Andy’s Death Re-visited
Andy Warhol’s Death: Not So Simple, After All
By BLAKE GOPNIK
Andy Warhol, in 1987. Credit: Associated Press
“Pop Icon Andy Warhol Dies After Routine Surgery” ran the headline in The Houston Chronicle. Time magazine questioned how “the country’s most famous pop artist dies in a prestigious big-city hospital after a rather routine gallbladder operation.”
A routine surgery: Some version of that story was repeated around the world in the days and decades after the death of the 58-year-old artist, the 30th anniversary of which is on Wednesday.
Dr. John Ryan, a medical historian and retired surgeon, has recast the story line. “This was major, major surgery — not routine — in a very sick person,” Dr. Ryan, emeritus chief of surgery at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, said in a recent phone interview.
RELATIONSHIP STATUS Gets Two More Seasons
Milo Ventimiglia’s ‘Relationship Status’ Gets Two More Seasons on Verizon’s Go90 (EXCLUSIVE)
COURTESY OF STYLEHAUL
“Relationship Status,” the millennial social-media drama starring and executive produced by Milo Ventimiglia, is returning for two more seasons on Verizon’s Go90 mobile video service.
The show was created by Céline Geiger (“Vampire Diaries,” “The Lying Game”). It’s executive produced by Ventimiglia — who currently stars in NBC’s primetime hit drama “This Is Us” — and Russ Cundiff of DiVide Pictures; James Frey and Todd Cohen of Full Fathom Five; and StyleHaul.
Go90 has picked up two 12-episode seasons of “Relationship Status,” which will feature a traditional film and TV talent alongside digital creators. Season 2 is slated to hit the free, ad-supported service in the fall of 2017; the producers expect to announce cast details soon. As with the first run of the show, the ensemble dramedy will weave through the complexities of relationships while exploring the intertwining lives and connections of dating in the digital age.
“We could not be happier to continue ‘Relationship Status’ into season two and three,” Ventimiglia said in a statement. “The landscape of online dating and social media is ever-changing and we are looking forward to bringing more compelling stories about love, life and loss to Go90.”
Noah California
from The San Francisco Chronicle
Is California overdue for biblical, catastrophic flooding? History says it could be
By Katie Dowd
Sacramento underwater due to floods in an 1862 rendering that ran in local papers.
Californians are always talking about the coming Big One, but what if the big one is a flood, not an earthquake?
With this recent cavalcade of rainstorms, there’s been renewed interest in a 2011 USGS study on the so-called “ARkStorm.” In it, the USGS lays out a case for a hypothetical “megastorm,” one that could cause up to $725 billion in damage and impact a quarter of California’s homes.
The ARkStorm would bring with it catastrophic rains, hurricane-force winds and hundreds of landslides. Central Valley flooding alone is projected to span 300 miles.
If that sounds far-fetched, there’s historic precedent: Geological evidence indicates that California endures massive flooding caused by atmospheric rivers every 100-200 years. And settlers who moved to California after the Gold Rush soon found what the native population had known for centuries: Northern California is prime flooding territory.
The most prominent example is the Great Flood of 1862, a natural disaster that still ranks as the largest flood in the history of the American West. Between Dec. 1861 and Jan. 1862, the West Coast received a near-constant deluge of rain. Sacramento received a stunning 23 inches in that period, turning the city into a watery ghost town.
“The people are leaving the city as rats would a sinking ship” the Red Bluff Independent wrote on Jan. 14.
Apocalypse at Oroville
Oroville Dam’s untested emergency spillway activated. Flows to continue ‘40 to 56 hours’
BY DALE KASLER
Water began pouring over the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam early Saturday for the first time in its 48-year history. State officials continued to say they don’t expect the situation to result in flooding in the town of Oroville or other communities downstream.
Unable to release enough water from the dam’s heavily damaged main spillway, officials with the California Department of Water Resources announced that water from the storm-swollen reservoir started flowing over the adjacent emergency spillway at around 8 a.m. Department spokesman Doug Carlson said water was pouring over the emergency structure in what initially was a steady, relatively gentle flow.
