Daily Archives: June 24, 2021

There will be all sorts of risks for any future colonists on Mars, such as extreme weather and temperatures, radiation, and the human physiological problems associated with living in with decreased gravity. But another issue means colonists on Mars will have to be on a constant lookout above their heads.

While Mars and Earth are both hit by space debris regularly dust, small rocks and bigger meteoroids on our planet, meteors usually vaporize in the atmosphere.

On Mars however, with a surface pressure 1/100th that of the Earth, the impactors generally make it to the surface, says the team from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) on board MRO took this image of a small impact crater that was formed sometime in the last 5 years. Although the crater is small, the rays of ejecta thrown out by the impact are easy to spot, stretching out almost a kilometer.

How often does this happen on Mars? A 2013 study estimated that the Red Planet gets womped by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year, forming craters at least 3.9 meters (12.8 feet) across. Like on Earth, even a small impact would wreak havoc on any Martian settlement. But impacts of this size on Mars happen more frequently.

Related: What will it take to feed a million people on Mars?

Marsis about half the size ofEarthby diameter and the thinnerair surrounding the planet has anatmosphericvolume less than 1% ofEarths. Theatmosphericcomposition is also significantly different: primarily carbon dioxide-based, whileEarthsis rich in nitrogen and oxygen.

MRO has been in orbit of Mars since 2006, and one of the benefits of having a spacecraft in orbit around another planet for several years is the ability to make long-term observations and interpretations. HiRISE images over the years have detected numerous fresh craters that have formed, and since it has repeatedly imaged several regions on Mars, scientists can study the before-and-after images to calculate the impact rate based on new craters.

The 2013 study showed that the rate for how frequently new craters are formed, which are at least 3.9 meters in diameter is about one each year on each area of the Martian surface roughly the size of the U.S. state of Texas.

Just one more thing that will be a challenge for anyone who dares to try and live on Mars.

See the original image and more details from MRO on the HiRISE website.

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This is why Martian Colonists are Going to Wish They had an Atmosphere Above Them - Universe Today

As severe storms struck Chicago on Sunday night, Ella Williams was coming home from a music-video shoot. Walking to her apartment, she felt a strange yet familiar sensation.

"There was thunder and lightning, and I felt this vertigo," says Williams, a singer-songwriter and guitarist who makes music as Squirrel Flower. "It felt like I was going to fall into the sky."

The capacity of nature to make us feel powerless and the onrushing threat of climate disaster are two core themes of Squirrel Flower's latest album, Planet (i), out June 25 on Polyvinyl. Across its dozen tracks, Williams grapples with those terrors while reckoning with another more private fear: "The fear of my body deteriorating," she says, "because I was experiencing these relentless concussions over and over again."

Williams suffered the most severe of these concussions in 2019: while working at a cafe outside Boston, she hit her head on a low walk-in fridge. She was about to embark on a tour, but instead was forced to spend two and a half months recuperating. Since then she's had to devote psychological energy to fending off panic about potential pain.

"There was a time where every little headache I got would spark anxiety and depression," she says. "After I would get one, I would think, 'Yeah, my life is over. I have brain damage.' I don't have brain damage. I'm fine, but I was overcoming the fear of my body not working."

Squirrel Flower, Mia JoySat 6/26, 4:30 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, sold out, 21+

Squirrel Flower, Kara JacksonSat 6/26, 7:30 PM, Sleeping Vilage, 3734 W. Belmont, sold out, 21+

Planet (i) is alternately meditative and brazenly catharticsometimes in the same song. "Big Beast" opens with acoustic guitar and then erupts into a cloud of distorted fuzz worthy of doom metal. On "Night," Williams sings about how she hasn't "seen the sun in months," then stirs the song out of its slumber with pounding drums and an overdriven guitar solo. She's eager to finally explore these waves of rhythm and emotion onstage. She made Chicago her new home earlier this year, and on Saturday, she and her band will perform here for the first time since the movethey'll play two sold-out shows at Sleeping Village to celebrate the album's release.

