Strange News

[S Landreth]

Meet Earendel, the most distant star ever detected

The most distant star — or possibly pair of stars — that astronomers have ever seen was just revealed thanks to the Hubble telescope and a massive cluster of galaxies. Far from Earth, the universe bends around the vast bulk of a galaxy cluster, creating a gravitational lens in spacetime much like the curved lens in a magnifying glass. Like a magnifying glass, it revealed something small and hidden: a star system from the early universe.

The far-away star system takes the official name WHL0137-LS, but the astronomers who found it nicknamed it “Earendel” from the Old English word meaning “morning star” or “rising light.”

Earendel system as we’re seeing it today was shining within just 900 million years of the Big Bang, according to the authors of a new paper in the journal Nature describing the discovery. Fully 12.8 billion years passed before that light reached the Hubble Space Telescope, magnified by a lucky trick of gravity to appear as a tiny smudge of photons on Hubble’s image sensor. Earendel is 8.2 billion years older than the Sun and Earth and 12.1 billion years older than our planet’s first animals.

Even by the standards of ancient stars, Earendel stands out: astronomers observed the previous record holder, nicknamed Icarus, as it appeared 9.4 billion years ago — 3.4 billion years more recently than this new record-holder. Even the oldest known supernovas, usually the brightest and most easily-spotted individual objects across the immensity of spacetime, are younger than Earendel.

Seeing through the gravity lens

Earendel’s home galaxy, the Sunrise arc, takes its name from that gravitational lensing effect that made this discovery possible.

“This galaxy appears magnified and stretched into a long, thin crescent shape due to the gravitational lensing effect of a massive cluster of galaxies in the foreground,” said Brian Welch, a Johns Hopkins University astronomer and lead author of the Nature paper.

Welch told The Verge that he stumbled across Earendel while he was studying the gravitational lens itself.

Gravitational lenses, like magnifying glasses, tend to warp and twist images and have areas of higher and lower magnification. If you have a magnifying glass at home, the best magnification is likely at the center of a simple circle. Gravitational lenses are trickier to use.

In a gravitational lens, there’s a line called the “critical curve” where the magnification is most intense. Objects seen through the lens get reflected across the critical curve, appearing multiple times. And the more closely they line up with the line of the curve from our perspective on Earth, the more magnified they get.

“I was creating a model of the lensing effects of the galaxy cluster, with the goal of measuring the magnification of the Sunrise Arc,” Welch said. “The models kept predicting that this one bright point on the arc should have an extremely high magnification.”

Welch realized that this bright point was an object very closely aligned with the critical curve — so close and so small that even Hubble’s sharp eye resolved its doubled, reflected image across the line as a single smear. That proximity to the critical curve also meant that whatever it was, it had already been magnified somewhere between 1,000 and 40,000 times before reaching Hubble. However small and faint it appeared to Hubble, it was, in fact, much smaller — tiny on the scale of the Sunrise Arc galaxy.

“As I looked into it more, I found that the source was too small to be anything other than an individual star (or binary system),” Welch said.

The ancient universe

Welch and a large international team of coauthors spent three and a half years studying Earendel across multiple Hubble observations to confirm that they were seeing something real and not a transient effect of the light.

That time and effort was worth it, Welch said, because these very old stars can teach us things about the history of the universe.

“With distant objects, we are seeing into the universe’s past and into a time when the universe looked very different than it does today,” Welch said. “We know that galaxies look different at this early time, and we know that there have been relatively few generations of stars that came before.”

Stars are the factories of heavy elements in our universe, formed when lighter atoms like hydrogen and helium fuse together through nuclear fusion to form heavier material like carbon, oxygen, and even iron. Earendel, at that early stage in our universe’s history, probably had very little material heavier than helium in its system, Welch said.

“Studying this lensed star in detail gives us a new window into what stars in these early days were like and how they differ from stars in the nearby universe,” Welch said.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in December 2021, is currently gearing up for science operations. Its optics, sharper than Hubble’s, should be able to confirm their conclusion that Earendel is a single star system and not a cluster of star systems lumped together, the authors wrote in the paper. They also hope to see whether Earendel was a solitary star or binary system, learn more about the star’s temperature and mass, among other properties.