Little Shaq to SPROUT
Sprout Greenlights New Series ‘Remy And Boo’; Renews ‘Floogals’ & ‘Nina’s World’; Sets Development Slate
Sprout, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment’s 24-hour preschool network, is expanding its original programming slate with the greenlight of new series Remy and Boo created by Industrial Brothers’ Matt Fernandes and produced by Industrial Brothers and Boat Rocker Studios. The network also has given Season 2 renewals to its popular original series Floogals and Nina’s World and set several new projects in development, including an original series executive produced by Shaquille O’Neal.
Among the new projects on Sprout’s development slate are Little Shaq, executive produced by Shaquille O’Neal. Inspired by the former NBA superstar’s real life childhood, the series follows an outsized boy’s funny and often awkward adventures in his urban American neighborhood. From Universal Cable Productions, the series is also executive produced by Full Fathom Five’s James Frey and Todd Cohen.
They’re Beginning To Wander
Army drone missing from Arizona found in Colorado
A drone like the one that disappeared is seen in this image provided by the U.S. Army / U.S. ARMY/CBS DENVER
DENVER — An Army drone that disappeared on a training flight in southern Arizona has been found about 600 miles away in Colorado, and the military is trying to figure out how it got there.
Officials at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, say a hiker found the $1.5 million Shadow drone stuck in a tree in the mountains west of Denver Thursday. It was missing a wing.
Soldiers lost contact with the drone at Fort Huachuca nine days earlier. A search failed to find it, and the Army concluded it probably crashed and disintegrated in the area.
The Bombing Of The L.A. Times
Infernal Machines: The Bombing of the Los Angeles Times and L.A.’s First ‘Crime of the Century’
Bombed-out building of the Los Angeles Times at First Street and Broadway, 1910 | Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library
It never fails to astound me. The tales we remember collectively. And the stories we forget. I first learned of the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times on a walk around Hollywood Forever Cemetery. There, next to graves of the Otises and Chandlers, is a grand monument to “Our martyred men,” the 20 employees of the Los Angeles Times who had lost their lives in the early morning hours of Saturday, October 1, 1910. There is a list of the deceased, fourteen of whose remains are buried beneath the monument. They had been hard at work at the Times’ headquarters, often called “The Fortress,” on the northeast corner of First and Broadway, when a series of dry blasts starting at 1:07 a.m. shook downtown Los Angeles to its foundations.
When I was growing up my father ran a paper and a printing press. I spent many happy nighttime hours at the press — running in and out of the revolving doors of the dark room and climbing on the great rolls of newspaper. I can still remember the smell of the ink, the clanging rhythm of the insert machine, and the dark ink smudges on the pressmen’s shirts. There was a sense of camaraderie among the folks who worked at the paper — the odd hours, the stress of deadlines, and the constant noise. Perhaps these memories are why this story so resonates with me.
At the current home of The Los Angeles Times on Spring Street, faded and half empty, there are few references to the bombing. There is a brief blurb about it in a historical timeline exhibit in the lobby. There is the cornerstone laid in 1934 by Harry Chandler, which contains a copper box with a list of the dead and other mementos. The words “True Industrial Freedom” are etched into the building’s façade, a reference lost to most casual pedestrians.
Across the street is an empty lot where “The Fortress” and its immediate successor had once approximately stood. The day I visit, there is a faint smell of urine and trash, and the detritus of the city clogs the lot’s chain link fence. Weathered signs proclaim that the block will soon be a city park, and flowering bushes have already reclaimed much of the area. Stray sheets of newspapers blow through high, rustling weeds. The ruins of a later government building are visible, and a desk and chair sit on ghostly guard at the top of a set of stairs overgrown with weeds. Rumor has it that the future park’s retaining walls were made with the debris of “The Fortress,” but it is only a rumor. The truth is there’s nothing much left of the disaster that once gripped the nation and dramatically capped off decades of class warfare and labor struggle. There are just scattered pieces of remembrance, here and there.
2017 BS32
NOT SO FAR AWAY – Asteroid 2017 BS32 will zoom past Earth TONIGHT in fourth close shave of the year
Scientists spotted space rock from ‘potentially hazardous’ Aten asteroid group on Monday
BY MARGI MURPHY
PA.PRESS ASSOCIATION
SCIENTISTS have just spotted an asteroid which will brush past Earth this evening.
Asteroid 2017 BS32 will fly past at around 161,280 km from our planet, according to stargazers.
2017 BS32 is expected to hurtle past at around 8.30pm Thursday.
The space rock – estimated to be around 82ft in size – belongs to the Aten group of asteroids.