"We've been rehearsing so much, and I can't wait," Williams says. "It's a patio show, and the way we'll perform a lot of the album is pretty relaxed and quiet. But every once in a while, it's just this crazy transition. People who haven't heard the album are going to freak out."

In our interview, Williams discussed recording Planet (i) in England, her dim view of Elon Musk, and the necessity of imagining a better future, among other topics. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Matt Sigur: When did you move to Chicago?

Ella Williams: I moved here in Marchfour months ago. I'm very new. Last winter, I had moved back into my parents' house, and my brothers were home for the holidays. My brothers and I were all just like, "Should we just move to Chicago? We have a lot of friends there, and it's cheap." The time was right, and I had been thinking about coming here for a while. It seemed like the right place for my next adventure.

You mentioned last night's tornado, which happened while you were shooting a music video. Thinking about that and your album, it's funny, because some of these songs mention tornadoes.

Right? I feel like it fits, like, "Of course there's going to be a tornado as I'm shooting a music video for a song from this album." I feel like those moments in those songs are affirmations. I'm trying to tell myself that I'm not scared, that I'm going to face this thing.

One time, while I was attending college in Iowa, there was a tornado and I stood outside alone for the entire thing. I was so scared and didn't want to go inside. I eventually did because the air just changed. But the tornado was something I wanted to face, because I've always been so scared of the power of storms, elements, huge waves, deep water, thunder and wind. A lot of the album is me trying to grapple with how I'm in awe of nature and terrified by it.

The album is me trying to be OK with submitting to nature. A lot of peopleespecially latelyare going through life knowing there will be a massive climate disaster that affects everyone at some point, whether it's wildfires, a tornado, a hurricane, or drought and lack of water.

I think everybody is going through life, trying to act normal, but we all know it in the back of our heads. And that feeling of powerlessness is utterly terrifying. It's pretty fucked. You just go through your daily life. You're doing your normal shit, you have a moment of silence, and you freak out. I was trying to feel OK with it and acknowledge that nature is powerful, as it should be.

The album is steeped in disaster, and you have a history dealing with concussions. What ties these themes together?

What I was doing with these songs was trying to grapple with my fear of climate doom and disaster in the same way I was trying to grapple with the fear of my body deteriorating, because I was experiencing these relentless concussions over and over again. It got to a point where I had to overcome the fear of pain and disability.

On the production side of Planet (i), you went to England and worked with Ali Chant. How was that experience?

Initially, I was hoping to self-produce this record. I wanted to do it myself and get back to how I recorded music when I made my first EP as Squirrel Flower. Back then, I was just using this little, shitty recording interface and layering everything. I wasn't worrying about anything else.

Before recording this, I was talking to some producers, and Ali hit up my manager and said, "I'm a fan of Squirrel Flower." We talked on the phone, and we clicked. But at that time last year, we agreed that there was no way to record. There was a pandemic, and there's an ocean between us. The conversation was like, "Maybe in the future, nice to talk to you, goodbye."

The following week, I got COVID, which was crazy and horrible, but it allowed me to rethink the possibility of going to England to record. At the time, the U.S. and UK were the only countries open to each other because they were both fucked. [Laughs.] I had the antibodies, so I decided to fly there. I triple-masked and flew to London, then my friend drove me to Bristol to the studio.

It was insane working with Aliand his friend Adrian Utley, the guitarist of Portishead, played on the record. It felt too casual. They were both very laid-back and down-to-earth.

Ali and I didn't want anything to feel overproduced. We were both on a similar page in terms of keeping in little mistakes and crackles. It was all about creating this thing that, when you're listening to it, feels like a performance.

Did you have the songs written beforehand, or were you writing in the studio?

I had like 30 demos going into it. I had this Soundcloud playlist, because I was trying to share them with certain people and get feedback. I would move them around, put some on another playlist. It was so fucked and disorganized. I had too many songs.

I narrowed them down to 14 to go into the studio. Then I ended up writing two more while I was in Bristol that made it onto the record"Flames and Flat Tires" and "To Be Forgotten."

