Magazine Posts

Susan Horowitz Cain "SUSAN CAIN is the #1 bestselling author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which has been translated into 40 languages".... Learn more
 Photo Credit: Aaron Fedor

Photo shared by Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Over 4000 planets are now known to exist outside our Solar System. Known as exoplanets, this milestone was passed last month, as recorded by NASA's Exoplanet Archive. The featured video highlights these exoplanets in sound and light, starting chronologically from the first confirmed detection in 1992 and continuing into 2019. The entire night sky is first shown compressed with the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy making a giant U. Exoplanets detected by slight jiggles in their parents-star's colors (radial velocity) appear in pink, while those detected by slight dips in their parent star's brightness (transit) are shown in purple. Further, those exoplanets imaged directly appear in orange, while those detected by gravitationally magnifying the light of a background star (microlensing) are shown in green. The faster a planet orbits its parent star, the higher the accompanying tone played. The retired Kepler satellite has discovered about half of these first 4000 exoplanets in just one region of the sky, while the TESS mission is on track to find even more, all over the sky, orbiting the brightest nearby stars. Finding exoplanets not only helps humanity to better understand the potential prevalence of life elsewhere in the universe, but also how our Earth and Solar System were formed.

Everything is good,
everything is swell,
until I had fallen
into Facebook hell.
You are banned now,
we won't explain why
and won't tell you how
you got into this mess.
All we will say is,
you now must confess.
Tell us why
you broke the rule
and we will let you
access with limited tools.

"Since the Paris agreement, the six largest US banks – Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – have provided $1.4tn in financing to the fossil fuel industry" Read full article

What is lost
will soon be found.
When hearts, a break
it isn't renown,
to expect a change,
when no ones around.

I must confess
to my current
state of mind.
Lack of motivation.
Lack of creativity.
Thoughtless.

Her face, lined
with wrinkles
from dread.
Thinking about
all of
the years,
lying ahead.
What to
do when
the love
of your
life has
Dementia. She
will forget
you soon,
not know
your name
or recall
all of
your memories
of life
you spent
together, as
a couple.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Mimas, small 400 kilometer-diameter moon of Saturn, is host to 130 kilometer-diameter Herschel crater, one of the larger impact craters in the entire Solar System. The robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn in 2010 recorded this startling view of small moon and big crater while making a 10,000-kilometer record close pass by the diminutive icy world. Shown in contrast-enhanced false color, the image data reveal more clearly that Herschel's landscape is colored slightly differently from heavily cratered terrain nearby. The color difference could yield surface composition clues to the violent history of Mimas. Of course, an impact on Mimas any larger than the one that created the 130-kilometer Herschel might have destroyed the small moon of Saturn.

Love the rain
freshened smell
of the sea.
Primitive thoughts
of our origins,
percolate the mind.

"Earth warming has not been uniform, with some regions warming at a far greater pace. One such region is the Arctic..... which has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the past 43 years. This means the Arctic is on average around 3℃ warmer than it was in 1980....... This is alarming, because the Arctic contains sensitive and delicately balanced climate components that, if pushed too hard, will respond with global consequences" ... Read more

Another memory slipped away.
It is not quantified.
It happens every day.
At what point will you
not know what I say.