Several of the thousands of Atens have been classed as “potentially hazardous” because of their proximity to Earth.
It was only spotted on Monday by astronomers and is the fourth Near-Earth Asteroid to pass this year, according to eagle-eyed asteroid watchers.
Spin
THE MIND-BENDING PHYSICS OF A TENNIS BALL’S SPIN
GETTY IMAGES
TENNIS HAS BEEN called the game of inches, of kings, of poets, of love, of errors, of endurance, of a lifetime. But those are mostly metaphors. Really, tennis is the game of spin.
Watch Novak Djokovic send arcing yellow streaks from beyond his baseline to the bleeding edge of his opponent’s backcourt. Watch Rafael Nadal’s ground strokes cross a foot or more above the net, then drop like tactical bombs to the competition’s ad corner. Watch Serena’s opponents go crosseyed staring down her barrel-rolling 126 mph first serves. Go to any court in any city and you will find players at every level squatting, twisting, grunting—trying to find that spin.
It’s fairly easy to figure out what spin does: It wins tennis matches. How it works—or rather, how it’s created—on the other hand, is about as complicated a physics question you can set about solving without invoking subatomic particles. The variables include squishy balls, stiff racquets, taut strings, thrusting knees, twisting hips, swinging shoulders, and rotating elbows. But all those mechanics are made possible by a pair of equipment innovations.
More Moon Mining
Billionaire closer to mining the moon for trillions of dollars in riches
Moon Express, the first private company in history to receive government permission to travel beyond Earth’s orbit, announced Tuesday that it raised another $20 million in private equity financing to fund its maiden lunar mission to take place in late 2017. This brings the total amount of private investment to $45 million from investors that include Peter Thiel‘s Founders Fund, Collaborative Fund and Autodesk.
What may have added impetus to investor interest in Moon Express is President Trump’s picks for the NASA transition team — Charles Miller and Chris Shank — and the leading candidate to become the next NASA administrator, GOP Rep. Jim Bridenstine. All support commercial space ventures and manned exploration — including lunar missions.
If successful, the new MX-1 lunar lander from Moon Express would not only win the $20 million Google Lunar XPRIZE, it would also help jump-start a new era of space exploration. Up until now, only government-funded missions from the United States, China and Russia have landed on the moon.
Leaping Sans The ‘chute
Skankin’ Dogs
Dogs ‘prefer reggae and soft rock’ to other music genres, research suggests
Dogs appear to prefer reggae and soft rock over other genres of music, according to researchers.
The Scottish SPCA and the University of Glasgow have published a paper which suggests music affects dogs’ behaviour.
Researchers played a variety of music to dogs at a rehoming centre in Dumbarton and assessed physiological and behavioural changes.
Prof Neil Evans said the most positive behaviour changes were seen when the dogs were played reggae and soft rock.
All though these genres stood out, he said the study suggested each dog had its own music tastes.
Prof Evans said: “Overall, the response to different genres was mixed highlighting the possibility that like humans, our canine friends have their own individual music preferences.”
The dogs were played five different genres of music: soft rock, Motown, pop, reggae and classical.
The study suggested that dogs spent “significantly more time lying and significantly less time standing” when music was played, regardless of genre.
By measuring the dogs’ heart rate, researchers said they showed a decrease in stress levels when played music – particularly when it was soft rock or reggae.
Breaking Down Reality
Essence of reality: Hunting the universe’s most basic ingredient
Drill down past molecules, atoms, and fundamental particles and where do you end up? We might finally be about to find out
By
Harriet Lee-Merrion
STRETCH out your hand. Ever wonder what it’s made of? The skin masks flesh, blood and bone sure enough. But those tissues are made of molecules, which are made of atoms. And atoms are made of electrons, protons and neutrons. It’s only when we drill down to fundamental particles and energy that we reach bedrock.
Or do we? The history of physics certainly gives us pause. For more than 300 years we have been asking ourselves about the true nature of reality – what, ultimately, stuff is made of. Time and again, we have found another layer beneath what we thought was the lowest. What’s more, with each new depth we plumb, our old understanding of reality is swept aside.
Now we could be on the cusp of another revolution, thanks to efforts to reconcile our two most successful but incompatible theories of reality. Not particles, energy, space,time or anything else we might think of as fundamental truly is: instead, the essence of reality is a thing whose workings we’re only just beginning to grasp.
