Tootfinder

On Website Technicals (2020-12) - Tech updates: vignette ads, year-end to-dos, Big Sur and FTDI, half traffic, time travel, 20/20. - https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-site-technicals-43.html

On Website Technicals (2020-12)
Tech updates: vignette ads, year-end to-dos, Big Sur and FTDI, half traffic, time travel, 20/20.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #KEXP's #SundaySoul
Derobert and The Half-Truths:
🎵 Peace On Earth
#DerobertandTheHalfTruths
https://derobertandthehalftruths.bandcamp.com/album/peace-on-earth
https://open.spotify.com/track/25eEpWBAL947uaPiI4676W
Please 🔁 BOOST to share what you like
- your followers don't see if you ⭐ favourite a post

Woohoo. It's my lucky day!
Although I have to say, Elon, if you're splurging out over half a billion between just 5 lucky winners, what on earth have I said to offend you that I'm only being offered $2 million?
#spam

Won’t happen in my lifetime, but if the human race survives the next decade or so some of you young whippersnappers could be seeing this.
#science #spaceScience #exoPlanets

Could a unique rectangular telescope be the key to finding Earth 2.0?
"We show that this design can, in principle, find half of all existing Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars within 30 light-years in less than three years."

As we turned into Lone Pine to begin the half-marathon ascent of Mount Whitney,
I got the sense that Frederick had been distilled into a person whose focus was so singular that she only needed someone to show her direction.
That someone was Boyd.
Frederick asked him to pace the miles into the base of the climb,
and it was then that Boyd told her,
finally, that she was on pace to break the age-group record.
This was the final arrow in his quiver.
…

What It Takes to Crew the Hardest Race on Earth
Every year, ultrarunners sign up to compete in a brutal race that stretches 135 miles across Death Valley in the high heat of summer. Because of its harsh conditions, the Badwater 135 is perhaps the most intensely crewed ultra in the world, and without these dedicated support teams, for most, the race would be impossible.

I always find the use of first person plural pronouns in discussions of the distant future to be too cute…
Humans didn’t exist a million years ago. There were some crafty hominid apes but not the sort you could clean up and mistake for a human.
There is no “us” 7 billion years from now. There is very likely no “us” in half a million years. We may or may not have descendants but they won’t be “us” in any sense.
A billion years is longer than Earth has had visible life

<<Global growth of power demand last overwhelmed growth of wind and solar. Power generation grew by 4.3%, or 1,293 TWh from 29,963 to 31,256 TWh. Combined wind and solar generation grew by just half that total, 649 TWh. The gap between the two, 644 TWh, was filled by 1) nuclear and hydro generation grew by a combined 272 TWh -unreliable growth technologies. Meanwhile, 2) coal generation continued to grow, by 152 TWh.>>
- Gregor Macdonald

Not Fast Enough
Monday 7 July 2025

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #SundaySoul
Derobert and The Half-Truths:
🎵 Peace On Earth
#DerobertandTheHalfTruths
https://derobertandthehalftruths.bandcamp.com/album/peace-on-earth
https://open.spotify.com/track/25eEpWBAL947uaPiI4676W

💎 Scientists design superdiamonds with theoretically predicted hexagonal crystal structure
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-scientists-superdiamonds-theoretically-hexagonal-crystal.html

Scientists design superdiamonds with theoretically predicted hexagonal crystal structure
The brilliantly shiny diamond is more than just pretty; it's one of the hardest minerals on Earth, with a name derived from the Greek word adámas, meaning unbreakable. Scientists have now engineered a harder form of diamond known as bulk hexagonal diamond (HD)—a crystalline structure that has been theorized for over half a century to have physical properties superior to those of conventional diamond.

Gravitational photon echo
Wen-Te Liao, Sven Ahrens
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00533 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.00533

Gravitational photon echo
The generation, controls, and storage of the gravitationally induced photon echo using the 8.4 eV Thorium-229 nuclear clock transition on Earth are theoretically investigated. With its exceptionally narrow linewidth of approximately 1 mHz and high quality factor in the order of $10^{19}$, the Thorium-229 clock transition allows for the potential detection of gravitational-redshift effects at millimeter-scale altitude variations. Moreover, the 1740-second half lifetime of the Thorium-229 isomeri…

Recoil-Constrained Scheduling of Non-Propulsive Payload Deployment for Mega-Constellations
Li Zhengrui, Li wenhao, Feng Guanhua, Yue Yuxian
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08251

Recoil-Constrained Scheduling of Non-Propulsive Payload Deployment for Mega-Constellations
This paper addresses the significant challenge of recoil momentum accumulation during non-propulsive payload deployment for low-Earth-orbit mega-constellations. An efficient phase-based approximation algorithm is introduced, leading to over 90% faster computation while maintaining maximum ejection velocity errors below 1%. The analysis highlights that cumulative recoil velocity is the primary factor governing deployment capability, with excess velocity being approximately half of the cumulative…

Comprehensive analysis of CM Draconis: eclipse timing variations driven by either a third body or stellar magnetic activity
B. Kalomeni, K. Yakut
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17035

Comprehensive analysis of CM Draconis: eclipse timing variations driven by either a third body or stellar magnetic activity
The CM Draconis system is a well-studied, double-lined spectroscopic binary that is totally eclipsing and exhibits strong magnetic activity. Nearly one million photometric measurements have been collected across multiple wavelengths over more than half a century. In addition to showing frequent flare activity and apsidal motion, CM Dra also hosts a distant white dwarf and has been proposed to harbor a Jupiter-sized circumbinary companion. At only 47 light-years from Earth, it remains one of the…