JWST will be busy making its way through a scientific wish list that has grown long in the years astronomers spent anticipating the launch, as The Verge previously reported. That will include studying exoplanets as well as the ancient universe — including star systems like Earandel that glowed at the dawn of time. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/30/2...l-lensing-jwst

[S Landreth]

Wonder what deeply religious people think of the story above

[S Landreth]

Rare snake native to Alabama may be making a comeback

Conservationists are hopeful that a rare snake native to Alabama may be making a comeback after one was discovered last week in the state.

A “wild-hatched” eastern indigo snake was found on March 16, making it the second snake of the species to be discovered in Alabama in more than 60 years.

“The young snake was found yesterday and is the product of natural pairings among those purposefully released in Conecuh National Forest,” Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division wrote on Facebook.

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

The hatchling is the result of the Eastern Indigo Project, which began in 2006. The eastern indigo snake was once native to Alabama but was declared “threatened” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1978 after not being seen in the state since the 1950s.

The Eastern Indigo Project has been releasing the snakes into the Conecuh National Forest since 2010 with hopes of reintroducing the species to its native area.

Tim Mersmann, district ranger for the Conecuh National Forest in Alabama, said in a press release, “Multiple agencies focused on restoring the entire ecosystem, and the reintegration of the indigo snake species to the whole system is very satisfying.” https://thehill.com/changing-america...ay-be-making-a

Beautiful snake (turn it over to see its belly). We have some here on the property. They are protected.

[S Landreth]

‘Holy grail’ political button sets auction record, selling for $185K

A teeny, tiny campaign button is proving size doesn’t matter when it comes to fetching record-high prices for political memorabilia.

A one-and-a-quarter-inch button featuring the sepia-toned portraits of 1920 Democratic presidential candidate James Cox and his running mate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, garnered a record-breaking $185,850 — an unprecedented amount for a pinback button — at auction earlier this month.

“This is the real holy grail piece,” said Scott Mussell, an Americana specialist at Hake’s Auctions, which sold the campaign button.

Mussell explains that one of the reasons this particular button was so coveted was because only six of them in the same size exist. Not many of the Cox-Roosevelt buttons were produced, since “Democrats had no chance” to win the White House that year.

“Not a lot of material was made for them,” Mussell said. Doubters of Cox’s campaign proved to be right — he lost to his Republican opponent, Warren Harding, in a landslide.

In recent years, Mussell has seen an uptick of activity and interest in people getting involved in the world of political collections.

“I think the pandemic had a little bit to do with that,” the history guru said. “Everybody was stuck at home, and they’re looking around for stuff on the internet, and they’re digging through their attic and, you know, finding whatever relics they have.”

Older collectors are also starting to pass down some of their prized items to their kids, causing a “generational shift” and leading to more sought-after keepsakes making their way to auction houses.

Mussell said even in the digital age, political candidates will always produce physical items that could become collectibles.

“Even this last campaign — which was perhaps the most unusual of the many unusual campaigns recently — they still made stuff,” Mussell said.

“It seems like the Trump people didn’t make nearly as much as the Biden people. But going back to 2008 and 2012, the Obama campaign really, they made a lot of stuff: paper buttons, brochures, posters, all manners of things,” Mussell said.

For wannabe political collectors — or those eyeing big bucks down the road — Mussell suggests that hanging on to rare items is key.

“More generic stuff is what sort of falls to the wayside as far as the values of these things are concerned.”

Folks in Iowa and New Hampshire likely have an advantage in the competitive collecting world because they can hunt down “early material,” said Mussell.

Even as campaigns focus their efforts on social media and clicks, Mussell predicted there will always be a place for political collectables.

“Ultimately, part of this is history. Part of it is nostalgia, as well.”

