I remember Hale-Bopp in 1997. At it's peak it was so bright you could easily see it from inside a brightly lit restaurant, looking out a window 20 feet away.
> Most — though admittedly not all — comets originating from the Oort cloud usually end up being duds. Typically, as these comets cross the orbit of Mars, their steady brightening trend starts to falter, similar to a marathon runner at the 20-mile mark; "hitting the wall" so to speak. In the case of a comet having emerged from the Oort cloud, a sudden decline in brightening may be signaling that it ultimately will end up underperforming.
" You mean to tell me that we can see light from the edge of the universe, but we can't tell if an object will be bright (or not) when it arrives at earth ? "
Reading the article, it seems that there's materiel that will react with the faint but steady hit of sunrays. Still , with our tech and advancement, you'd think we would be able to give a reasonably accurate prediction of whether a a very large stone will continue to shine bright when it passes by earth at supersonic speeds.
"I have an object composed of unknown materials, jumbled together in an unknown way, with unknown density. I'm going to hold it next to a light and heat source. How bright would it be?"
We literally don't know what gases, and how much of them, will evaporate off of it until they do evaporate. And that doesn't happen until it warms up more.
Yeah, let's just measure the density and composition of a comet that will be here in a few months, and with expectations that it may be releasing new gaseous formations as it gets closer, predict what will happen with those formations.
In much simpler form, it's similar to the "Where will this satellite in a decaying orbit land?"
The difficulty is not the approximation: the difficulty is that whether drag begins to increase at t=x or t=x+30sec (based on orientation when it first encounters atmosphere) cascades throughout the rest of the equations and dramatically changes the results.
Giving a month would still be Northern-hemisphere specific, as the article itself points out
> Unfortunately, we here in the Northern Hemisphere will not be able to check on the status of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS during this summer because it will be situated much too far south to be accessible with telescopes. Those living in far-southerly locations, such as Australia, New Zealand and South America, however, will be able to track it in the morning sky before sunrise.
You know how many times I've been teased with something that will only be visible in the southern hemisphere? Maybe it's a grass is always greener on the other side, but I definitely want to spend enough time in the southern hemisphere to balance things out. Of course when I finally do get to spend time there, all the cool things will only be visible in the northern hemisphere. I swear, it's like changing lanes in traffic.
The month-day-year format drives me crazy, especially when using a cloud product.
Cloud provider: “All our servers are UTC because that’s the international standard! Adapt your code!”
Also the same cloud provider: “We print all UTC dates using US format because that’s the local standard for less than 4% of the population. Nothing outside of North America exist or even if it does.. it doesn’t matter enough for us to care to learn about ISO 8601.”
It's a reflection of a general myopia in the American psyche, which intensifies as you reach the country's center where the rest of the world is relegated to being regarded as a strange abstract construct, and either ignored, disdained, or bombed.
The entire human race uses phrases like "this fall" and has since time immemorial. The only myopia is that American publications specifically are supposed to take place in some kind of universalizing cultural vacuum equally applicable to the whole world.
Yes, but other countries are not the sole major super-power with almost an imperial presence across the globe.
America is, until now at least, the closest thing to Rome we had since its fall, but far bigger and with much farther reach.
I bet that if space.com looks at their analytics, they will find out that they are widely read across the globe, and the same applies to every other big media in the US.
Being a global empire comes with certain privileges, it is only natural that it would also imply some costs. One of them being aware that you have a global audience.
Like it or not, America is the new Rome, and Americans would benefit a lot from remembering this if they want America to keep its global influence.
Wow, pedants going to pedant, even so early in the morning. From the perspective of an observer on terra firma, the sun absolutely rises in position relative to the horizon. The actual causes of that doesn't mean that the sun is physically moving but is only the result of the earth's rotation has diddly squat to refute that to that observer, the sun is in a higher location as time passes until it eventually, wait for it...sets. Oh no, the horror to a pedant that we've now said it not only rises but sets too! Run away! Run away!!!
