Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Voyager at the edge : Nature News
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is at the limit of the 'heliosheath', where particles streaming from the Sun clash with the gases of the galaxy. Contrary to scientists' expectation of a sharp, violent edge, the boundary seems to be a tepid place, where the solar wind mingles with extrasolar particles.
...this year researchers were expecting it to meet another boundary — one at which the solar wind sharply reverses direction, signalling the beginning of interstellar space.

Instead, Krimigis says, measurements of low-energy charged particles show that the solar wind has gradually slowed to zero and is mingling with interstellar gases. Theories failed to predict this mixed-up environment, and Krimigis says it may even be possible that this is, in fact, what interstellar space looks like. "We may have crossed and don't know it, because nobody has a model that describes what we're seeing," he says.
You might have a climate crisis if ... | Grist
It's hard for me to fathom how naysayers still refuse to acknowledge that increased carbon pollution -- primarily from the burning of fossil fuels -- is to blame for the increasingly hostile weather we're facing these days.
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Rob Perks runs NRDC’s Center for Advocacy Campaigns.
16 tips for avoiding climate burnout | Grist
We think about our children and their future, and we weep. We tear ourselves away from them for yet another day, another night, trying to preserve something left for them to live in. Even the children are traumatized
National Geographic Magazine - Manatees in Hot Water
Over the past two winters, says the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, hypothermia and stress from cold weather—including the most frigid 12-day stretch in 70 years—have killed at least 400 of the endangered mammals.

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