"Are You Saying That Hamas Is A Result Of Gaza, And Not That Gaza Had Hamas Forced Upon It?" 

images of the Sun captured during the first year of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission.

Credit: NASA/SDO

So ridiculous..

Eye Of The Universe

桜が満開

UNITED STATES: Lone Jew sings “Am Yisrael Chai” as a massive crowd of pro-Hamas demonstrators gather in New York.

Extreme Science: Launching Sounding Rockets from The Arctic

This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the world’s northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge scientific instruments.

This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular region of Earth’s magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What’s it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?

Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind — away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in Earth’s magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they’re the ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.

The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude, spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.

They also fly directly through some of the most interesting regions of Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s what scientists are taking advantage of for their Grand Challenge experiments.

One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle. Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly under Earth’s magnetic cusp.

But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth’s axial tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.

Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they’re studying upper atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in the solar wind — and they’re related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.

But even before launch, the extreme conditions make launching rockets a tricky business — it’s so cold that the rockets must be encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures and potential precipitation.

When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it’s up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec. 7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.

These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that they can retrieve the pieces later.

The next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya Space Center in Norway in March 2019.

 For even more about what it’s like to launch science rockets in extreme conditions, check out one scientist’s notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4

For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.

@NASA_Wallops | NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science

New York Post

Campus antisemites are vile but administrators who protect them are just as complicit

After another week of anti-semitism on our nation’s college campuses, the question should not be what to do about the people who hate Jews b

By 

Karol Markowicz

Meanwhile, students at Brown University marched and chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which, for those unclear, is a call to dismantle Israel.

The chant is widely understood to be a call for genocide or ethnic cleansing, since it isn’t just about changing the name of the country but ridding the area of Jews entirely.

How does it feel to be a Jewish student at Brown today?

Oddly, the discussion now is moving to whether the people who are making Jews fear for their safety should face repercussions.

Should future employers know that you called for the extinction of Jews or threatened Jewish kids in the school library?

Suddenly the biggest promoters of cancel culture are very worried about “free speech.”

Universities have spent years talking about “harmful language,” “microaggressions” and “safe spaces” — and punishing students for all kinds of speech.

Kids were kicked out of school or had their acceptances rescinded for words they used before they ever got to college.

Social-media posts that embarrass the school have been used as grounds for expulsion.

Yet somehow these places of festering censorship have now fallen silent about explicit threats to Jewish students, citing their concern for protecting free-speech rights.

Spare us the excuses. We see what’s happening here.

Now that the harmful language consists of chants calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the microaggressions are pretty macro, schools can’t just hide behind the First Amendment or weak slogans about what does or does not have a home on campus.

Antisemitism didn’t rise with the slaughter in southern Israel; it was exposed by it.

Midnight Cafe

“Go ahead, privileged little white boy from far away, tell me what’s REALLY going on here.” - via matanperetz___

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