeer numbers crash by half By Victoria Gill Science correspondent, BBC News, Washington DC 12 December 2018 The population of wild reindeer, or caribou, in the Arctic, has crashed by more than half in the last two decades. A new report on the impact of climate change in the Arctic revealed that numbers fell from almost 5 million to around 2.1 million animals. The report was released at the American Geophysical Research Union meeting. It revealed how weather patterns and vegetation changes are making the Arctic tundra a much less hospitable place for reindeer. Reindeer and caribou are the same species, but the vast, wild herds in northern Canada and Alaska are referred to as caribou. It is these herds that are faring the worst, according to scientists monitoring their numbers. Some herds have shrunk by more than 90% - "such drastic declines that recovery isn't in sight", this Arctic Report Card stated https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46516033

Nasa's IceSat space laser makes height maps of Earth By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent, Washington DC 11 December 2018 One of the most powerful Earth observation tools ever put in orbit is now gathering data about the planet. IceSat-2 was launched just under three months ago to measure the shape of the ice sheets to a precision of 2cm. But the Nasa spacecraft's laser instrument is also now returning a whole raft of other information. It is mapping the height of the land, of rivers, lakes, forests; and in a remarkable demonstration of capability - even the depth of the seafloor. "We can see down to 30m in really clear waters," said Lori Magruder, the science team leader on the ICESat mission. "We saw one IceSat track just recently that covers 300km in the Caribbean and you see the ocean floor the entire way," the University of Texas researcher told BBC News. She was speaking here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting - the largest annual gathering of Earth and space scientists.

I can remember when I was a young lad and I would keep my bike in a coal cupboard, many a time I would move an empty coal sack to get my bike and dozens of them fuckers would fall out with their backs up and pinchers wide open, they gave me the shivers.

It's the same as ear-wigs, I can't stand them fuckers and they give me the creeps with their pinchers on the tail end, they say they got the name ear-wigs as once one crawled in a blokes ear and started nesting in the eardrum.

Bed Mites & Dust Mites are just as bad, I put the frights up the wife when I showed her a picture of the little fuckers and told her to try and keep her mouth closed at night time in bed as no matter how clean you are and the bedding they can still exist and crawl in your mouth.

Ok, it's weird, I had set that up as a draft with the pictures to add and put the post in later, you must have been posting that when I was retrieving the draft from my memos to put my one in, great minds think alike lol.

AAAAAAGGGGGGG!!!! I was just putting that in and you beat me to it Could you delete my one please as I have no delete button, we must have been typing this post at the same time but you were quicker in posting XXXX

'Zombie' bacteria hint life on Earth began deep underground Sarah Knapton 23 hrs ago Earth is teeming with life miles beneath the surface, scientists have discovered, leading to speculation that our distant ancestors may even have evolved deep underground. Researchers at the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) said they had found barely-living ‘zombie’ bacteria and tiny worms, inhabiting entirely new ecosystems more than three miles into the crust. The lifeforms are so numerous that their mass may be up to 385 times that of all humans.

They are like bees buzzing around a honeypot.

It makes me bloody jealous, wish it was me.

You've been framed Zomato India driver sacked after eating customer's takeaway 5 hours ago Takeaway delivery firm Zomato has apologized after one of its drivers was filmed eating a client's food and resealing the containers in India. The video, which was filmed in Madurai in southern India, shows a man wearing a Zomato shirt sitting on a moped eating food out of boxed orders then resealing them and putting them back into a delivery bag. The video has been viewed thousands of times on social media. Zomato said it has a "zero tolerance policy" towards food tampering and has sacked the delivery man in question. In a statement, Zomato acknowledged that the video suggests the man was eating food meant for customers. The company said: "We have spoken to him at length and while we understand that this was a human error in judgment, we have taken him off our platform." Zomato also says they will soon introduce "tamper-proof tapes" and "educate their delivery fleet" as a further precaution against food tampering. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46522548

