@EricFielding@mastodon.social
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

EricFielding

@EricFielding@mastodon.social

Geophysicist at lab in Pasadena, California. Statements and opinions posted by me are my own and not those of my employer. he/him. Also https://mastodon.social/@EricFielding on Twitter

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Happy mother’s day to my Camponotus pennsylvanicus queen! She is nearly four years old this summer and the proud mother of nearly 700 beautiful daughters. Here she is today and years ago where her colony had only 30 ants. She has done an amazing job raising a huge colony!

The same queen protects a small pile of brood.

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird Can one queen have 20,000 baby ants? That seems difficult.

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

I am talking o a reporter about this in a couple hours: https://regina.ctvnews.ca/from-outer-space-sask-farmers-baffled-after-discovering-strange-wreckage-in-field-1.6880353

This is about an hour away from my farm, so this'll be a fun conversation, and yet another great opportunity to tell a lot of people about what a huge problem we have with unregulated commercialization of orbit. (Also I just redid my slides for my public talk next week, this is going in!)

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@michael_w_busch @WTL @sundogplanets There was that chunk of metal that crashed through the roof of a house in Florida. It was not hot enough to start a fire, but did damage the house.

sundogplanets, (edited ) to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

Hello Toronto - I'm giving a public talk there in 8 days. Want to hear me yell about satellites for an hour? Come say hi!

EDITED to add: Oops I didn't give image credit! The image in the poster was taken by Joshua Rozells, see APOD link: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220614.html

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@sundogplanets I guess Toronto is a giant city if you are from Canada. Since I live in the Los Angeles area, I have a different perspective.

EricFielding, to space
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

SWOT Satellite Helps Gauge the Depth of Death Valley’s Temporary Lake

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/swot-satellite-helps-gauge-the-depth-of-death-valleys-temporary-lake

ZekuZelalem, to random
@ZekuZelalem@dair-community.social avatar

BATTLE FOR THE HORN:
Just here to provide some updates on the geopolitical skirmishing that has involved a number of major players in a race for control and influence of Somalia's coastal frontiers off the Gulf of Aden...which borders the Red Sea and the lucrative Bab El Mandeb strait. That strait has a huge impact on global oil shipments, and has been explored as a possible Israel weapons delivery portal.

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@ZekuZelalem Thanks for your explanation about this topic. The news media in the USA has been ignoring this.

mattferrell, to solar
@mattferrell@mastodon.social avatar

: A $19 Million investment has been made into installing solar panels over irrigation canals in the USA, to generate renewable energy and increase water conservation. What are your thoughts on this plan? News Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/04/05/19-million-for-innovative-solar-panel-installation-over-canals-from-investing-in-america-agenda/

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@mattferrell Sounds like a win-win effort to me. The canals already cut across the landscape and have road access. It is not tearing up natural areas with wildlife. I only wonder who is going to be paid to do the installation and who will get the benefit of the electricity that is produced.

ai6yr, (edited ) to food
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

I believe (at least in the US), today is "everyone has corned beef and cabbage" day. What are you having for dinner tonight?

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@ai6yr @EricFielding @chris_bloke Yes, about 30 million people in the USA have Irish ancestry and there are only 7 million people in Ireland now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans?wprov=sfti1#

EricFielding, to random
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

The European Space Agency (ESA) ERS-2 satellite re-entered the Earth's atmosphere earlier today over the North Pacific Ocean. I used a lot of radar images from this satellite in years past, but I am happy that they were able to de-orbit it and reduce potential space junk. It was some luck that it fell over the 75% of the Earth that is ocean.
https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/ERS-2_reenters_Earth_s_atmosphere_over_Pacific_Ocean

EricFielding, to random
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

NASA's Mars Helicopter team says goodbye.
https://youtu.be/raOA2MX-XLQ?si=qMQBZpsKM_IvbgxQ

EricFielding, to Iceland
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

The Icelandic TV network RUV has a great live webcam that is on top of a hill north of Grindavik and showing the lava flowing into the town. It is sad to see lava reaching people's homes but all the people were evacuated in time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqudj0x0POA

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

Today, 15 January, the eruption has ended. The fissure close to the town stopped flowing after destroying three houses. The larger fissure further north has only a small residual vent activity, but flows yesterday covered the main road and destroyed the hot water pipes bringing heating to Grindavik. The berm or earth wall deflected most of the lava from the northern fissure and was a great effort.

EricFielding, to random
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

NISAR, the soon-to-launch radar satellite from NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), will measure key Earth vital signs, from the health of wetlands to ground deformation by volcanoes to the dynamics of land and sea ice.

Short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, NISAR will provide the most comprehensive picture to date of motion and deformation of frozen surfaces in Earth’s ice- and snow-covered environments, collectively known as the cryosphere.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/this-us-indian-satellite-will-monitor-earths-changing-frozen-regions

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Some 'science' photo libraries are...questionable.

This photo claims to be "Ant carrying aphid egg, SEM" colorized to highlight the "egg" but look closely! (https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/370844/view/ant-carrying-aphid-egg-sem)

It's NOT an egg. That's just part of the ant's mouth! Take a look at the second set of photos by Hugo Darras. ( https://flickr.com/photos/fourmis/5004761756 ) you can see this is part of her maxillae, the part she uses to collect liquid.

