A week ago I posted on  Death by a Gamma Ray Burst?   This week, I focus on another space invader, a large asteroid.  PBS has had several documentaries on this topic:   The Asteroid and the Dinosaur  and   Dinosaur Apocalypse . The scientific term for the above is  Impact Event .  The biggest Earth event might have been the  Big Splash , or the Theia Impact: This when our Moon was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Theia, the mythical Greek Titan, was the colliding body, mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon. The isotope ratios of lunar and terrestrial rock are identical. There are many theories, but one is that the Moon was formed by the tangential impact upon Earth of a body the size of Mars. Much of this giant-impact consensus emerged from a 1969 conference held at Kona, Hawaii.  Those who don't believe are called the agnostics. But our solar system is today quite different, and planet-sized impact neighbors are no longer present. 2 billion years ago an asteroid cal

Well, the day finally came, for former president Donald Trump was arraigned in a Florida court, indicted, electronically fingerprinted, plead not guilty to everything, released, should get $2 million at a fundraiser and will  give a speech tonight  at 8:45PM EDT from his Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.  On what, who really knows.  But his judge has not limited what he can say. You can read the details  here .  Some might want to watch the analyses on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow and her cohorts at 8PM EDT. Here is my take: The court cases are getting more and more serious for Trump.  Sure, "stealing"  15 boxes  of  more than 300 ( 325, actually ) confidential files  and  11,000 records  from his office when he left the presidency was a concern.  Worse was his effort to defy the government which tried to get those papers back.  This was nothing like Biden and Pence embarrassingly returning mostly trivial information they mistakenly took. If Trump had acted similarly, today

President Joe Biden is on Puerto Rico today.  The island has had a history of major hurricane problems, and power from Category 1 Fiona last month is still not fully available.  He next goes to Florida, where parts of the state will just need to be abandoned, while the death toll remains under double digits.  Saturday night  125 people died in Indonesia  after a soccer match. Read this article about how  politics can affect recovery attempts from hurricanes .  Florida politicians particularly seem to be caught in this imbroglio.  Biden smartly said all the right things about Hurricane Ian, but notice how he ( Ian ) only damaged Republican states, skipping around Georgia, which more recently caused problems for Republicans. On to the topic of the day, salt, or sodium chloride.   Our oceans are 3% salt, and if water is removed and spread evenly over our land surface, would form a layer 500 feet thick, about the height of a 40-story office building. The Dead Sea is 34% salt, yet, algae an

                     From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):     DAY     USA    WORLD      Brazil      India      South Africa June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21      1225      6849         571        703       85 Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118 Dec     30       3880    14748       1224       299      465 Jan      14       4142      15512        1151        189      712 Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398 Mar      2       1989     9490        1726       110      194 April     6        906    11787         4211       631       37 May     4        853     13667        3025      3786     59   June    1        287    10637         2346      3205      95  July    7         251      8440        1595        81