ISS: Spacewalk cosmonauts investigate mystery hole 5 minutes ago Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are embarking on a spacewalk to investigate a mysterious hole that caused a loss of air pressure in August. The cause of the hole on the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, docked to the station, has not yet been established. However, Russian officials have said they believe it was caused by a drill and may have been deliberate. Oleg Kononeko and Sergei Prokopyev will spend about six hours on the spacewalk. All systems go as Russia's Soyuz aims to erase failures What's life like on the ISS? Spacecraft hole could be 'deliberate' The hole was discovered after crew members traced an air leak that was causing the minor loss of pressure on the ISS. The Soyuz capsule had been used to deliver a new crew to the laboratory 400km (250 miles) above the Earth in June. Crew members used tape to cover the hole and experts speculated that it could have been caused by the impact of a high-speed rocky fragment flying through space. However, that theory was later ruled out. Photos of the hole from inside the spacecraft circulated online. A space industry source told Russia's Tass state news agency that the spacecraft could have been damaged during testing at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The mistake might have then been covered up. "Someone messed up and then got scared and sealed up the hole," a source speculated, but then the sealant "dried up and fell off" when the Soyuz reached the ISS. Sources quoted in Izvestia newspaper said that if the sealant is found on the hull during the spacewalk then the hole was probably caused when the spacecraft was on the ground. In September, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's civilian space agency Roscosmos, said that a production defect was possible but "deliberate interference" had not been ruled out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46529422

Christmas pet adoption ban at German shelters 43 minutes ago A dog is for life, not just for Christmas - so the famous slogan goes. It's certainly the case in Germany, where a temporary ban on new adoptions aims to cut short any plans to give an animal as a Christmas gift. Dozens of shelters have told potential pet owners that no animals will be handed over in the run-up to Christmas. Berlin's shelter, the largest in Europe, is among them. It says the ban reduces unwanted animals being dumped back after the holiday period. "Animals are living beings with needs and feelings," it said. "They are not suitable as surprise gifts." In Bremen, none of 500 animals will be re-homed after 18 December. Regional news outlets are reporting similar decisions in other towns and cities, including dozens of shelters in a united decision in Lower Saxony. The problem, according to the ban's supporters, is that pets are often bought impulsively at the last minute. "The decision to keep an animal must not be taken lightly - the whole family must be involved in the decision-making process," said Claudia Hämmerling from Berlin's animal protection association. Most shelters will still be open for viewings - but families will have to come back in January after they've had time to consider. Puppy sales at pet shops set to be banned More dogs abandoned in Christmas 2017 run-up RSPCA warns against costumes for dogs Not everyone agrees with an outright ban. In the UK, animal protection group RSPCA says the person receiving the pet should be known to be willing and ready - and highlights the extra noise, hustle, and bustle at Christmas that "can make it difficult for any pet to settle into their new homes". "However, for some people, the festive period is a calm, quiet time and may well be a good opportunity to introduce an animal into the home as families tend to be around the house with more time to spend with them," it says. Their US counterpart, the ASPCA, largely agrees. But the Dog's Trust - author of the famous slogan about dogs being "not just for Christmas" - is still running adverts to that effect nearly 40 years after it first coined the phrase. "Christmas presents aren't dogs, and dogs aren't Christmas presents. It's that simple!" the charity said when launching this year's advert. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46522116

