Science

Researchers 3D printed a mini quadrupole mass filter, a key component of a mass spectrometer, that performs as well as some commercial-grade devices. It can be fabricated in hours for a few dollars and is one step toward producing a portable mass spectrometer that could enable effective medical diagnoses or chemical analyses in remote areas.

The integration of mechanical memory in the form of springs has for hundreds of years proven to be a key enabling technology for mechanical devices (like clocks), achieving advanced functionality through complex autonomous movements. In our times, the integration of springs in silicon-based microtechnology has opened the world of planar mass-producible mechatronic devices from which we all benefit, via air-bag sensors for example.

Trends come and go but the popularity of detoxification and cleansing in January is eternal.

The post 2024 Detox Trends To Watch (Out) For first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Researchers have created a functional semiconductor from graphene for the first time, creating the possibility of computer chips with greater performance and efficiency

The populations of species including bateleurs and secretary birds have fallen precipitously within the past 50 years, putting these birds at risk of extinction

Electrically stimulating part of the brain makes people more susceptible to hypnosis, which has shown promise for treating conditions such as chronic pain

In the largest survey yet of AI researchers, a majority say there is a non-trivial risk of human extinction due to the possible development of superhuman AI

A large language model can translate written instructions into code for a robot’s movement, enabling it to perform a wide range of human-like actions

Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, features a surprisingly strong magnetic field for its size. Tidal effects from Jupiter continually stretch and squeeze the moon, keeping its core warm and driving the magnetic field. But the exact geological processes occurring within the core are not fully understood. Now, a new experimental study has put one of the leading models of core dynamics to the test: the formation of crystalized ‘iron snow’.

The iron snow theory is like a geological ‘weather model’ for a planetary core: it describes how iron cools and crystalizes near the upper edge of the core (where it meets the mantle), then falls inwards and melts back into the liquid centre of the planet.

Ganymede’s core, in other words, is a molten metal snowglobe, shaken and stirred by Jupiter’s gravity.

This cycle of rising and falling iron “creates motions in the liquid core and provides energy for generating a magnetic field,” the researchers behind the study write. “However, the key aspects of this regime remain largely unknown.”

So they designed an experiment to test some of those aspects.

Of course, scientists can’t just peer inside a planetary core, so the team took to the laboratory, where they used water ice as an analog for iron snow crystals.

The experiment consisted of a tank of water, cooled from below. A salty layer of water rested at the tank’s bottom, representing the planetary mantle (and from a practical standpoint, helped keep the ice crystals from getting stuck to the bottom). On top of the brine was a layer of fresh water, representing the planet’s liquid core. Ice crystals formed near the bottom of the tank, where the salty and fresh water mingled, then floated upwards and melted in the warmer liquid above.

In other words, the experiment was an upside-down simulation of iron snow, with the snowflakes drifting up instead of down.

This setup allowed the team to test the behaviour of the crystals and their effect on the whole system.

Their findings were surprising. Instead of a steady flow of crystallization, rising, and melting, there were instead sporadic bouts of rapid activity, followed by periods of inactivity.

Why?

It appears that to trigger the crystallization process, the liquid needs to reach a supercooled state, below the temperature at which you would expect ice to solidify. Once that supercooled temperature is reached, it releases a flurry of snowflakes, and then pauses until the temperature is once again low enough to release a new bout of crystals.

Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede. Image Credit: By National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – http://sos.noaa.gov/download/dataset_table.html

This sporadic and cyclical process has significant ramifications for a planet’s magnetic fields. Iron snow at Ganymede would occur intermittently, and be localized at different places throughout the core. The result would be a shifting and dancing magnetic field that strengthens, weakens, and changes shape over time.

Ganymede isn’t the only place in the solar system where iron snow dominates the behaviour of planetary cores. It is a plausible description of core behaviour in all small planetary bodies, including our own Moon and Mercury, as well as Mars and large metallic asteroids.

In cases where magnetic fields are known to exist (like Mercury and Ganymede), it brings us one step closer to understanding the dynamics of those systems.

