Meteor shower in 6 years?

It seems that comet SW-3 will be back... in pieces... in 2022... which might put a horizon on any “defend cities against meteors” schemes which might (or might not yet) be afoot.

One thing which the article mentions which points directly at charge separation as a splitting-up mechanism [all bolding mine] is:

Caltech scientist William Reach, who led the Spitzer observations, said they might change expectations for 2022.

Reach said it is unlikely the 2022 event will be a major one like the spectacular Leonid meteor showers in recent years.

"But the door's open," Reach said in a telephone interview.

He said the big chunks coming off the comet move backward before dispersing, something that is not predicted in existing computer models. So to forecast what Earth will plow through in 2022 will now require some reworking of the models. Images and data of the comet provided recently by the Hubble Space Telescope will also go into that effort, he said.

...and much more. An interesting read.

Comments

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

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