Around the time I was finishing last night's posting with some filler, I was watching the Rocket Lab launch of the TROPICS satellites, "Rocket Like a Hurricane". The launch itself was successful and that was known by that time, but the two satellites hadn't been deployed and their conditions were unknown. Deployment wouldn't take place until almost an hour later.
“We’ll be getting data we’ve never had before, which is this ability to look in the microwave wavelength region in the storms with hourly cadence to look at the storm as it forms and intensifies,” said William Blackwell, TROPICS principal investigator at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, during an April 28 media call. “We hope to improve our understanding of the basic processes that drive the storms and ultimately improve our ability to forecast the track and intensity.”
More accurate forecasts of track and intensity? I've been beating that
long-dead horse
for years. I know I'm not the only one.
Long time readers may recall that last October, within 24 hours of closest approach, the NHC forecast Hurricane Matthew to be over my head as a Cat IV storm. Actual closest approach was about 50 miles away and a much weaker cat II. We didn’t get hurricane force winds. That’s an enormous difference in the risk from the storm, since wind damage scales as velocity squared. I'd like to see them more accurate at 24 hours, let alone at 10 days.
Let me restate that. I'd like to see them as accurate at 10 days as they are at 24 hours now (which isn't very accurate) and become more accurate on every forecast. That may not even be physically possible; these systems are modeled by complex sets of partial differential equations. The alternate technical term for chaotic systems is "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" and the initial conditions are anywhere on Earth. You may have heard of that as "the butterfly effect" - as in a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and that change in initial conditions causes a difference between calm and a tornado a week later and up to a hemisphere away.
Meanwhile, if you want to watch the launch and as much sitting around as you can stand, you can always click here.
As for the Not News, this weekend was the worldwide opening of the Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, the self-proclaimed last episode of the GotG series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Mrs. Graybeard and I had long ago decided we'd go see it and early on in my retirement we settled on going to opening weekend as a midday matinee on Monday. We always do our best to avoid too much information and spoilers, so I won't read reviews and "highlights" unless it's someone we know and trust about their opinion. Which means we went to the noon showing without having seen anything except for the trailer and a few interviews from Premiere Night. As always for these opening weekend Monday matinees, there might have been as many as 20 people in the theater (part of a 10-plex), but I didn't count.
We've both come to consider Guardians 2 as one of the funniest MCU movies they made, if not the funniest, and this was the return to the MCU by the same writer/director, James Gunn. I think there's more just plain silliness in Guardians 2 than any other movie they've done. After 2, Gunn was said to be moving to the DC movie universe, and it looked like there'd be no replacement. I don't really know (or care to know) what happened but I had heard he was back for this one when they started working on it, 1-1/2 or two years ago.
GotG 3 doesn't have as much silliness as 2 did. It suffered from a common affliction we've seen in other movies since Endgame: a bit too much story going on, which means they need to tell and resolve them without leaving too many loose ends - they've said quite openly that this is the last episode with this cast. That meant it was entertaining but not in the same league as 2. We see whole new sides of Nebula and Mantis, with more personality out of both of them. (Nebula was more developed as a character than Mantis, so there was less about her.) Both characters were fun to watch. We both thought the movie was fun but both of us said there were places where we felt like we did in other movies where we wondered "what are they telling me and why?"
For the uninitiated (who probably won't care) The Guardians are the four people right behind the Guardians logo. And the vaguely tree-looking thing right behind the middle two; the gray and red guy standing beside the green woman. Tree-guy is a Guardian, too. Make sense? Marvel Studios image, of course.
There are new characters and (of course) it's a new story. I don't want to get into too much at the risk of dropping spoilers, but there are lots of characters from the previous two movies. Ayesha, the queen of the ... ? gold-spray-painted people who wants revenge on the Guardians, is back. Zoe Saldana plays a different version of Gamora (who was killed off the last time we saw her onscreen), but the movie is largely centered on Rocket the Raccoon and a totally new story line. That involves a tyrant who wants to make a more perfect universe but kills off every step along the way that doesn't please him.