If you’re wondering, Earth’s core isn’t believed to be dominated by iron snow. The powerful pressure of gravity at the heart of our planet, along with a different composition of materials, means that metals in Earth’s core tend to solidify in the middle, then melt as they drift outwards, rather than snowing down from the mantle (though both processes might be present in some quantity, according to recent research).

Read the paper:

Ludovic Huguet, Michael Le Bars, and Renaud Deguen. “A Laboratory Model for Iron Snow in Planetary Cores.” Geophysics Research Letters.

The post Iron Snow Could Explain the Magnetic Fields at Worlds Like Ganymede appeared first on Universe Today.

Some years ago I rememeber running the SETI at Home screensaver and would watch it for hours to see if any peaks appeared naively thinking they might be signals from an alien civilisation! There is no doubt that the search for extraterrestrials (ET) has captivated the minds of many people across the years. The search has of course to date, been unsuccesful despite multiple observations that seem to suggest the conditions for life across the cosmos may actually be more common than we first thought. Now Chinese agencies are funding projects to use the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) to conduct searches for alien signals.

The Far Neighbour Project (FNP) was launched in 2023 and uses some interesting observational techniques to hunt for technosignatures from advanced civilisations. They are targetting nearby stars, exoplanet systems, local globular clusters and much more. A paper recently published by a team led by Tong-Jie Zhang explains how the team plans to use FAST along with new observational data analysis techniques in the hunt for alien signals. 

A home PC running SETI at Home helping to churn through observational data (Credit: SETI@home)

FAST – which has been nicknamed Tianyan meaning “Sky’s Eye” – is located in Pingtang County, soutwest China and was comissioned in 2016. It is the second largest single dish radio telescope in the world and has been constructed in a natural depression. The design is quite innovative with 4,500 metal panels which form a moving, active parabola. Like other large static dishes, there is a cabin suspended above the dish from cables. This can move automatically to steer the instrument to receive signals from which ever direction is required. 

The team are employing two new observation methods in the hope it will enhance and improve the results. First is the MultiBeam Coincidence Matching method (MBCM) which is similar to the On-Off method that has been commonly used in SETI observations. The On-Off concept assumes that a sky-localised signal would not be detected in multiple telescope observations at the same time. MBCM takes advantage of FASTs 19 beam receiver so that it can simultaneously record data in the centre beam AND the outermost beams. Then there is the MultiBeam Point-Source Scanning (MBPS) technique which also makes use of FASTs 19 beam receiver. It is especially sensitive to persistent narrowband signals and it can simultaneously cross-reference  observations in a single observation. Together MBCM and MBPS are two new and powerful observational methods that will greatly enhance the speed of observation processing and conduct more sensitive observations of more celestial objects. 

The paper concludes by musing that the techniques and methods may easily enable the Far Neighbour Project to run for a millennium and for that reason, they refrain from describing exactly how their methods may be implemented across such vast timescales given the pace of technological advancement. Alas to date, no evidence has been acquired for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence but these new methods must swing the possibility of detection in our favour if, anyone is out there!

Source : SETI at FAST in China

The post China’s FAST Observatory is Playing a Key Role in the Search for Aliens appeared first on Universe Today.

When NASA decided to send the little Ingenuity rotorcraft to Mars on the belly of the Perseverance rover, they weren’t certain of success. Nothing like it had ever been attempted in Mars’ extremely thin atmosphere. Mission planners hoped and planned for a total of five flights, enough for a technology demonstration.

But now, as almost everyone knows, Ingenuity has wildly exceeded NASA’s initial expectations.

NASA’s Ingenuity has racked up important milestones since it detached itself from the Perseverance Rover’s underbelly in April 2021 and got to work. On April 19th, 2021, it became the first aircraft to complete a powered, controlled extraterrestrial flight. Since that day, it has blown away expectations and completed 70 flights.

Its most recent flight was its 70th, far exceeding its planned five flights. But the previous flight, number 69, was the helicopter’s longest. On December 21st, Ingenuity flew about 706 meters, or 2315 feet. That surpassed its previous longest flight, which was 704 meters, or 2,310 feet, in April 2022.