Every age has had its own list of reality’s basic elements. For the philosopher Democritus, everything was made of atoms. For Aristotle, it was earth, air, water and fire. In the late 19th century, all the talk was of the luminiferous ether, a medium which was thought to carry light.
For most of the past three centuries, however, Newton guided our thoughts on what all things are made of. He thought that reality had three elementary components: time, a cosmic clock ticking away in the background; particles with mass; and a space in
Poppies! Poppies!
from The San Francisco Chronicle
Winter rains could lead to spectacular floral display at California poppy reserve
By Amy Graff
The winter rains could trigger a poppy explosion in the California desert this spring.
The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve outside Lancaster has received the minimum amount of rain, 7 inches, to make a vibrant bloom possible. The weather over the next couple weeks will determine the future of the sprouts.
A late freeze, a heat wave or a three-week stretch without rain could wipe out the bloom.
“We need the rains to continue on a regular basis to maintain the bloom,” California State Park Interpreter Jean Rhyne says. “That’s really what they need. With the past years of drought, there isn’t a lot of moisture built up in the soil. If we’d had several years of good rain and enough moisture content in the soil, the plants would be growing early enough to carry them through a freeze or heat wave. The roots needs to be deep enough for them to tolerate extreme conditions.”
The Sampha Process
Sampha, a Wounded Voice for Drake and Beyoncé, Steps Out With ‘Process’
Sampha, the experimental British pop singer and electronic producer, sounds like someone who has seen things.
For years, some of the biggest names in music (and the best talent scouts) — including Drake, Beyoncé, Kanye West and Solange — have deployed his lush, tender soprano, which can feel wounded but never weak, to telegraph their vulnerability. Through guest appearances on tell-all songs like Drake’s “Too Much” and Mr. West’s “Saint Pablo,” Sampha has made himself a go-to collaborator for those in search of emotional heft.
So it’s peculiar, then, given his ability to touch souls with his voice, that Sampha (born Sampha Sisay) long shied away from singing. As a child, he was known at home mainly as a dancer, doing Michael Jackson moves at the urging of his four much older brothers. When a career in music dawned on him, he thought of becoming a producer like Pharrell or Timbaland.
“When I started, I was just making lots of beats, and I wasn’t even intending to sing over them,” Sampha said last month in a low murmur, trailing off more often than he finished sentences. “I didn’t even have a microphone at home — I would have to go to someone else’s house to record.”
Ticked Off Vic About To Take A Nice Shit
Boom Star Born
Spectacular collision of suns will create new star in night sky in 2022
by Sarah Knapton, science editor
At the beginning of the 3rd century civil war raged in Britain as the Roman emperor Septimius Severus sought to quell unrest in the north.
But unknown to the fighting cohorts and Caledonian tribes, high above their heads two stars were coming together in a huge cataclysmic explosion.
Now 1800 years later the light from that collision will finally arrive on Earth creating a new star in the night sky – dubbed the ‘Boom Star – in an incredibly rare event which is usually only spotted through telescopes.
Before their meeting the two stars were too dim to be seen by the naked eye, but in 2022, the newly formed Red Nova will burn so brightly in the constellation Cygnus that everyone will be able to to see it.
“For the first time in history, parents will be able to point to a dark spot in the sky and say, ‘Watch, kids, there’s a star hiding in there, but soon it’s going to light up,” said Dr Matt Walhout, dean for research and scholarship at Calvin College, Michigan, where the prediction was made.
The Great Gig In The Yoko
Old Venice
The Lost Canals of Venice of America
Secreted away from the hustle and bustle of the famous boardwalk, the picturesque canals of Venice, California, are one of the seaside community’s hidden charms. But in Venice’s early years, the canals that survive today were only a sideshow. The main attraction – the original canals of Abbot Kinney’s Venice of America – are lost to history, long ago filled in and now disguised as residential streets.
In planning Venice of America, Kinney incorporated several references to the community’s Mediterranean namesake, from the Italianate architecture to his fanciful notion of launching a cultural renaissance there. But Venice of America would not have lived up to its name were it not for its canals.
When it opened on July 4, 1905, Venice of America boasted seven distinct canals arranged in an irregular grid pattern, as seen below in Kinney’s master plan for the community. Totaling nearly two miles and dredged out of former saltwater marshlands, the canals encircled four islands, including the tiny triangular United States Island. The widest of them, appropriately named Grand Canal, terminated at a large saltwater lagoon. Three of the smaller canals referred to celestial bodies: Aldebaran, Venus, and Altair.
