Month: September 2022

SO ENDS this second and last weekend on modular metabolism. This is a particularly insightful article on the topic and is worth a careful read. Even in the nonliving world, the laws of geometry and physics impose modularity and fractal repeats at different scales. Remember when you are flying over mountainous countryside and see periodicity in the watershed patterns? Or the repetitive circular motifs in astronomical bodies and motions? And so it goes on: modularity, it seems, is deeply embedded in Nature. View in LinkedIn

QUESTION to an 11 year old girl: " "Q: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”" "(Pause)" "A: “Well, I think I want to dress up as a tree.”" "UK Channel 4 news, interviews during lockdown, 1-28-21 View in LinkedIn

Deconstructing the orchid flower. View in LinkedIn

“VENUS is the most dangerous planet in the solar system: its surface is at 393°C, hot enough to melt lead. It’s even hotter than the planet Mercury, which is closest to the Sun. Venus’ atmosphere is acidic and thick. Its clouds, which hide the surface from view, contain concentrated sulfuric acid — strong enough to dissolve most metals used to make spacecraft. The atmosphere is nearly as thick as liquid water because its surface pressure is extremely high — 93 times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere.” https://lnkd.in/dAsAqH7 View in LinkedIn

MARS. “In the absence of an intrinsic dipole magnetic field, Mars' O+ planetary ions are accelerated by the solar wind. Because of their large gyroradius, a population of these planetary ions can precipitate back into Mars' upper atmosphere with enough energy to eject neutrals into space via collision. This process, referred to as sputtering, may have been a dominant atmospheric loss process during earlier stages of our Sun. “ https://lnkd.in/djesTG5 View in LinkedIn

MERCURY. “In contrast to the other terrestrial planets Mercury does not have an atmosphere, but it has a relatively weak magnetic field. The strong solar UV radiation leads to photo-chemical escape of ions from Mercury's surface. Also solar wind protons can penetrate through the magnetospheric cusps and sputter ions off the surface. Due to the absence of an ionosphere no significant energy can be stored in the magnetosphere of Mercury such that solar wind disturbances will lead to short time deformations of the magnetosphere.” https://lnkd.in/dVhpP9H View in LinkedIn

JUPITER, SATURN AND VENUS. “In contrast to planets like the Earth, Jupiter or Saturn, Venus does not have an intrinsic magnetic field and thus its atmosphere is not protected against the incoming solar wind. However, solar UV radiation ionizes the upper atmosphere creating an ionosphere which in turn interacts with the solar wind ions and the magnetic field carried by the solar wind.” https://lnkd.in/dVhpP9H View in LinkedIn

“THE CoRoT-7b super-Earth. The atmosphere is made of rocky vapours with a very low pressure (P ⩽ 1.5 Pa), no cloud can be sustained, and no thermalisation of the planet is expected. The dayside is very hot (2474 ± 71 K at the sub-stellar point) while the nightside is very cold (50–75 K). The sub-stellar point is as hot as the tungsten filament of an incandescent bulb, resulting in the melting and distillation of silicate rocks and the formation of a lava ocean.” https://lnkd.in/dDkzNen View in LinkedIn