How did they decide it was an aphid egg? Most aphids don't even lay eggs they give live birth!

Three photos of an ant's head as seen from below. The photos show how the maxillae can extend, it also shows that the "egg" in the other photo was just part of the ant's mouth.

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird I also see a lot of videos on YouTube with crazy interpretations of geology and geophysics. Not quite the same as this site that claims to be science photos, but scientific misinformation is spreading rapidly these days. I don’t know how we can reduce the impact.

EricFielding, to Iceland
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

The magma intrusion beneath Grindavik, Svartsengi, and the Blue Lagoon of Iceland has finally broken through to the surface through a 4 km long fissure with lava fountains. The initial lava flows are not going towards Grindavik, but the area was evacuated a month ago after a swarm of earthquakes and strong surface deformation due to magma dike expansion at depth.
https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-12-18-eruption-on-reykjanes-peninsula-399922

EricFielding, to space
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

The NASA Deep Space Optical Communication tech demo on the Psyche spacecraft has successfully called home with a laser beam. This is the first optical communication from beyond the Moon. #NASA #NASAJPL #MissionToPsyche
See https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-deep-space-optical-comm-demo-sends-receives-first-data

EricFielding, to Iceland
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

Iceland news service has a live updates page in English. They report that the earthquake rate is slow again today (Monday) and the authorities are considering allowing more people to visit their homes in Grindavik and retrieve items. The hot water supply has been damaged by the cracks and deformation in the rocks under the town. https://www.ruv.is/english/2023-11-10-magma-intrusion-under-grindavik-eruption-likely-live-396249

EricFielding, to Mexico
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

Blog post on The Eyewall (@theeyewallwx) today describes how badly the forecasts for Hurrican Otis missed predicting the explosive strengthening yesterday. Tuesday afternoon, the forecast was for Category 1 hurricane, but it strengthened to Category 5 and hit Acapulco directly.
https://theeyewall.com/october-25-2023-outlook-after-a-shocking-burst-of-intensification-hurricane-otis-makes-a-catastrophic-landfall-near-acapulco/

EricFielding, to music
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

Heavy metal (or at least hard rock) music video about NASA Psyche mission to a heavy metal asteroid.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=nulrIo6CTb8&si=VqIZgxE9Tl42fOKd

EricFielding, to random
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

Morocco interferogram from NASA Caltech-JPL ARIA processing. Edit: after original posting, we realized that the sign of the displacement colors was reversed. The online version at this URL is the correct version. The ground near and east of the epicenter (red symbol) moved up and southeast, towards the satellite, as expected for thrust earthquake. https://d1z62tir4fw0q0.cloudfront.net/202309_Morocco_EQ/Displacements/Sentinel1/D154_20230911_20230830/MOROCCO_S1_20230830_20230911_UNW.png

EricFielding, to random
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

What is the best way for an organization to create a shared account here on Mastodon or another Fediverse instance? An organization that I work with wants to migrate from the former bird site and create an account but they are concerned about the security risk of a shared password. @mastodonmigration

Sheril, to science
@Sheril@mastodon.social avatar

If the community truly wants to make our work more accessible to policymakers & the public + increase support for & trust in our research, we shouldn't publish our work behind ridiculously expensive paywalls that very few people can access.

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@Sheril Starting this year, people who get research grants from NASA are required to publish in open-access journals or provide their manuscripts openly through preprint servers. I think other funding agencies in the USA and other countries are adding similar requirements.

EricFielding, to LosAngeles
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

The National Hurricane Center (USA) reported that the storm center was over downtown Los Angeles, California at 8 PM Pacific time on August 20.

hankg, to microsoft

This article on the zombie of Silverlight had me flashing back to the end of the 2000s, before HTML5 was a thing, when I was really concerned that MS was about to succeed in quashing the web once and for all for dynamic content/single page app type network apps. Like C# is to Java, Silverlight was Java Applets (and Flash) done right. There was no real alternative available. With Silverlight only having first class support on Windows with close second class support on OSX it seemed clear that all other desktops would be locked out. The open source Moonlight project, based on Mono, was always painfully behind. As much as I hate JavaScript I'm glad that the community got HTML/CSS and JavaScript polished up to not match what you could do with Silverlight but exceed it. Anyway, the spirit of Silverlight has been picked up by the community thanks to technologies like WASM and Blazor. Interesting read but not something I'd look to jump to personally. #microsoft #silverlight #moonlight #JavaScript #blazor #xaml
Silverlight Just Won't Die: 'XAML for Blazor' Arrives -- Visual Studio Magazine

EricFielding,
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

@hankg I had to run Windows under Parallels on my Mac for about five years to be able to use a website that required Silverlight, after the macOS support was dropped. The government agency in
Japan used Silverlight only for their website all the way until Microsoft killed support for even IE on Windows. Then they finally made or paid someone to write a modern website that uses HTML5.

EricFielding, to random
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

NASA JPL Video on the Europa Clipper spacecraft

https://youtube.com/watch?v=u9eOg3pCN0M&feature=share

EricFielding, to space
@EricFielding@mastodon.social avatar

Where are flood waters flowing after major storms? How much did the land move during an earthquake or volcanic eruption?

A NASA-sponsored project called OPERA is tracking a changing Earth by merging data from multiple satellite missions.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-led-project-tracking-changes-to-water-ecosystems-land-surface.

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