Prepare.
Earth woefully unprepared for surprise comet or asteroid, Nasa scientist warns
Scientist recommended Nasa build an interceptor rocket, with periodic testing, alongside an observer spacecraft to stop catastrophic fireballs from hitting us
by Alan Yuhas in San Francisco
Large and potentially dangerous asteroids and comets are extremely rare, scientists said – ‘But on the other hand they are the extinction-level events.’ Photograph: Mopic / Alamy/Alamy
Humans are woefully unprepared for a surprise asteroid or comet, a Nasa scientist warned on Monday, at a presentation with nuclear scientists into how humans might deflect cosmic dangers hurtling toward Earth.
“The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment,” said Dr Joseph Nuth, a researcher with Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Speaking at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union, Nuth noted that large and potentially dangerous asteroids and comets are extremely rare, compared to the small objects that occasionally explode in Earth’s sky or strike its surface. “But on the other hand they are the extinction-level events, things like dinosaur killers, they’re 50 to 60 million years apart, essentially. You could say, of course, we’re due, but it’s a random course at that point.”
Comets follow distant paths from Earth but sometimes get knocked into the neighborhood. Nuth said that the Earth had “a close encounter” in 1996, when an aberrant comet flew into Jupiter, and then again in 2014, when a comet passed “within cosmic spitting distance of Mars”. That second comet was only discovered 22 months before its brush with a planet: not nearly enough time to launch a deflection mission, had it been on a course for Earth.
Kuso Gross-o
Kuso is the grossest movie ever made
Grotesquely explicit descriptions ahead
by Chris Plante
There are a number of reasons I’m hesitant to recommend Kuso, the first film from artist and musician Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus. (Spoilers and grotesquely explicit descriptions ahead.) I’ll start with the footage of an erect penis being stabbed. As with most footage of an erect penis being violently gored by a long steel rod, it’s certainly unexpected. So by the time you cover your eyes, it’s already too late. And if you happened to blink, it’s cool, Kusodelivers a callback.
To paraphrase the official plot synopsis, Kuso is a collection of semi-connected short films chronicling the lives of the mutated women, men, and children of Los Angeles, following the earthquake to end all earthquakes. But that’s not really Kuso’s story, let alone its point. While the film does hint at some interesting (though opaque) commentary about Los Angeles, racism, and the grim and bloody history of America, its creators are mostly interested in one thing: producing the grossest film ever.
They succeed. The sliced eyeball in Un Chien Andalou, the copious shit in River of Fundament, the corporeal mutilation of the entire torture-porn genre: it’s all an amuse-bouchefor the final course that is Kuso.
NASA Hiding Things.
NASA ‘cuts live feed from international space station’ after mysterious object appears on camera
A self-styled alien hunter believes he has spotted a UFO during a live feed from the International Space Station.
John Craddick, from Wolverhampton in the UK, claims he has never seen anything like it before.
He told the Mirror: “I’ve been watching it [the live feed] for years but never seen any UFOs on it before.
“I was showing a friend how it worked at around 11.30pm when the feed cut out, and 35 seconds after it came back on, this object appeared.
“At first it was really small and then it grew bigger, lasting for about 25 seconds,” he said.
Mr Craddick claims that it must be alien because “nothing human can fly that high”
Arrivederci Yellow Spaghetti
Say goodbye to LACMA’s beloved yellow spaghetti installation
While droves of visitors are busy posing in between the lamp posts of “Urban Light” or pretending to hold up the 340-ton “Levitated Mass” for a fun photo, LACMA regulars know that the Miracle Mile museum’s most fun photogenic installation is a hands-on piece from 1990 that resides next to the entrance of the Ahmanson Building. But it turns out those swinging spaghetti strands won’t be around for much longer.
Jesús Rafael Soto’s “Penetrable,” a thick curtain of yellow plastic hoses, will wrap up its stay at LACMA on February 12. The kinetic installation has invited visitors to get lost in its tangle of human-scale strands since 2011. We had grown so accustomed to the late Venezuelan artist’s sculpture that we assumed LACMA owned the piece, but it was instead part of a long-term loan from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, to which it’ll return next month.
