The Venus Climate Orbiter, called AKATSUKI, aims to find out why blistering winds zip around the planet at speeds of up to 400 kilometres per hour. The upper clouds can circle the planet in four days or even less, and no one knows why. The effect is called “super-rotation”, because the bulk of the atmosphere is rotating much faster than the planet itself. Venus takes 243 Earth days to make one rotation.
Venus orbiter to fly close to super-rotating wind – space – 14 May 2010 – New Scientist.
When food was scarce, the team found that the spiders built larger webs to improve their chances of catching prey, but at the expense of the plants.
BBC News – Plants and spiders ‘compete for the same food supply’.
Abstract from Proceedings of the Royal Society B is here.
Via a tweet from peacay, some fantastic images of Victoria amazonica at botanicus.org.
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The victorias are a bit of a grail plant for me (I use that expression a lot – sorry) – from the Amazon basin (or the Paraguay/Parana – home to a fish on my wish list), featured in Victorian photographs with folks standing on them, intricate, thorny leaves – what’s not to love?
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An image shamelessly ganked from Bibliodyssey (thanks for assembling it, peacay) – clicking on it will take you to the originating post, “Gould Hummingbirds“.
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A web site with more info – if you’re curious about what it’s take to grow one of these beauties – is here.
A I write this there’s a bit of weirdness going on over in the metropole (Portsmouth) – it’s unclear exactly what is happening, but it involves a bus, a 911 call reporting a suspicious package/device, local and state police, AFT agents and robots. I found out about it via Twitter about 15 minutes after police showed up and it became obvious to local folk that something was up (around noon today). Some of the things I’ve noticed since then:
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I caught some of the teevee coverage as well. The informal coverage was better – much better. Nobody (I suspect, including many of the cops on scene) knew what was going on – last I looked, we still don’t. That didn’t stop NECN – or the crowd watching – from covering it, nor should it have. Instead of the 2 or three stills and speculation/repetition of a very few facts that the teevee was offering, the crowd supplied more pictures, bad jokes and updates when something actually happened. I got much more of a sense of the situation from the ‘new’ media feed. The landscape may change further, but believe me, the ‘changing media landscape’ has already changed.
More proof – as if any were needed – that logos do not need swooshes to be pleasing.
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NH Division of Forests and Land – State Nursery
The Old Man of the Mountain lives on!
So very weird/awesome.
Motorhome Mania – Watkins Glen whatzit at Hemmings Blog – Classic and collectible cars and parts.
Wow – that was fun. Up early to run dogs and then off to the southwestern corner of NH, where the cacti and mesas frolic (or not). First stop was at Callahan & Co. Booksellers to sell some dupe/no longer needed sporting books. Hard to imagine, but I came out of Mr. Callahan’s barn upside down (I spent more than he paid me).
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From there to the Toadstool in Peterborough to see the Noted Nature Writer do a talk and book signing event. I got there early, so first I had some pie for breakfast:
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And did a little looking around:
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The talk was wonderful – from there the posse went to Deering where I helped put new bracelets on a gos, much hawking was talked and I met more interesting people. Back home, another dog run – they’re all fast asleep now – and that’s it for me!