Oh. And be careful about who you call a bad dog!
glad you and mrs si mostly enjoyed the flick. I wont give my $ to marvel-disney or pretty much anything "hollywood". They hate me and any non woke humans so I return the favor. Bud lite should be the model
ReplyDeleteYou're a reasonable guy, and I understand the reaction. There's a ton of stuff from Disney you couldn't pay me to watch, but I didn't find anything remotely offensive about the movie. Every action movie I can think of as far back as I can recall has had a woman who beats up professional tough guys with the unspoken reason that "she's a trained assassin" or some such nonsense, and it had that. "Willing suspension of disbelief" and all. Aside from that, it's an alternate universe. If dogs, raccoons, otters, pigs and others talk, not to mention a talking tree that says only three words but somehow conveys complicated messages, and we accept that, it's not our universe. Even in that universe there was nothing like Dylan Mulvaney.
DeleteThe movie is centered on Rocket, but he isn't even in the poster?
ReplyDeleteWeird.
Kinda weird, but Rocket was unconscious for almost all of the movie.
DeleteI categorically refuse to give money to Disney/Marvel. I will see that movie when I can see it for free - eventually they do land at my local library... so far anyway...
ReplyDeleteTROPICS is a low budget, cubesat system. Not sure if it will improve reporting or forecasting. What is reassuring are the low costs possible via Rocket Lab, SpaceX et al opening up possibilities.
ReplyDeleteYou're very likely right about it not being likely to seriously improve reporting or forecasting, but one thing gives me hope. If I see one consistent lesson of science in the last hundred and some years, it's this:
Deletewhen we look where - or how - no one has looked before no one has looked before , we see things no one has ever seen before. It's going on with the Webb telescope right now. We're looking in a part of the infrared spectrum that we've never looked in before (at least with a telescope that good) and there are all sorts of reports that the observations challenge the standard model of cosmology. If they don't actually break the standard model. I think this has happened over and over: look in some new slice of spectrum and all the old models and extrapolations off old observations just fall apart.
TROPICS may not be using spectrum that's never been used before, I don't know, but it's a new way of getting information so hopefully there are new things there haven't been observed before. That's the best possible chance of providing those unexpected observations; the "that's funny" moments that are the source of just about all advancement.
That's got too many errors in it. Let me do this again:
DeleteYou're very likely right about it not being likely to seriously improve reporting or forecasting, but one thing gives me hope. If I see one consistent lesson of science in the last hundred and some years, it's this: when we look where - or how - no one has ever looked before, we see things no one has ever seen before. It's going on with the Webb telescope right now. We're looking in a part of the infrared spectrum that we've never looked in before (at least with a telescope that good) and there are all sorts of reports that the observations challenge the standard model of cosmology. If they don't actually break the standard model. I think this has happened over and over: look in some new slice of spectrum and all the old models and extrapolations off old observations just fall apart.
TROPICS may not be using spectrum that's never been used before, I don't know, but it's a new way of getting information so hopefully there are new things there haven't been observed before. That's the best possible chance of providing those unexpected observations; the "that's funny" moments that are the source of just about all advancement.
You caused me to go take a dive into the TROPICS satellites and mission. It appears the use of high mmwave frequencies and relatively high revisit rates are an attempt to catch your 'butterfly' in action. This system is different than the 35 GHz system the Great Big Defense Contractor I worked for collaborated with NASA Goddard on. That was a long term cloud study (also a little understood weather phenomenon). Anyway, more here if you are interested. https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.3290. New applications of millimeter wave sensing always piques my interest.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I will go through that.
DeleteI've only worked at mmwaves once, a satellite to satellite 60 GHz link (that I think never flew), the rest of the time it was 14 GHz and below. Because of that, mmwaves for weather radar is all new to me.
Creating a utopia by killing off everyone he disagrees with - was the villain's name WEF?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they will get useful information, but if it disagrees with the 'we'll burn in 100 years' line, it will probably be pigeon-holed for the known future.
ReplyDelete