“People have nostalgia for whatever their upbringing was, so people who were part of that 2008 campaign, they’re going to have nostalgia for that going forward,” he said. “I think as long as that is kind of continuing, there’s always going to be interest in the material.” https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-kno...d-selling-for/

[S Landreth]

Traces of giant prehistoric crocodiles discovered in northern British Columbia

Giant crocodiles once roamed northeastern British Columbia. A recently published article in Historical Biology features the first detailed trace fossil evidence ever reported of giant crocodylians. The sites are from the Peace Region of northeastern British Columbia, north of Tumbler Ridge.

The trace fossils include swim traces, made when the crocodiles were scraping the muddy bottoms of lakes and river channels with their claws. Some of these swim traces showed remarkable detail, including parallel striations that represent scale patterns on the crocodiles’ feet.

While the Tumbler Ridge area has become well known for its dinosaur tracks, there is something special about crocodiles. Unlike dinosaurs, they survived, and still have not changed substantially since the Mesozoic.

In 2020, a crane company donated time and personnel to recover four large blocks containing some of the finest examples of these tracks and traces. They were transported to the Tumbler Ridge Museum, where they are securely stored and will be incorporated into future exhibits.

Ancient giants

The tracks and traces we examined are in the age range of 95–97 million years from the Cretaceous Period. The tracks included ankylosaurs, ornithopods and turtles.

The size of the crocodiles can be estimated from the distance between their claw impressions. We used this distance to estimate a total body length of about nine metres, and possibly as much as 12 metres. This was corroborated by our identification of a partial track, 75 centimetres long, which allowed for a similar length estimate of close to nine metres.

A crocodile of such prodigious size would have weighed around five tonnes, and would probably have been a top predator. By comparison, the record length of crocodiles living today is about six metres.

Gigantism in crocodiles has been reported several times in the fossil record. In North America, the oldest body fossil evidence of giant crocodiles is of Deinosuchus at about 82 million years, estimated to have been between eight to 12 metres long. Deinosuchus has been recorded from the United States and Mexico, but never from Canada.

The large swim traces from north of Tumbler Ridge may represent a precursor to Deinosuchus, that lived at least 13 million years before the previously reported first appearance of giant crocodiles in North America.

Tracking enviromental changes

The environment consisted of a low-lying delta-plain with shallow lakes, river channels and vegetated wetlands, situated about 100 kilometres inland from the shoreline of the Western Interior Seaway that linked the Gulf of Mexico with the Arctic Ocean.

It was possible to document multiple episodes of flooding and emergence, which determined whether and when animals walked or swam. This helped explain the variety of tracks and traces that were identified.

These findings follow our discovery of 112 million-year-old swim traces, made by much smaller crocodylians (between one and two metres long) within the Tumbler Ridge UNESCO Global Geopark. Our familiarity with the nature of the exceptionally well-preserved traces from near Tumbler Ridge led directly to the first identification of crocodile swim traces in Africa.

The co-existence of traces made by walking ankylosaurs and swimming crocodiles on a single surface was intriguing and unprecedented in the fossil record. One of the ankylosaur trackways is the smallest thus far described from the region. It comprised tracks only 10 centimetres wide, presumably made by a juvenile. https://theconversation.com/traces-o...olumbia-180195 - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/...nalCode=ghbi20

[S Landreth]

Millions of toothpicks later, artist Wayne Kusy continues to build marvelous creations in wood

A toothpick is a humble thing, ubiquitous but so commonplace as to be ignored.

Not so for Wayne Kusy. For most of his 61 years, toothpicks — thousands of them, millions of them — have been essential parts of his life.

He has used them to create an astonishing and artful armada, a gathering of ships made of toothpicks and glue and his patient energies. They have been shown in galleries and museums and featured on television and in magazines. He should be famous, but he is not and that is OK with him.

“Most people wouldn’t recognize me on the street,” he told me a few years ago. “But I have become kind of well-known in the folk-art world.”

Kusy was born and raised in New Mexico and the Rogers Park area of Chicago and for decades has lived in a third-floor walk-up in Chicago's Lincoln Square. Like many youngsters, he played with Legos and, in grammar school, he used popsicle sticks to build a class project. In fifth grade his first ship sailed into his life when he used 3,000 toothpicks, give or take, to fashion a boat, a small boat.