60-Second Astro News: Helium Exoplanets and a Supernova Surprise By: Christopher Crockett | December 10, 2018 Helium puffs up some exoplanet atmospheres Like a couple of day-old party balloons, two planets in our galaxy appear to be puffed up with helium and leaking it into space. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen. Despite that, researchers have only recently started detecting it in the atmospheres of exoplanets. The hope is that helium, being the second lightest element, could be a sensitive probe of how sunlight erodes planetary skies. Astronomers suspect that bloated gas giants snuggled up to their stars might lose most of their atmospheres due to the relentless influx of high-energy ultraviolet and x-ray radiation. Now, two worlds are granting researchers their wish. Lisa Nortmann (University of La Laguna, Spain) and colleagues, using the 3.5-meter telescope at Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, detected a trail of helium dragging behind the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP–69b (located about 160 light-years away) as it orbits its sun about once every 4 days. The comet-like helium tail extends roughly 170,000 kilometers (110,000 miles) away from the planet. In a companion paper relying on data from the same telescope, Romain Allart (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and colleagues found a puffed-up helium atmosphere — five times as wide as the planet itself — enveloping the roughly Neptune-mass world HAT–P–11b, which orbits a star about 120 light-years away. Spectra reveal that helium winds appear to blow from the dayside to the nightside at nearly 10,000 kilometers per hour (7,000 mph). These two finds, both published in the December 7th Science, are not the first time that researchers have detected helium around an exoplanet. That honor goes to the planet WASP–107b— astronomers reported the not the first time escaping that world in May. These more recent reports, however, are the first time that astronomers have been able to resolve details about the helium atmospheres. Supernova body-slams a companion The potential explanations for what makes a star go boom are many and varied, and astronomers debate the exact underlying causes.. Now, a detailed timeline of a supernova at the moment it burst on to the scene is providing new details to aid researchers in this quest. The late Kepler Space Telescope (may it rest in peace) is best known for its thousands of exoplanet discoveries. But in its waning years, it became a useful tool for providing snapshots every 30 minutes of rapidly evolving phenomena in the cosmos. In February, it caught the moments before, during, and after the detection of a supernova, dubbed 2018oh, that went off in a galaxy roughly 160 million light-years away. Right away, the build-up of light seemed odd. In the first five days following the explosion, the supernova seemed to emit an excess of light compared to other similar supernovae. After that, its evolution proceeded pretty much as expected. Reporting November 25th on the astronomy preprint site arXiv.org, Georgios Dimitriadis (University of California, Santa Cruz) and colleagues suspect that the excess light came from the supernova blast wave slamming into a companion star — a companion that may have triggered the detonation. Supernova 2018oh is classified as a Type 1a supernova, which means it likely arose from the destruction of a white dwarf, the naked core left behind after stars like our Sun run out of fuel. There are two leading ideas for what would cause a white dwarf to explode. One possibility is that two white dwarfs locked in a gravitational embrace slam together. Another scenario is that a run-of-the-mill companion star keeps dumping gas on to the white dwarf until it becomes too heavy to support its own weight, triggering a thermonuclear explosion. The double white dwarf story seems to explain most Type 1a supernovae, according to a 2014 review paper. But a handful, such as 2018oh, appear to be caused by a single white dwarf pilfering gas from a neighbor. Dimitriadis’ team notes that a few scenarios provide a good match to the observations — including the presence of a thin layer of helium enveloping the doomed star or the presence of an off-kilter nugget of nickel in its core — but a lone white dwarf appears slightly favorable. https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/60-second-astro-news-helium-exoplanets-and-a-supernova-surprise/

Astronomy Picture of the Day 2018 December 11 Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tail Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing: Faus Márquez (AAE) Explanation: Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

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Australia v India: How has cricket down under recovered from sandpapergate? By Sam Sheringham BBC Stumped producer in Adelaide 8 December 2018 | Cricket Australia players have vowed to "make Australians proud" of the team again At the approach to the Adelaide Oval's East Gate is a statue that sums up the Australian fixation with cricket. Raised on a plinth is a lithe batsman in full swing, sleeves rolled up above the elbows and cap perched neatly above the eyes as he aims a drive towards the city skyline. It is a figure that would be instantly recognizable to any self-respecting Australian and the adjacent plaque is appropriately understated: Sir Donald Bradman, 1908-2001. After all, 'The Don' is not only his country's most famous cricketer but quite possibly the most celebrated Australian of them all. From Bradman downwards, Australia's great cricketers have been revered as not just sporting but national heroes - and so when those same heroes prove themselves to be flawed, the sense of disappointment is far-reaching. The ball-tampering scandal, which saw captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and batsman Cameron Bancroft banned after hatching a plot to cheat by using sandpaper on the ball in a Test match against South Africa in March, shook this proud sporting nation to its core, causing tremors that are still being felt today. As a new-look team took on India this week in its first home Test since the incident, the BBC's Stumped programme travelled to Australia to take the pulse of a damaged cricketing community.

Mind-blowing