"To Be Forgotten" has these lyrics: "To be alone, what a feeling / To be forgotten, what a feeling." Those lines could read sad, but the performance feels cathartic.

I feel like a lot of my life I've had a fraught relationship with independence and solitude and how joyful and not joyful that can be.

When I was writing that line, I was alone in Bristol, letting my music physically guide me through life around the world. I was literally following my art, and it felt so amazing. That's what I was trying to capture, walking around Bristol alone for hours and feeling amazing, just being with the universe, having nature be my company.

I think that it may be from having ADHD. I just get really distracted sometimes when I don't have alone time. I get frazzled. It's really important to take a step back and be able to slow down.

What's your ideal planet?

Oh fuck, I don't know. [Laughs.] I've been reading a lot of sci-fi lately. I reread Fahrenheit 451, and now I'm rereading The Martian Chronicles, and I started Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. It's a very powerful thing to imagine or reimagine our society in a different place and way.

I can say that my ideal planet is not Elon Musk's Mars colony. At this point, I don't think I can construct my own ideal planet. I need to read more about other people's ideal planets. A lot of the time, it's pretty radical to just imagine a different world, whether that's in the future or a different planet completely.

I think a lot of people have been experiencing apocalypse for a very long time, whether it's from climate disaster or environmental racism or policing. I think about it a lot in terms of queer theory, because that's what I studied in college. There are a lot of people who feel like their world is fucking ending all the time and have always been forced to imagine new ways of living and community building. The act of imagining is very powerful.

Thinking of it from a queer perspective, if your very existence is denying a gender binary and imagining a new type of expression and selfhood, you're already living in the future. You're already imagining something more beautiful than what already exists, if that makes sense.

Is this album the first of a series? Are there going to be other Planet albums

Planet B? [Laughs.] It's a good question, because I have so many songs that didn't make it onto the record. I feel kind of confined sometimes by album-cycle structure stuff. I knew that I didn't want to do a double album. I need to be creative and think about a way to share those songs.

Or not, you know? Maybe those songs just exist in my voice memos. That's beautiful in its own way.v

Read more here:

Squirrel Flower confronts looming disaster on the new Planet (i) - Chicago Reader

We've been overwatching Red Solstice 2: Survivors since we checked out the game's alpha a month ago. Now in its final form we dive into the full co-op experience with our squad of four to take on some of the single player story and into the meat of the game's skirmish mode.

If you didn't know, Red Solstice 2: Survivors is a top-down tactical-action game where you control space marines on a Mars colony overrun with alien/zombie creatures. Your main goal is to survive while completing a primary objective,but along the way there will be side missions to complete like rescuing civilians, powering up critical gear, and collecting things in the name of science. The top-down view makes the game feel a bit like a Diablo-style experience, though you can take more direct control of your actions for enhanced targeting bonuses.

The key to surviving survivors is overwatch! Your "E" key. Pressing this creates a radius in which any enemy entering your character will automatically target and take out baddies. There's a fine line to balancing this auto aim with manually taking control when you want to prioritize bigger, badder targets.

Along the way on your missions you'll want to be on the lookout for lockers that contain usable items like mines, turrets, grenades as well as health and ability boosting items. And trust us, you are going to need these things as the game throws a ton of enemies at you - especially as your time on the red planet increases - so does the difficulty.

Since we last looked at the game a month ago, it doesn't really feel like too much has changed. There's been a bit of polish added and some UI cleanup, but it's the same fun experience we had last time we played. Jason highlights a few issues he's noticed now that we've had some more time with it; namely, that not all skills you unlock via your "Profile" experience carry over into the Campaign mode as new classes/abilities/gear there are unlocked by completing research projects. Oddly, though, this limitation only applies to the host and not your co-op buddies. Aside from that, while saved loadouts are a great feature so you can swap between different guns/abilities quickly before launching into a mission, the interface is a little bit clunky and it's not always clear why you can or can't equip some things.

