Peckerwood Manor

I'm still on quasi-baby leave from Peckerwood Publishing House (MANOR! - you, probably), but I saw this article and just had to weigh in on how our universe is expanding faster than a celeb coming off Ozempic and we don't know why. I saw this article about how the Webb telescope has confirmed what previously was wondered to be something Hubble was making up: the universe is expanding faster than expected. Not-at-all-made-up image of Hubble celebrating to follow: The James Webb Space Telescope, hereafter referred to as Webb because I'm lazy, has collected two years worth of data confirming the universe is expanding 8% faster than what astrophysicists think they know about the beginning and evolution of our universe. Apparently this has a name, called the Hubble Tension. But Webb is backing up his older brother now. But Cappy, you might say. Expanding? What? If you're not already familiar, the prevailing theory of how our universe started is called the Big Bang. Essent...

Manorites, I'm briefly coming out of parental leave from writing for the Manor to express my outrage at the headlines. "Snow reported at Philadelphia International Airport in the middle of July: NWS" "It Snowed in Philadelphia Sunday: National Weather Service" "Philadelphia International Airport sees snow in July" "Philadelphia sets record for snow in July" Did the US National Weather Service report a trace of snow on July 14, 2024? Yes. Does that technically set a record? Yes. Did it actually snow? NOOOOOOOOO. What you'll see in all these click-baity articles is that once you get past the headlines, it HAILED. HAIL, MY HORS. via GIPHY This all comes down to a peculiarity with reporting criteria that is frankly, dumb. Thunderstorms that came through Philadelphia on Sunday hailed enough to leave a trace (that's <0.4 in or less depth - 10 mm for the smarter 98% of the planet) of frozen precipitation, i.e., hail, on the surface. And f...

Peckers, grab your rosaries and say your prayers! The sun's magnetic poles are due to flip, and it could happen this year ! NSF/AURA/NSO I'm kidding, of course. Not about the flipping, but about the need to worry about it. This happens every 11 years, after all! What even is a magnetic pole? Gifer A magnet is a material that produces a magnetic field. Super helpful, huh? A magnetic field is essentially an area that influences the motion of charged particles moving through it. You've probably run into magnets before. Maybe you stuck them on your fridge, or you're convinced the COVID vaccine lets you stick car keys to yourself . Magnets sticking is achieved due to the magnet producing a field that attracts the particles in the magnet to the particles in the refrigerator. Magnetic fields look pretty cool. Here we see the structure of a magnetic field because of how it lines up pieces of metal that are aligned by the center magnet's field. Wikipedia If I went any furthe...

We'll consider this one science-adjacent in one of my favorite disciplines, archaeology. Social science counts, right? A paper recently published in the journal Antiquity revolved around a hollowed out goat or sheep bone found in the Netherlands. Why would anyone make this sort of box? Why, to hide their hallucinogens, of course! Black henbane (also known lovingly as stinking nightshade) is technically a poisonous plant. According to the world-renowned source of Wikipedia, in ancient times it was often used in conjunction with other plants for either an anaesthetic (numbing or sleeping agent) and "magic potions" of the psychoactive variety. Modern examples of psychoactive drugs would be cocaine, cannabis, ecstasy, or Tylenol 3. Pliny the Elder documented its use in the Roman Empire, saying it was "of the nature of wine and therefore offensive to the understanding." Dioscorides was a little less harsh, recommending it as a sedative and pain reliever. So this ...

A less dry science post for today! Part of being a scientist is having a deep, deep appreciation for your field of study. As much as I hate sitting here day after day writing code, fighting with my computer, discussing policy ad nauseam, dealing with bullshit, and/or writing a paper (I HATE WRITING PAPERS), at the end of the day I love the weather. From the peaceful calm of stepping outside on a warm, still morning to the incredible energy that fills every cell of my body when I'm storm chasing, I both love and am humbled by the weather every day. That extends really to the entire universe. Trees, animals, rocks, planets, stars, galaxies...we love it all here at the Manor. That's why today we simply step back and appreciate the beauty of our universe with the release of images of 19 spiral galaxies taken by the James Webb Space Telescope . Via nasa.gov. Observations of nearby spiral galaxies in near-infrared and mid-infrared light. Credit to ASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (ST...

