Notices by Mike Malaska (mike_malaska@deepspace.social), page 2

On January 14, 2005 just over 20 years ago today, the Huygens probe touched down on the organic-rich surface of Saturn's moon Titan.

Here is the scene from Titan's surface. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07232

Scientists (I'm one of those) have been analyzing this image and the other descent images from the probe for 2 decades. What have we learned from the probe images about the surface of enigmatic moon?

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For #SilentSunday , this was at
Earth's South Pole 490 million years ago.*

*according to the Rock'd app's continental paleoreconstruction for 490 million years ago.

Continental drift brought these rocks from the south pole, across the equator, and into today's northern mid-latitudes.

(So yes, there were ice sheets and glaciers in central and eastern North Carolina, but...about half a billion years ago.)

Haw River Paddler Access park near NC highway 54, Graham, North Carolina.

#SilentSunday
Orange County, North Carolina.

10 seconds of softly chirping crickets on a peaceful fall evening in the Piedmont woods of North Carolina.

Have a good evening!

I voted!

If you can do it, please vote early. No matter what principles or issues you hold dear, please exercise your right to vote to make your voice heard.

And remember, nobody needs to know how you voted. Your husband/wife/family/friends do not need to know, nor can they know. It is only beween you and the ballot box.

Thank you!

Imma gonna spin off a thread posted by @weatherwest

Can we change the course of hurricanes? (No. Definitely not yet.)

Can we affect weather? Why, yes. Sorta.

And this thread is going to be a very wild ride.

We will cover:
Kurt Vonnegut.
Crystal structures.
Agricultural frost damage.
Biotechnology and society.
and, of course #astrobiology

Buckle up.

Here we go....

[1/n]

So yes, in rare instances, humans can make rain happen by seeding clouds. They spread silver iodide (AgI) crystals into the clouds. Silver iodide is not soluble in water and one of it's crystal forms is hexagonal and mimics ice. The water molecules fit right in. The silver iodide crystals serve as "seed" nucleation centers and the water molecules glom onto them in the form of ice. They get bigger, heavier, and drop to make rain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_iodide

In the book 'Cat's Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut (great book, btw.) a seed crystal of "ice-nine" causes worldwide devastation as it makes water turn to a solid at room temperature.

Amazingly, it was Kurt Vonnegut's older brother, Bernard Vonnegut, who discovered that silver iodide could be used to seed clouds by serving as the nuclei for ice crystals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Vonnegut

I just captured a one-in-a-million image.
In the woods just off our front deck.

I think it wants me to go with it to Narnia.

Many people ask me: "Gee Mike, have you seen any scary-ass fungi in your garden lately?"

Why sure, here is a nightmare-inducing image of cedar-apple rust (Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae):

Here is a detail of some of that salt deposit where the lake "went away".

(Can't use term "receded", because the lake might be bigger now. Maybe "moved away"?)

Wind was moving image left to image right. It swooped around the topographic obstacle. There is also a neat lumpiness repeating bump pattern as well. And on top of all this are the fine hairs of salt. Zoom in to image center for detail.

I think that this is an evaporative salt effloresecnce carved by wind.

#geology
#DeathValley