But I wouldn’t consider this pedantry. It’s an observation that humans tend to look at the world through their own personal lens. Historically societies have built languages, maps, science and cultures that places themselves at the center.
I’ve observed that bigotry against the people who have settled the American Midwest is in vogue right now but, even so, I’ve found it rare to see such a violent and aggressive display of bigotry as GP over something as mundane as using the term “the fall” in an article.
Also, have issue with the sun comment. There are plenty of stars, but none of them are nearly as important to us as our star Sol. Of course it's going to be given predominance in our cultures. To think otherwise is just silly and just picking a fight for argument's sake. Yes, early theories were we were earth centric, but that was proven false. We know the universe is not centered around the sun, but we definitely are. Again, name something based on something so central to one's being isn't that far fetched. There's nothing disrespectful about call Sol "the sun".
In other words, I think it's a silly argument only made on the internets. Even legit astronomers don't argue the point as something serious to be concerned.
The heliocentric conceit that you’re arguing against isn’t my quote from the internet.
That’s Carl Sagan giving a speech IRL.
I’d encourage you to follow the link I shared and listen to Carl Sagan’s full speech.
> It's a reflection of a general myopia in the American psyche, which intensifies as you reach the country's center where the rest of the world is relegated to being regarded as a strange abstract construct, and either ignored, disdained, or bombed.
There is nothing that I’ve found about the people that have settled the American Midwest that makes this statement more or less true than any other arbitrary geographic grouping of people I’ve come across in life when it comes to using language like “the fall.” Which I was trying to demonstrate by quoting Carl Sagan.
GP is throwing plain ol’ bigotry at a group of people.
Having travelled extensively, I've observed that Americans, in general, whether themselves travellers, or living in the US, are significantly less aware of other countries and cultures than any other major country. Absurdly so.
Further, those that have some awareness, or what I'd deem is an ordinary level of awareness, are very typically from either the East or West coasts.
I've reasoned this makes sense, as those living on the coast are more likely to encounter foreigners, or travel themselves.
In Europe, or for example most of Asia, by contrast, awareness is significantly higher, across the board. And when it isn't, the attitude is so different;
much more curiosity and tolerance, less superiority or arrogance, if any.
This only makes sense to me, given other geography's versus the US, which is somewhat in its own kind of geographic bubble, and a pervasive culture which, extremely arrogantly, believes the country is "the greatest on earth".
If the US people didn't also continually support ongoing violent conflicts in parts of the world they have no business involving themselves in, I'd regard this myopia as largely benign.
But that's not the case. This aspect of the American psyche, and the votes it directs, remains a significant concern to the rest of the world - and I will continue to call it out as such.
I held this view for a while after growing up in Illinois.
But I think Americans are a bit different in the scales and the distances that they deal with compared to other countries. And those differences lead to cultural isolation depending on where you draw "culture" lines. I think you find a similar inward facing mindset everywhere, but not every geography is as connected as the countries Americans gets contrasted with.
Some cultures are closer together, temporally and geographically, than others.
America is huge and young. In Europe, for example, you can drive for a few hours and end up in another culture with deep history. Those countries are also connected by land routes to world powers.
The first time I left the U.S., I was ~20. I traveled with an international team. My coworker was German and he couldn't wrap his head around the fact that I'd never left the U.S. He shared a story about his childhood where they all hopped in the station wagon and drove to France. I said: "Yeah, my family did the same thing. But we went to Missouri."
By road, Berlin to Moscow is closer than Denver to NYC.
The Americans in the Midwest often know a bit of Spanish, are somewhat familiar with major events in Mexico and Canada, etc. And they are super in-tune with the cultures and politics of other states in the U.S.
Like-for-like, I'd compare American cultural knowledge of other states in the union (i.e. Louisiana, Kentucky, New Jersey, etc.) to the knowledge of other countries for someone living in Europe.
