Monday, March 31, 2025
Get a load of the Italian General's dueling scar
General Giuseppe Molinero (right), the Italian commanding officer of Palermo, surrendering to US General Geoffrey Keyes, 1943
What a great painting
The Varberg is towed from Marstrand in July 1719) by Christian Mølsted
During the Great Northern War (1700 – 1721) the Danish forces successfully attacked the Swedish harbor, town and fortress of Marstrand in July 1719, which resulted in the capture of the Swedish frigate Varberg, which in the painting is shown being pulled clear of the Swedish guns in the fortress.
Varberg was a fourth rate 36 gun frigate built at Karlskrona. She was armed with 18 x 8lbrs on her lower gun deck, 18 x 4 pounders on her upper gundeck and 6 x 3 pounders on her quarterdeck and fo'c's'le.
She was taken into service with the Danish fleet under the name Crown Prize of Denmark. In 1730, she was handed over to the Danish East India Company, which however went bankrupt. The ship was purchased in 1732 by the Asian Company and was named Crown Prince Christian. She made the first trip to Canton by any Danish ship in 1730-32.
Mt. Shasta Snow Report
Sunday, March 30, 2025
NASA has been monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa
This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.
The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) – likened by NASA to a 'dent' in Earth's magnetic field, or a kind of 'pothole in space' – generally doesn't affect life on Earth, but the same can't be said for orbital spacecraft (including the International Space Station), which pass directly through the anomaly as they loop around the planet at low-Earth orbit altitudes.
During these encounters, the reduced magnetic field strength inside the anomaly means technological systems onboard satellites can short-circuit and malfunction if they become struck by high-energy protons emanating from the Sun.
Something tells me this is a normal variation, but we haven't had the tech to notice it until now.
The primary source is considered to be a swirling ocean of molten iron inside Earth's outer core, thousands of kilometers below the ground. The movement of that mass generates electrical currents that create Earth's magnetic field, but not necessarily uniformly, it seems.
A huge reservoir of dense rock called the African Large Low Shear Velocity Province, located about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the African continent, is thought to disturb the field's generation, resulting in the dramatic weakening effect – which is aided by the tilt of the planet's magnetic axis.
"The observed SAA can be also interpreted as a consequence of weakening dominance of the dipole field in the region," said NASA Goddard geophysicist and mathematician Weijia Kuang in 2020.
Glad they are studying it, though. The more we know, the better.
