I have an Irish last name that has French roots (I guess from the Normans invading) but I have no actual Irish blood in me.
On my father's side I'm mostly German (my German grandfather was adopted into an Irish family), and on my mother's side I'm everything in the British Isles except Irish.
The name is enough though, right? ;)
 
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Shagnak said:
I have an Irish last name that has French roots (I guess from the Normans invading) but I have no actual Irish blood in me.
Click to expand...
I'll let you in on a little secret: the French roots are more important. ;)

I've no idea if I got any Irish blood, but I know it's a mix of French and English, with a dab of Dutch.
 
I could have posted this in the science thread, but ...
futurism.com

Biologist Says the Sun May Be Conscious

A groundbreaking theory claims that everything in existence possesses some form of consciousness — including the Sun itself.
futurism.com futurism.com

Still, it's a fun idea in a sci-fi type of way. The Sun is a complex system; maybe it harbors mysteries we haven't yet comprehended....And say the whole thing is somehow true — if so, what would the Sun think about? It may be able to choose in which direction to send out solar flares or coronal mass ejections," Sheldrake mused to PopMech, "which can have an enormous effect on life on Earth, and to which our technologies are very vulnerable."

pibbuR who from now on considers the sun chaotic evil.
 
That would truly be hard to believe, that a star could be sentient in any way. Then again I certainly don't claim to know everything.
 
Stars being "alive" is a hot take, but could be argued for, given that they have a "biological cycle" where they are chemically born, they feed, they grow and mature and eventually they die. Having sentience and controlling in which way they want to eject their solar flares sounds like next level tinfoil hat material, however.
 
A quasi sattelite is an object circling the sun, but with a period similar to that of a planet. Viewed from the planet, this may seem like an orbit around the planet itself, but it's not really a moon.

Animation_of_524522_Zoozve%27s_orbit.gif

This picture shows Zoozve (violet), which may make Venus (white) inhabitants to be fooled believing that finally they've to got a moon.

"Zoozve"? Often when given names to celestial objects names from mythology has been selected. For instance the planets Uranus and Neptune. The Jupiter moons Europa (consort of Zeus), Io (lover of Zeus, later turned into a cow) and the ominous name given to Pluto's moon, "Charon". Not always mythology, however. We have the interstellar visiting object "ʻOumuamua" "from Hawaiian ʻoumuamua 'scout' ... reflects the way the object is like a scout or messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to humanity." (Wikipedia)

This object was at first given the designation 2002 VE68. However "On 26 January 2024, the Radiolab podcast aired an episode about the asteroid, which co-host Latif Nasser first noticed on his child's solar system poster, where it was referred to as "ZOOZVE", derived from the artist, Alex Foster, misreading the asteroid's provisional designation" (Wikipedia). And the rest is history, in 2024 the Astronomy naming bosses (they must have found it funny) officially approved the name.

pibbuR who like most geeks astronomers has humor (admittedly not always good humor)

PS. Quasi satellites are unstable.m Zoozve is believed to leave Venus (kicked out) in a couple of hundred years. DS.

PPS. Another not-really-a-moon is Cruithne, which co-orbit's earth, but does not encircle it. DS.
 
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One field of study in astronomy is to determine how objects are composed (the stuff they're made of). Of special interest is the composition of their atmosphere, not only for planets and moons in the solar system, but also for exoplanets. How is that possible?

When elements are exited (for instance by being hit by photons) they emit radiation, but only at certain wavelengths. We see that if we study the spectrum. Turns out that different elements have their own signature, and thus can be identified by analyzing the spectrum. A practical example of this is the sodium vapor lamp, which emits yellow light a 589 nm wavelength.

The spectroscope was invented in 1859. In 1868, while analyzing light from the solar corona (during a solar eclipse) they found a bright yellow (wavelength 587.49) emission line. Initially thought to represent sodium, but later deciding it didn't correspond to any known substance, and a new element was proposed. They suggested the name "Helium" after "Helios", the greek word for the sun. Helium was first discovered chemically nearly 30 years later.

A year after they noticed another unknown very intense 530.3 nm (green) spectral line. It's so intense that even without a spectroscope, the corona has a greenish tint (see image below). Once again a new element was proposed, given the name Coronium (after the corona). In 1902 it was suggested (by the father of the periodic table, Dmitri Mendeleev) that said Coroniuy might be an element lighter than Hydrogen. Fast forward to 1930 when it was finally determined that this wasn't a new element, in stead the spectral line represented highly ionized iron atoms (Fe13+), which means it has given up 13 electrons. This can only occur at very high temperatures, above 1 million K.

file_41651.jpg


However, this poses a problem. The surface (photosphere) temperature of the sun is around 5000 K. How is it possible that the atmosphere is so much higher (one estimate is that locally it may be up to 20 million K)? There's still no complete explanation for this. One contributing factor is magnetism, another may be the presence of completely ionized helium which is thought to reduce loss of heat from radiation.

pibbuR who regrets that there now are no unknown elements, his only chance at having an element named after him is the artificial synthesis of element number 119 provisionnally named ununennium. Unfortunately, according to Wikipedia "Theoretical and experimental evidence has shown that the synthesis of ununennium will likely be far more difficult than that of the previous elements."

PS. Synthesis of element 118 Oganesson is difficult enough as as far as I know still no more than 5 (possibly 6) very short lived atoms are produced. DS.
 
There are still a few old things here (besides me), like an Amiga 500 somewhere in the attic and books I can't find the heart to discard: DIY electronics that lead to the damned hobby, the complete schematics of the TRS-80 Model III, old programming language books (misc. assembly, Basic, Lisp, Forth, Logo, Pascal, C, and so on), and a few other oddities (an MS-DOS manual). And a few old game manuals.
 
Just randomly stumbled onto this CP2077 comparison video, on the 3.5 vs 3.6 vs 3.7 implementation of DLSS (yeah, it's that important to me :))) ).
Anyway, that's not the interesting part. The fascinating part is that the videos has a song playing, and I think it's some remix or riff on the CP2077 end credits song; the one I absolutely loved, and have played over and over for a couple of days after wrapping up the story. The reason I say this is because the hairs on my arm instantly stood up. That's usually my bodily reaction to an emotional moment. Damn, such a beautiful song. For a beautiful game.
 
gizmodo.com

Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores

Amazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com

"Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped."

pibbuR who very likely would hate that profession.

EDIT: Initially wrong link.
 
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