I agree with you that the American Government is not benign. I think Americans solving the American Government is one of the most pressing issues of our generation, not just from an inwardly facing American perspective but because of the outward damage this country is actively doing around the world. I have a lot of thoughts there that I'd dig deeper into in another context. In my opinion the state of the U.S. Government has more to do with the rise of crony capitalism and the failings of first-past-the-post voting than the conversation we are having here.
This is my argument every time a European talks about the lack of American international travel. They poke at us like we're unwilling to listen to logic, but they themselves are unwilling to listen to logic about logistics of navigation of physical land masses. Even if an American traveled from the center of the country to a coastal part, there's still massive oceans separating from either side that must be logistically dealt with. From Europe, once could get to a lot of Asia without ever getting their feet wet. Those ocean borders act not only as security moats, but also as cultural moats. This is just too outside the everyday experience for them, that it just seems to not compute.
For whatever reason, non-Americas just are not willing to accept that as any kind of explanation. The expense of traversing those oceans to get somewhere else is large in both time and money when both are limited.
Thanks for this, I appreciate hearing your perspective and basically agree.
An important point you raise is the significance of a deep history intermingled with that of a country's neighbours. Especially I think when it involves levels of conflict that greatly change society.
Maybe it's easier to find ways to get along when you've a deep shared cultural memory of what happened when you didn't.
Whereas the US has had this in a sense internally, its wars have generally been in "far away places". Other than isolated examples, this leads the populace to mostly "miss out" on what the impacts of full-scale war feels like.
I wonder if the microcosm of the armed forces might bear the brunt of this aspect in some isolation - and perhaps, sadly this may show in the high rate of US veteran social issues, suicides etc.
If you want to go down the prescriptive path, a more correct word relative to "autumn" is "hærfest". Just like "fall" replaced "autumn", "autumn" replaced "hærfest".
"Autumn" was never replaced with "fall". "Fall" (referring to leaves falling down) and "spring" (referring to leaves springing up) both come from Middle English. The United States was colonized by English speakers who still used both terms.
Meanwhile, "autumn" is a loan word from French. "Autumn" and "fall" were both used in Britain, but "autumn" eventually won out (after the colonization of North America).
It did in the states. Autumn is no longer a loan word (a loan word has little or no changes). The French word is quite different: automne. As You can see, it is missing 2 letters and the pronounciation is quite different.
No, there was not a point in history where Americans all said "autumn" and then switched over to using "fall".
"Fall" (along with its counterpart "spring") was commonly used in Britain when America was colonized. The British later stopped using "fall" (although they did keep "spring") and switched completely over to "autumn". But Americans never made that switch and continue to use both terms just as their British ancestors did.
"Fall" never replaced "autumn". It replaced "harvest" (just as "spring" replaced "lent"). "Autumn" was borrowed from French, and then "fall" and "autumn" existed side by side for hundreds of years in Britain, up until very recently when "autumn" replaced "fall".
"Fall" (referring to leaves falling down) has been in use since Middle English, along with "spring" (referring to leaves springing up).
Why did so many English speakers stop using "fall", a proper English word with a very long history in Britain, and switch to using a French word for it instead?
For that matter, why didn't they do the same for "spring" when it is so closely linked to "fall"? It seems very silly.
Likely because Americans started using it; many words that british claim are the "right way" were originally the way Americans use it currently. "Across the pond" youtube channel does a great word by word history
In America, Autumn is reserved for the name of daughters of hippies after they've already used Sunshine and Moonbeam. Also, the punchlines aren't as funny, "did you have a nice autumn?" when someone trips.
That actually blows my mind of stereotypes. The germans are memed to be very rigid and mechanical while the french are memed to have a pliable relationship with time. So putting the french in charge of the memed concept of trains must run on time is just wrecking everything for me.
What do you mean? From googling autumn seems to be the word used for that season (which is of course at a different time than the Northern Hemisphere)?
