Not much to report on today.  Even Super Typhoon Champi in the West Pacific, at 185 MPH yesterday, and now the strongest ocean storm yet in 2026, has dropped to "only" 165 MPH.  Expected to further weaken and sneak between Taiwan and some of those southern Okinawa islands, moving up north, losing typhoon strength in two days, with landfall near Nagasaki, Japan on Sunday as a tropical storm . Yes, TIME is a magazine, but this is Wednesday, my day for sci-tech.  What time is it?  You look at a clock.  But time is "different" in physics.  I asked Google AI, how do they differ. Yes, time is different in physics compared to everyday human life . For normal citizens, time feels like a steady, universal clock that ticks at the exact same speed for everyone. In physics, time is relative , meaning it stretches and slows down depending on speed and gravity . [ 1 , 2 ] In physics, time is not a flowing stream or a fixed clock. It is a fundamental dimension of...

I met James Hansen several decades ago, and remember him all the back to  1988 when he first testified in Congress .  This was six years after I had left the U. S. Senate, a time period when global warming was an issue of importance only to a very few scientists.  I am on his mailing list, and this morning received his views on  The Venus Syndrome and Runaway Climate . Paper starts with: Mars, Venus and Earth   are the Goldilocks planets – too cold, too hot, and just right. These planets reveal how a planet’s surface temperature depends on atmospheric gases as well as the planet’s distance from the Sun. The physics is energy balance: a planet sends back to space, as (infrared) heat radiation, the energy in sunlight that it absorbs. Absorbed solar energy depends simply on the Sun’s irradiance, ⁱ   the planet’s distance from the Sun, and the fraction of incident sunlight that the planet absorbs (the remainder being reflected). The surface temperature is then ...

We leave the Westin Grand Munich tomorrow for Copenhagen.  The hotel itself is now more and more appreciated.  We walked around the neighborhood, led by my Blue-bar Pigeon and passed through a supermarket, where we purchased some suckling pig. The season for those giant white asparagus has just started, and I'm trying figure out how to have a meal of them.   The WGM is also convenient to the various transport modes taking you to downtown Munich.  This photo is to the city, and note that snow-topped mountain range.  Alas, we decided to just stick around the WGM for there are shopping areas and a nice market.  One of those been there and done that experiences.  For example, when I was here seven years ago, I caught the U4-Bahn into Odeonplatz and took the usual touristy photos. Was led around by my Blue-bar Pigeon. Saw an almost black tulip, which reminds me of where we will be in a few days. Had a truly great lunch at Schuhbeck's. Read the details ...