Speed Queens
SPEED QUEENS: THE FEARLESS FEMALE DRAG RACERS OF THE 60S AND 70S
By Cherrybomb
Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney on the cover of ‘Sunday News Magazine’ in 1978.
Like many fields of work, the drag racing scene was and is fairly well dominated by men. During its heyday, specifically the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, the National Hot Rod Association incorporated the use of gorgeous women/models to help appeal to the fanboys. If you were into that scene, you probably spent a lot of time fantasizing about Pam Hardy aka “Jungle Pam” who accompanied driver “Jungle Jim” Liberman across the country clad in go-go boots and form-fitting, barely-there outfits that showcased her bodacious “assets” while she showboated on the track and in the pit for her adoring fans. Though Liberman would pass away unexpectedly in 1977, Hardy would continue to appear at racing events. But this post isn’t about buxom blonde race track cheerleaders. It’s about the ballsy women who drove the cars during that era—and there were actually quite a lot of “speed queens” that not only gave their male counterparts a run for their money, but also blazed a trail for other women who wanted smoke up the track.
And since I know you’re curious, here’s a shot of “Jungle Pam.” Though her attire says otherwise, it must have been cold that day.
[ click to continue reading (and viewing) at Dangerous Minds ]
Fark Yeah!
Foul-mouthed people are also the most honest, study finds
By Henry Bodkin
People who regularly posted short, simple messages on Facebook were found to be the least likely to swear, but also more dishonest CREDIT: AP
Temperate language has traditionally been considered a social virtue, but new research suggests that people who refrain from swearing are often the most devious and dishonest.
Those fond of effing and blinding, by contrast, are likely to be the most honest in any given group, according to academics at the University of Cambridge.
The study describes how 276 participants were asked to list their favourite swear words in order to gauge how fond they were of turning the air blue.
They were then given a survey asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as “I never lie” and “all my habits are good” to assess their propensity for dishonesty.
The researchers found that the most honest in the group were also the biggest swearers.
Thinking about taking up jogging….
Space Bling Psyche To Destroy World Economy
NASA to explore space rock worth so much money it would DESTROY world economy
THE American space agency is planning to send a spacecraft to a lump of metal in space worth quadrillions of dollars.
By Peter Truman
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY / BLING: The metal in the asteroid is worth more than the world’s economy
The 200km-wide asteroid is currently orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
It is made up of various precious metals such as iron, nickel and gold.
Experts believe the iron alone in the rock would be worth $10,000 quadrillion – enough to cause the world’s economy, worth $73.7 trillion, to promptly collapse altogether.
ENDGAME: Rules of The Game
Facebook Kills Again
Maserati Driver Killed In Crash Remembered As ‘Wonderful Young Man’
(credit: CBS)
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (CBS4) – Investigators have identified the driver of a Maserati killed in a crash in Douglas County.
Brandon Gionapoulos, 24, died when the blue Maserati he was driving landed in a ditch near C-470 and Lucent Boulevard. The mangled car was spotted by a passerby around 10 a.m. Saturday, but it’s not yet clear when the crash occurred.
Gionapoulos was a sales employee for the Mike Ward Maserati and Infiniti dealership and part of his job gave him access to the high-performance vehicles, authorities told CBS4. The dealership is located just about a mile from where the crash happened.
Hours before, around 7:25 p.m. Friday, Gionapoulos posted a Facebook Live video showing the dashboard of a Maserati. The short video shows the vehicle going from zero to 111 miles per hour in just about 20 seconds, and then ends.
The Big Magnet
The paradox powering Earth’s magnetic field
Our planet’s protective force field appears to be billions of years older than the mechanism that got it going. So what really made Earth magnetic?
By Marcus Woo
Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center
IT IS Earth’s silent defender. Without it, a constant onslaught of charged particles would bombard our planet’s atmosphere, changing its chemistry and disrupting our electronic infrastructure. Assuming any of that stuff was even there to disrupt. In Earth’s infancy, our guardian may have prevented the sun’s action from stripping away the protective bubble of gas surrounding our planet entirely, and so allowed life – and eventually intelligent life – to flourish.
This silent defender is Earth’s magnetic field, a force field whose source lies in the churning molten iron that forms the planet’s core. Electrons flowing through this fluid generate an electric current, which in turn creates a magnetic field. The core is a giant, self-sustaining electromagnet: a dynamo.