This video shows Ingenuity during its 54th flight on August 3rd, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/j. Roger

Five feet further might not seem like much. But Ingenuity is operating in a harsh environment that no aircraft has ever flown in before. Mars is extremely cold and dry, which can be good for aircraft on Earth. But it’s not on Earth; it’s flying in Mars’ very thin atmosphere, only about 1% the density of Earth’s. The thin atmosphere makes lift more difficult to generate, though the gravity is weaker, which helps. Not to mention the time delay in communications between Mars and Earth that adds a layer of complexity to every endeavour.

In that context, a 706-meter-long flight is a serious achievement.

The Perseverance Rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument captured this image of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on June 15, 2021, the 114th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The location, “Airfield D” (the fourth airfield), is just east of the “Séítah” geologic unit. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS.

In total, the 1.8 kg (4 lb) 10 cm (19 inch) tall rotorcraft has flown just under 17 km (10.5 miles) over the Martian surface. It’s spent 127.7 minutes in flight and has climbed as high as about 24 meters (79 ft.) Its 69th and longest flight lasted 135 seconds at speeds as high as 35 km (22 mi) per hour.

These numbers signify a rousing success. Ingenuity has proven the value of having an airborne companion for Mars rovers. An eye in the sky can help plan a rover’s path and can identify intriguing features in need of exploration. Ingenuity is no longer a technology demonstration. Now, NASA is using it as a scout for Perseverance, and the goal is to keep the rotorcraft ahead of the rover. But the successful scouting has led to communication disruptions.

NASA lost contact with Ingenuity back in April 2023 during its 52nd flight. The flight was successful, but NASA lost contact with the tiny rotorcraft as it descended back to the surface to land. The dropout in communications was expected due to an interfering hill between Ingenuity and Perseverance, which handles all of the craft’s communications. Perseverance was busy working on one side of the hill while Ingenuity sat on the other side. After 63 days, the rover crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again, and communications were restored, just as planned.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here next to Perseverance’s tracks in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. This image was taken on April 5, the 45th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Ingenuity was never meant to be a working scout, so it’s well outside of its planned mission parameters now. In future missions, these communication dropouts will be avoided as much as possible.

Ingenuity suffered another setback, too, on May 3rd, 2022. Seasonal dust blocked the rotorcraft’s solar arrays, and Ingenuity was unable to fully recharge its batteries. One of the machine’s instruments went into a low-power state and reset its clocks. “When the sun rose the next morning and the solar array began to charge the batteries, the helicopter’s clock was no longer in sync with the clock aboard the rover,” NASA wrote in a statement. “Essentially, when Ingenuity thought it was time to contact Perseverance, the rover’s base station wasn’t listening.”

That communications drop-out didn’t last long, though. NASA personnel instructed Perseverance to continually listen for Ingenuity’s signal until communications were re-established a couple of days later on May 5th.

These hiccups are expected in a technology demonstration mission. By lasting this long and flying so much, and by dealing with communication problems and dust problems, NASA’s learning a lot more than they hoped for. Failures and problems are all a part of it.

And Ingenuity isn’t done yet. It’s survived everything Mars has thrown at it for almost two years. Each successful flight is a huge bonus now.

As the first aircraft on Mars, Ingenuity is a technological trailblazer. Its successors will be based on the many lessons NASA has learned from the little rotorcraft. And if rover design is any template, the aircraft that follow in Ingenuity’s footsteps will be larger, more robust, and more capable.

Mars exploration will never be the same again.

There are plans to send a pair of rotorcraft to Mars in the Mars Sample Return mission. And engineers are already thinking about a Mars Science Helicopter to accompany a future rover mission. It would be much larger and more capable than Ingenuity. It’ll have six rotors and be able to carry several kilograms of scientific payload to study areas inaccessible to rovers.