Your local highway after the smallest bit of snow isn't the only place where pileups can happen. Galaxies can do it too! It all started with a strong fast radio burst. The strongest we've known, in fact. What the hell is that? A fast radio burst is a radio pulse that comes and goes (transient) lasting anywhere from a fraction of a millisecond to three seconds. We don't know what causes them. And they're strong. The average fast radio burst releases about as much energy in one millisecond (a one-thousandth of a second) as our Sun does in three full days. Of course, they (thankfully) are much less strong by the time they make it here. Learn more on Wikipedia , the king of all sources. Alexa Gordon from Northwestern University (a legit place to study astronomy and astrophysics, by the way) says the current thought is they are caused by very compact objects, like a magnetar. These are a type of neutron star with very powerful magnetic fields. A neutron star is the collapsed...

I'm no biologist. In fact, it's one of my least favorite science areas. I love me some plants and animals, but I just do not care about their inner workings in much the same way as you likely don't care about the complex ass process in which ice crystals form in the upper atmosphere. And no, I won't tell you about that, because my graduate level coursework in this arena basically didn't care if we understood it either because it's that big of a pain in the ass. However, I WILL tell you about this delightful news during the lovely time between Christmas and the New Year: reindeer chew their cud in their sleep! Talk about multitasking. You may have heard of reindeer. Those delightful animals that fly through the air and pull Santa's sleigh. No! Much to the dismay of a disturbingly large portion of the population, reindeer are in fact real animals. In North America, we call them caribou , because how could we dream of keeping naming consistent across continent...

An article from the Washington Post (sorry for the potential pay wall folks) is making a big splash in your Captain's professional circles the last couple of days. So, what is Artificial Intelligence (AI), also called Machine Learning, what is weather modeling, and is Google really going to take over the weather enterprise like they try to do everything else? Let's start with good old fashioned weather modeling. The father of modern weather forecasting, including Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP, weather models), is Vilhelm Bjerknes of Norway (1862-1951). This is him. Via Wikipedia Fun fact: Scandinavia is basically responsible for most of what we have learned about weather in the last 100 or so years, so while the Vikings did nothing but destroy my ancestors, their descendants made my career possible, so I thank them. Anyway, in addition to all the other things he did, he is the first to write down what we call the primitive equations, the basis of modern computer models of...

For background on El Niño in general, see this previous Science Snapshots:  https://peckerwoodmanor.blogspot.com/2023/07/science-snapshots-heeeereeees-el-nino.html But it's not just a normal El Niño this winter (or summer for our friends below the equator). It's a SUPER EL NIÑO! Well, that's the prediction, anyway. Apparently the U.S.'s National Center for Atmospheric Research has a new climate model, and when they ran it the results were "oh shit." I'm more on the short term side of things, but I'm guessing their reaction when they saw the results was the same as when I see there's going to be a massive tornado outbreak tomorrow when I look at the 500 millibar vorticity chart, and that is "oh shit." Based on past experience, stronger El Niño equals more pronounced impacts. A super El Niño is defined as when the area of warm sea surface temperatures is 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Freedom Units), and has only happened 3 times since we...

Cryptozoology is the study of supposed "undiscovered" creatures. It's not really a science, and encompasses things like undiscovered large apes (sasquatch, yeti), chupacabras, the Loch Ness Monster, you get the picture. I read something once I found interesting. I can't remember where, so apologies for the lack of citation. But, a lawyer looks for evidence to support their hypothesis, while a scientist looks for evidence to disprove it. I learned this in my statistics class, to take the null hypothesis. For example, if my hypothesis is, "There are storks in the park," I can never disprove it. If I never find a single stork, that doesn't mean there AREN'T any. I have no reason to update my hypothesis that I just pulled out of my ass. I'll always insist there are some storks in that damn park. Whereas if I take the hypothesis, "There are no storks in the park," I can disprove that the instant I find a stork and update my hypothesis to som...