Overall this game is a definite recommend from the Co-Optimus team. If you watched our video above you can clearly hear and see us having a jolly good time with our friends. The skirmish mode definitely has some meat to it and its bite sized nature will keep us coming back for more.

Red Solstice 2: Survivors is available now on Steam for $29.99. It features eight player online co-op.

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Red Solstice 2: Survivors Co-Op Stream Recap and Impressions - Co-Optimus.com

World's largest surviving carnivorous marsupials Tasmanian devils were given a safe harbour on an island abound in the little penguin population. Now, theyre devouring the endangered penguins to the point of wiping the mammals out of their habitat.

[Credit: The Maria Island Walk]

The popular Maria Island, now home to the Tasmanian devils, is located off the east coast of Tasmania. It is a solitary Australian National Parkthat can be reached by ferry or plane. The threatened predator was introduced to Maria Islandby the environment conservationists under theSave the Tasmanian Devil Program(STDP)which was aimed to stop the extinction of the Tasmanian devil due to Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD).

The STDP, a joint initiative of the Australian and Tasmanian governments, was established in 2003 following a national workshop of specialists on the decline of the Tasmanian devil. There were looming fears of the marsupials permanent endangerment due to the spread of the facial disease. DFTDis a highly transmissible ailment of the Tasmanian devil population that was transmitted to others with biting, fighting and copulation in their natural habitat, the coastal heath, open dry sclerophyll forests.

[Credit: Unspalsh]

However, according to a report issued by BirdLife Tasmania, the marsupials, that noticeably grew in population from 28 to an estimated 100 between 2021-2016, have been eliminating the penguins on the island. It is also threatened the colony of the medium-sized long-winged, short-tailedpetrel family sea bird species called the shearwater according to the Birdlife findings published its findings in the journal Biological Conservation.

[Shearwater bird. Credit: Twitter/@americanbeetles]

[Credit: Twitter/@SeabirdingJP]

The introduction of devils increased predation pressure on shearwaters, and the colonies continued to decline, reaching zero occupancies within four years of devil introduction.The penguins were also significantly reduced. The park produced an estimated figure of 3,000 pairs of penguins, that it said, have declined from the island due to the Tasmanian devils hunting habits. There were anecdotal changes also noticedin the ground-nesting bird's Cape Barren geese on Maria Island, trying to escape these marsupials.

In a televised remark with CNN on Wednesday, the convenor of BirdLife Tasmania Eric Woehler expressed hope as he indicated that the decimated little penguin population can most likely be restored once the predatory activity of the devils is taken care of. It is although uncertain if the sanctuary would opt for conservation translocations as a means to minimize the Tasmanian devils threats on its native prey species.

The convenor agreed that the park has witnessed the catastrophic ecological impact on the fauna across the Island since transplanting theinsurance population of devils in the habitat that is home to several important species on the verge of mass eradication. The little penguins, however, areone of the two most threatenedseabird species in the world. According toBirdlife International,it isnt the Antarctic penguins that are officially endangered,but thelittle penguinpopulation that exists at Manly, in Sydney's North Harbour is.

[Cape Barren Geese.Credit: Stewart Monckton/ Twitter/@SCMONCK]

[Penguins. Credit: unsplash]

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Australia, the little penguins can now only be found in southern Australia, as well as few in New Zealand. In Australia, little penguin colonies may be detected across the coastline from near Perth on the west coast, to Sydney on the east coast, and around Tasmania. In Phillip Island, there is only one remaining little penguin colony.

Woehler stated that it was very natural to have catastrophic consequences on the bird populations anywhere in the world where there was a deliberate introduction of carnivore predators in the habitat. In some cases, scientists warn about the impact on other wildlife species. Woeler, however, did verify that it would be now a good time to remove the devils from Maria Island as the threat is well within the range of being controlled. This implies, that the 116-square-kilometer Maria Island can be re-established as an island for the penguins.

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Tasmanian devils wipe out over 3,000 penguins on tiny Australian island - Republic World