Artist illustration of three solar-powered Mars helicopters from NASA: Ingenuity (upper right), along with the proposed design for a Sample Recovery Helicopter to be used on the future NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return Mission (foreground) and a concept for a future Science Helicopter (upper center). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Ingenuity’s success, including its 69th and longest flight, is directly responsible for the future success of other rotorcraft on Mars. And each successive flight creates more data that’ll be used to improve future rotorcraft.

Not only on Mars but elsewhere in the Solar System.

This artist’s impression shows NASA’s Dragonfly soaring over the dunes of Saturn’s moon Titan. NASA has authorized the mission team to proceed on development toward a July 2028 launch date. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

The post Ingenuity’s 69th Flight is its Farthest So Far appeared first on Universe Today.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been getting closer and closer to Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io with each recent orbit. Juno is in its 57th orbit of Jupiter, and on December 30th, Juno came to within 1500 km (930 miles) of Io’s surface. It’s been more than 20 years since a spacecraft came this close.

The Galileo spacecraft travelled over the moon’s south pole in 2001, coming to within 181 km (112 miles.) Galileo showed us a lot about the nature of Io’s surface.

But Juno is a different spacecraft with more modern instruments and cameras that will fly by Io multiple times. One of the mission’s specific goals is to determine if Io has a magma ocean or not. And while the spacecraft’s suite of scientific instruments can shed light on that question, Juno also carries a powerful camera that rides shotgun: Junocam.

Junocam was included with the spacecraft primarily to satisfy us, the interested public around the world. It takes high-resolution visible light images that are available for anyone to process and share. Two other imagers were also busy during the Io flyby. One is the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), which takes images in infrared. The other is the Stellar Reference Unit, which usually takes images of stars for navigation.

Io’s forbidding surface looks almost inviting in this Junocam image processed by Kevin Gill. But don’t be fooled: Io is a volcanic hellscape. If you’d like a phone wallpaper version of this image, Kevin made one here. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin Gill

Junocam images get the most attention because NASA makes them available for anyone to process and post. Junocam captured six separate images of the volcanic moon, including black and white and colour. The image below is a composite showing the lit and shadowed sides of Io, processed by Hemant Dara.

A composite image of Io showing the shaded and lit portions. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Hemant Dara © CC BY

Scientists know that Io is the most volcanic body in the Solar System by far. But they hunger for more detailed knowledge of its interior. Juno’s series of flybys will allow researchers to watch its volcanoes over time, which will help lead to some new understandings.

“By combining data from this flyby with our previous observations, the Juno science team is studying how Io’s volcanoes vary,” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator and a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, in a statement issued before this most recent flyby. “We are looking for how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are, how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how Io’s activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”

Io remains volcanic to this day because of its eccentric orbit around Jupiter. Jupiter’s mass squeezes Io, and the squeezing generates heat that drives its volcanoes. The other Galilean moons add to the effect. The tidal force is so strong that Io’s surface can rise and fall by as much as 100 meters.

Io is about the same size as Earth’s Moon, yet it’s covered in hundreds of active volcanoes. Eruptions can launch lava dozens of kilometres above the moon’s surface. There’s so much volcanic activity on the surface of Io that some lava flows are hundreds of kilometres long. These voluminous eruptions are like the ones that triggered mass extinctions here on Earth.

Juno’s next Io flyby will be on February 3rd. During that visit, Juno will also approach about 1500 km (930 miles) above Io’s surface.

“With our pair of close flybys in December and February, Juno will investigate the source of Io’s massive volcanic activity, whether a magma ocean exists underneath its crust, and the importance of tidal forces from Jupiter, which are relentlessly squeezing this tortured moon,” said Bolton.

The JunoCam instrument aboard our #JunoMission acquired six images of Jupiter's moon Io during its close encounter today. This black-and-white view was taken at an altitude of about 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers). More images will be available soon at https://t.co/mGfITRe57Y pic.twitter.com/9GcamrhxPt

— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) December 31, 2023

Juno is nearing the end of its mission in 2025. One of the hazards that’s bringing its end is Jupiter’s intense radiation. The spacecraft’s orbits are designed to protect it from Jupiter’s radiation, except when it approaches the planet for closer looks. It has to remove itself from the intense radiation to both extend the life of its electronics and allow it to send data back to Earth.