I'm sick AF and when I get sick, it's always a man cold with me. tenor.com I didn't slept much last night and my sinuses hate me. So as I lay here in bed with the simple common cold, surely dying, I'm wondering why the hell we haven't figured out how to cure this bullshit yet. Here's why. We started working on this in the 1950s, after figuring out it was the result of a group of viruses known as rhinoviruses, which account for about 75% of adult colds. vsgif.com So what's the problem? That there's over 160 different kinds, that's what. This makes the creation of a vaccine or drug a difficult problem indeed. You can make a vaccine to immunize people to one strain, but they're still susceptible to the other 159. But scientists don't let something like "impossible" stop them. Giphy Various approaches are being taken. Different teams are: Trying to find a common structure between all rhinoviruses to target Making a "cocktail" ...

My Peckers, please allow me to apologize for the lack of Science Snapshots recently. Thinks have been hectic in the Peacock household, on top of my constant fatigue plus insomnia because why the hell should I be able to sleep when I'm exhausted? But today is a very special Science Snapshots, where we look back at the Great Colorado Flood which occurred 10 years ago. The anniversary was actually yesterday, but I didn't want to step on the toes of yesterday's remembrance. Any other Front Range Peckers will remember this too. In September 2013, I was living in the city of Boulder, Colorado. I remember the week very well. It was cold and rainy after an early September that was atypically hot, producing multiple record high temperatures, and on Monday we were all quite happy with the cold and the rain. On Tuesday it started to get old. And on Wednesday the 11th, I was sending out energy to the universe that the rain would just stop already, please. But it didn't stop. It got...

Jerald  has waited long enough, so it's time to talk about Hurricane Hunters! Courtesy NOAA Note I'll be talking about US-based planes and organizations only, as that is what I'm familiar with. If you know about the equivalent activities from your home country, please feel free to share details in the comments! Hurricane Hunters are essentially airborne storm chasers who fly into hurricanes/typhoons/tropical cyclones. Except they are sanctioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), rather than just any random in a plane who feels like they can fly into a storm (looking at you, non-meteorologist storm chasers who risk the lives of everyone around you). While my understanding is that it's the experience of a lifetime based on people I know who have gone, the goal at the end of the day is to improve hurricane forecasts to better protect life and property. In addition to NOAA's crew , the US Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron ...

Part 1 here Part 2 here It only took me two long ass articles to get through the opening scene, so you know you're in for a long ride! So if no one continues to read this series...that's cool. I'll rant to myself. After the devastation of the F-5 tornado that we learned last time would never have been referred to as such in 1969, we jump forward to present day (1996). Showing the huge leap forward in weather observing technology, we encounter GOES 8 flying across the screen. Screenshot of the satellite from Twister Note that I've never seen GOES referred to as G.O.E.S. Who does that? Jan de Bont, apparently. GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. Except I learned in school it means Geostationary Orbiting Earth Satellite. The official NOAA page says the former though so I'm guessing either this is a Mandela Effect or they changed it randomly somewhere down the line. The first GOES was launched in 1975, and ever since then we've been c...

It looks like something important happened in the world of physics. I say "looks like" because today, I'm going to attempt to explain something that I don't understand. Like at all. We're going to be parsing out this sentence from U of Chicago: "Physicists now have a brand-new measurement of a property of the muon called the anomalous magnetic moment that improves the precision of their previous result by a factor of 2." Scroll down for the "bottom line" if you don't want a primer in particle physics. Let's start at the beginning. When I wanted to figure out what the hell is a muon, I needed to figure out what the hell particle physics is all about. Alright, so in my podunk public high school I actually had a halfway decent chemistry/physics teacher. He left a very well paying job at Whirlpool just to teach high school science in bumfuck nowhere because he felt like it. I learned in school that atoms are made up of a nucleus of protons...