“I was always fascinated by ships,” he said. “In part, it was their incredible size. They are, just think about it, buildings that float. I had to know, ‘How do they do that?’”

To satisfy his curiosity, he turned himself into a historian, searching out, finding and studying deck plans, blueprints and mechanical drawings. He read books, ogled photos and watched videos. Understandably, he also followed a more conventional higher learning path, studying marketing at Loyola University and later web design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has spent his for-profit career as a web designer.

He is, of course, a self-taught artist. Though there are now more than a few examples of toothpick artistry on the internet, when Kusy began, there was virtually nothing in the way of example or instruction.

On his own he became skilled at making toothpicks do what he needed them to do by trial and error, becoming an expert at using pliers to crush and mold toothpicks into pliant form. I first met him nearly 30 years ago, when he showed me his Titanic, a 75,000-toothpick ship nearly 10 feet long. It had taken him more than five years to make.

Then came a giant Lusitania, a 16-foot, 194,000-toothpick giant and a Queen Mary, 25 feet long and comprised of 1 million toothpicks.

He told me then, “What I do is never boring.”

But it is time-consuming, each boat taking years to create, in part because of Kusy’s attention to detail, such as the making lifeboats and handrails.

Now there are people (perhaps you, now reading this) who might think Kusy is nuts.

He is not. He is thoughtful and smart and self-effacing.

“I will tell you that during all these years I have thought of what I do as a hobby,” he said. “But recently I have started to really believe that I am an artist.”

Others were quicker to give him that label.

In 1994 when his Titanic was exhibited at a River North gallery, owner Celeste Sotola said, “Wayne is in the truest sense an artist because he’s a loner, he doesn’t follow anyone else’s lead, and the amount of time he spends on his art is a real symbol of his dedication.”

The amount of time was and remains two to three hours every day.

When he participated in the inaugural exhibition of the short-lived but wonderful gallery called Chicago Center for Self-Taught Art Museum, its director, Yolanda Saul, said, “The first time I saw the Titanic I thought it was amazing. I feel honored that he has agreed to loan us his work for the show.” There are other artists who work with toothpicks, Kusy told me without jealousy or pique, but few if any have been at it as long as he.

He has never been in this for the money. He did sell his Titanic for $15,000 to a Los Angeles museum and it now rests in the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, Florida. His Lusitania is in the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Queen Mary resides in the National Museum of Ship Models and Sea History in Sadorus in downstate Illinois, near Champaign.

Though he has a sponsor, Franklin International, the makers of the glue that holds his sculptures together, surprisingly, no toothpick company has been wise enough to similarly endow him. He continues to buy his own toothpicks and admits he is currently having trouble finding them, saying, “I am jonesing for toothpicks.”

Long a guitar player on open mic nights and in some local bands (one called Heavy Mental), he recently created a wooden one: five musicians — each about a foot tall — formed his Wood Zeppelin, with is accompanied by a nifty stop motion animation music video made in his living room with a little help from his friends.

“This came about because I had been commissioned by the Village of Algonquin to build a 45-inch model of the SS Algonquin from 1841,” he said. “About the same time, someone had suggested I document the construction using time-lapse photography. I thought it was a good idea, and the Algonquin was a small vessel. It took three months, but I shot 4,200 photos as I built the ship. The end result is on YouTube. Doing that inspired me. I thought if I can get a ship to animate, how about some rock ‘n’ roll characters.”

That ship is now on display in Algonquin’s Village Hall and Kusy is laboring on another major work, a sculpture of the SS Bremen, a German ship built in 1929. He traveled to Germany to do research.

His apartment also has four smaller ships in various stages of completion. They have been commissioned by boat owners who admire Kusy’s work, found him on his lively and information-filled website and were able to pay his modest fees, which involve hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.

One of these is a boat owned by a woman in Florida.

“She had me come down so I could see and photograph her boat,” said Kusy with his typical enthusiasm. “It took me forever to get there but she flew me back on a private jet. Now that was something.” https://nordot.app/88434999311831859...22757532812385

[S Landreth]

related to the story above........