Juno was designed to withstand only 17 orbits of Jupiter but has so far survived 57. With a few more to come, the mission still has lots to teach us about Io and the Jovian system. No doubt we’ll be gifted more stunning images and science as it completes its mission.

“Io is only one of the celestial bodies which continue to come under Juno’s microscope during this extended mission,” said Juno’s acting project manager, Matthew Johnson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “As well as continuously changing our orbit to allow new perspectives of Jupiter and flying low over the nightside of the planet, the spacecraft will also be threading the needle between some of Jupiter’s rings to learn more about their origin and composition.”

Io’s primary mission ended in July 2021, and its current extended mission will end in September 2025. At that time, the spacecraft will be sent plunging to its destruction in Jupiter’s atmosphere, ending its nine-year mission.

But these pictures of Io will always be part of its legacy.

The post Juno Makes its Closest Flyby of Io appeared first on Universe Today.

Yes, it’s about Israel, but the laws of physics determined that my latent secular Judaism would be activated by the Hamas/Israel war. Never before have I seen such a bushel of lies, misrepresentations, biased reporting, near-complete ignorance of history, willingness to excuse Hamas and the UN—all accompanied by sheer hatred of Israel and the Jews. It’s enough to make steam come out of my ears like a character in a Warner Brothers cartoon.  Never in my own life have I seen so much of the world go off the rails at once. (Well, there are some sane ones, but they’re not “progressives,” which angers me even more.)

So, in lieu of ranting, I present to you 5½ minutes of video commentary on the wary by Lucy Aharish, the “the first Arab-Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew-language Israeli television.” This is one of the sane ones.

Glenn Loury and his podcasting buddy John McWhorter are back on Loury’s Substack page with a video (there’s also a transcript) answering a reader’s question:

Ibram X Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University raised around $43 million (estimates vary), and there’s very little to show for it. The Center has produced almost no meaningful research in that time, despite the outlandish funding at its disposal. In the Q&A from October of last year, a viewer asked John and I what we would do with that kind of money, if our goal was ending racism.

Click to read, or, better yet, watch the eleven-minute video below, as the entire transcript comes from the video:

Below: the video. I’m going to give just two brief excerpts of the answer, as you’d best watch the whole thing—or read the whole thing—yourself.

Loury suggests a race-centered equivalent to Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study, hoping that a group of academics could produce something that could ameliorate racism or improve the situation of black people. McWhorter, on the other hand, would use the money to make a movie set in 1966—a year of racial ferment that changed black centrism to black activism and separatism. McWhorter’s idea is apparently that showing that “something went wrong in 1966” would re-center discussions about race from the extremes to which he thinks it’s gone.

Two quotes:

LOURY:

I’ll go first. I haven’t got a clue. I have no idea. I mean, I can tell you what I’d like to do. You know me. I would like to create a center where the best and most interesting and most provocative and deep-thinking and learned students of the subject could gather together. Some of them I’d hope to recruit to the faculty of the university by being able to offer departments funds to underwrite the appointments of senior members who would be members of the history department or the sociology department or the political science or psychology or economics department, but who would also be principles [sic] in my center. They’d be half-time teaching, half-time researchers. They’d have their own research programs. I wouldn’t have to figure out what they were researching, because they would already be leaders in their respective fields.

I’d try to combine that kind of initiative with the overall strategy for growth and improvement of the university. The psychology department is looking for a person who specializes in this, the history department for someone who specializes in that. I’d develop relationships with my colleagues in those departments and try to enrich the faculty and so forth by bringing people around.

Another thing I do is to try to develop programs for students and colleagues who are interested in the general subject of race and racial inequality. Speakers series, postdoctoral fellowships for young scholars who are just completing their dissertations and trying to convert them into books who could come in and work on that thing. A vital center of churning, people stimulating each other, sitting around the seminar room listening to somebody’s early draft of their chapter and critiquing it, and so on. That’s among the things that I’d like to do.

To anyone who’s been in academia—and that includes Loury, who should know better—getting together a bunch of scholars who will undoubtedly pursue their own interests, be it race-centered or not, is not a good way to solve a problem, especially a problem that hasn’t been clearly posed.  The center at first sounds like a bunch of synergistic humanities scholars, but clearly the program is to deal with issues of race.  But try doing that in today’s climate!  Clearly Loury himself would have to specify who gets hired so that heterodox thinkers like him are included. (He says, “I think I could be very happy ensconced in such a circumstance.

McWhorter’s idea is more inventive and creative: he wants to make a movie. But he adds that nobody would make such a movie today, nor would it change the world. But you can see his aim in the last para of his answer below:

McWHORTER

JOHN MCWHORTER: I would put that money into making a movie. Spike Lee would do it well, but it would be against his ideology. I would like there to be a movie about what happened to black thought in 1966. I wish more people understood how we got from integrationist to separatist, how we got to the idea that, for black people, we have to question what standards are and that just showing up is excellence and all of that. That’s so normal now. We’ve got, depending on how you count it, three generations of people who think of that as normal. If black people come up, you have to reserve judgment. Only so much can be expected of us. And maybe there’s a black way of doing things that’s better than the white way. But that’s new, and it’s easy to miss it now unless you’re very old or you’re a history buff.

There should be a 1966 movie with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, turning against white people. That should be shown, with Stokely Carmichael deciding that. Somebody playing John Lewis kind of caught in the middle of all of this. Bayard Rustin should be in it.1 Francis Piven and Richard Cloward, the white sociologists promulgating the National Welfare Rights Organization should be in it, and getting people onto the rolls on purpose. Viola Davis and people like that should be playing the women who are treated that way. And there should be a really great soundtrack, because of how black music sounded at the time. That would be part of it.

You’ve got the afros and the dashikis but also the older civil rights guard with the cat eyeglasses and the suits and the cigarettes being kind of pushed aside. There would have to be—and I don’t mean me—a careful speech coach, because in this film I would like it to be seen that there was a way of speaking that many black people had that would sound very white today to a lot of people, and people like that were taken seriously. I want Bayard Rustin to talk like him. He should not be played by Samuel Jackson.

There are clips of Bayard Rustin speaking, so you can hear his style.

And when Loury asked him if he thought such a movie could change the world, McWhorter responds:

Not change the world any more than the institute that you’re talking about would, but it would be a handy reference point. Too many of the film reference points are, “Slavery was bad. Racism is bad. Racism is still there.” Well, you know what? We’ve learned that there is an, I guess you’re going to have to call it, a black conservative perspective—but really I think it’s just a black centrist perspective—that is not shown as much.

So those are the solutions, and while I’d love to see the movie (I suspect I’ve seen much of it already), neither seems to me effective. But pondering what I would do, I couldn’t come up with anything. Neither am I black nor any kind of expert in creating equality.

In a discussion of McWhorter’s book Woke Racism in February of last year, I summarized his three prescriptions for ending racism. As I wrote at the time:

Chapter 5 contains McWhorter’s recommendations for how to really help black people. They may sound too few, or too silly, but the more one thinks about them, the more they make sense. In his view, there are only three correctives.

1.) End the war on drugs

2.) Teach reading properly (he recommends phonics, and knows whereof he speaks)

3.) Get past the idea that everybody must go to college

#1 and #3 aren’t associated with higher costs, but with a change in attitudes. Spreading the teaching of phonics, which many experts now agree is the best way to teach kids to read, would cost a lot more, but perhaps the $43 million could be used in one state or one area along with a “control area” to see how well it works.

As for Kendi, he’s experienced a serious fall from grace, with mass layoffs at his Center for Antiracist research at Boston University, and a spate of people attesting that the Center was mismanaged  (see here, here and here).  And yes, the output of the Center was essentially nil.

If you have better ideas, please put them in the comments.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “please,” rings in the new year, with Mo asking for a distinction that’s not a difference.  And no, they’ll have to put up with blasphemy, though you might get executed for blaspheming Islam in countries that adhere to that faith. Blasphemy mesaures are still on the books in Western countries like Spain and Northern Ireland, but they’re never enforced.

 

Thanks to several readers who helped replenish the photo tank by sending in wildlife pictures. But there’s always a need for more, so don’t forget us. Thanks!

Today’s photos come from Chris Taylor in Australia. His captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Seen through a window.

For the last two years I have not been able to get out and take as many photos as before.  I was diagnosed with Myeloma, and had chemotherapy and a Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant.  As I result, I was restricted to home for a long time and spent a lot of that sitting at my “office” where I could look out into the paddocks behind the house.  I sometimes kept a camera nearby, and all of these photos are taken from my desk!

Although people don’t associate snow with Australia, we always get a little bit of snow each winter.  At the beginning of May this year, this was the sight from my window, as the high wind raised the snow among the eucalypts as the moon set behind the hill.

Red Fox, Vulpes vulpes.
In the middle of the day and as bold as brass, this fox came wandering into the house paddock.  It calmly walked around, went hunting for something on the grass and then slowly ambled away.  Foxes were introduced into Australia around 1840, so that fox hunting could take place!  They have spread across the continent and are a serious threat to many native animals:

The vegetable patch is just outside the window, and while I wasn’t able to maintain it, became rather overgrown.  But that was much to the liking of a number of the parrot species around here, who came to feast on the seeds.

Galah, Eolophus roseicapilla.
The galah is very common throughout much of Australia.  Male and female are very similar, and only differ in the eye colour.  This one is a male, because of his black eye.  The galah is a member of the Cockatoo family (Cacatuidae) and like most cockatoos they have a crest that can be raised, although it is only a short one

Crimson Rosella, (Platycercus elegans).

The other parrots commonly visiting are the rosellas.  Two species come regularly to feed in the garden, the Eastern and Crimson rosella.  The photos are of the Crimson Rosella.

A pair of adults feeding on some seed:

The juvenile rosellas have a lot of green plumage for the first few months:

Not all photos turn out right, even when I get the focus, shutter speed and lighting right.  Not quite the right moment for pressing the shutter!  This is the juvenile bird.

Eastern Rosella, Platycercus eximius.

This is the other rosella species that commonly visit.  For the last couple of years a pair has been nesting in an old tree trunk that is nest to the driveway to the house:

My property is named after a native word meaning Blue Wren.  There are a number of species of wren with more or less blue or violet and, in one case, red coloration.  The species here is the Superb Fairy Wren, Malurus cyaaneus.  The wrens live in a family group of up to a dozen or so, and the non-breeding birds help to raise the young. The male and female will form a bond and stay together, however both the males and females are sexually promiscuous, although the pair will raise all the young, regardless of parentage!

The first photo is a breeding male.  In breeding plumage, they are striking, with iridescent blue and black on the head:

Out of season, the male’s plumage changes dramatically.  Now they are much like the female, but they retain navy blue tail feathers and a dark bill:

The females remain the same colour all year:

Flame Robin, Petroica-phoenicea.

The beautiful Flame Robin and its relative the Scarlet Robin come down to my property during the winter, and seem to spend summer on the higher plains and mountains.  Seeing them arrive for the first time in a year is a harbinger of the winter to come. The males are striking, and their glowing red plumage can be seen from quite a distance:

The female though, is rather drab in comparison:

I often get to see the raptors hunting over the fields. These would include the Wedge-tailed Eagle, Brown Falcon, and Peregrine, but most common was the Nankeen Kestrel, Falco cenchroides.

This one came and sat in the top of a small pine tree growing in the garden, and let me take its portrait before taking off:

The other common raptor is the Black Shouldered Kite, Elanus axillaris. This year a pair took up residence in a tree just out of sight from my seat, built a nest and raised two young.  These photos were taken while one was hovering over the turkey nest dam searching for some prey, usually small mammals or reptiles:

Something startled it and it looked up, while maintaining its hovering flight!: