Observatory Version of Misc Musings, Ravings, and Random Thoughts

[Auguste_Fivaz]

As is Alaska - met a few folks from Homer in Hilo one year. I was working for NOAA and they were on vacation in January. Straight shot down, around 7 hours. Reminds me of flying from Tokyo to Jakarta at 11 hours and - one zone.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

The USGS posted this video about the recent (Dec 24/Jan 25) eruption on Kilauea. It is amazing what a "small" event like this looks like. For scale, at towards the end (2:00 m), one of the team gathers a sample from the flow.

https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/january-3-2025-kilauea-eruption-observations-video-compilation

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

A few years ago I followed the adventure of the small team who deployed an autonomous sea craft from California which, amazingly, made it to New Zealand. It was called Seacharger, it was quite a story.

I got an update today which announced another sea going platform which can be seen and tracked here. One of the leads on the Seacharger went into business developing components for similar use, the new ASV is built from those components.

It was launched on Feb 8th and is quite a ways out into the Pacific.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

To avoid paying a lot of money for a "pro" unit, I'm playing with a group of 8 bright white LED's in a series circuit on a breadboard, hoping to prototype a usable dual light for my microscope with 4 LEDs per light.

This arrangement is based on parts I have on hand, if you think there is a way to make this run cooler, I'd like to know.

With a switching power supply of 26 VDC @ 500 mA

Ohms temp F bright 485 162 200 f7 340 165 250 f7 236 215 320 f7
where Ohms is the size of the resistor to ground
temp is the temp of the resistor after a minimum of 5 minutes run time
brightness is shutter speed using the spot meter on my Nikon digital camera set to Aperture of f7

series circuit, the + side of all LEDs is supplied with the power, the - side is to the resistor and to ground (breadboard)
The specs for the 8 LEDs are:

• 3.0V Typical Forward Voltage, at 20mA current
• Maximum continuous current: 20 mA

The 340 Ohm resistor would be the one I'd go with but it is still quite hot at 165 F., but as I'll be able to isolate it, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

(and yes, I have tried a 12VDC power supply and while very much cooler, the 26VDC is 2x bright.)

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Thanks, I smoked a 100 ohm resistor when I first mocked this up, so decided to go with those higher values. I'll add a few more LEDs and see if that helps with the temperature.

12 V was probably too dim because it’s right at the nominal forward voltage for four LEDs in series. If a couple of them need a bit higher voltage, those won't be adding much light to the total. However, your 26 V supply has some headroom for powering all 8 in series, so maybe try that with 100 or so Ohms of limiting resistance (if everything is nominal, that’ll give you 20 mA through the circuit).

With 4 LEDs per string, you’re dropping about 14 V across the resistors; for the 340s, that’s over half a watt each, so no surprise that it’s a bit toasty.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

One thing that wasn’t completely clear: it sounded from your description like you had 4 LEDs in each string, and then two strings in parallel. Is that right, or did you already have all 8 in series (which is what the photo seems to show)?

All 8 in series.. I thought about 2 sets of 4 in parallel strings but didn't go there, just ran it out to 8 see what the results would be using the 26 VDC power.

Thanks everybody.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

All 8 in series.. I thought about 2 sets of 4 in parallel strings but didn't go there, just ran it out to 8 see what the results would be using the 26 VDC power.

Thanks everybody.

Per suggestions above, using 12VDC 1A power and a 100 ohm resistor resulted in a very bright 8 LED array (~ 2x the brightness) of the previous setup and the resistor is running very cool (120 F) compared to the bigger PSU.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Is that with 8 diodes in series or only four? At 8, with 1V the current would be really low (way down the curve). What's the voltage across your resistor?

12VDC leaves 9.3VDC across the 100 ohm resistor with 8 in series.
5VDC .5A leaves 2.3VDC across the resistor with a bit of a decrease in brightness.

I wouldn't bother with those oldskool 5mm LEDs on sticks,

Yep, I wanted to consume the parts I have on hand, those are from a 2018 ADAFruit order opened the old parts bin and started rummaging around after sticker shock from modern lab lights.
I must visit Digikey soon and see where the world has got to per the input here. It might be time to play around and replace that indispensable 300W halogen living room lamp/space heater with LEDs.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer:

Beyond the Blue: Papahānaumokuākea ROV and Mapping

April 8-May 5, 2025

From April 8-May 5, NOAA Ocean Exploration will lead a 28-day remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and mapping expedition on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer to explore deep waters in and around Papahānaumokuākea. During the expedition, the team will work to fill gaps in our understanding of the region by conducting focused mapping and ROV operations in waters deeper than 200 meters (656 feet).

All things permitting, when the ship is not in transit, dives will be streamed most days, April 11 to May 2, from approximately 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. HDT / 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. EDT. Note that dates and times are subject to change. Over the course of the expedition, we expect to dive and explore deep-sea coral and sponge habitats, seamounts, maritime heritage sites, and the water column.

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/livestreams/welcome.html

I just captured this image a moment ago, the scientists are not sure if they've seen this one before.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

very cool looking. What is it?

I can't say but the observers were impressed by its size (over a meter across) and were hesitant to classify it on the fly. It is a coral of some sort, more than that, I don't know.

They take another deep dive tomorrow afternoon or early evening into the Murray Fracture Zone @ 2,100 meters.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

I can't say but the observers were impressed by its size (over a meter across) and were hesitant to classify it on the fly. It is a coral of some sort, more than that, I don't know.

They take another deep dive tomorrow afternoon or early evening into the Murray Fracture Zone @ 2,100 meters.

They are going down 4800 meters, I was misinformed, and are currently are at 3800. The decent takes over 2 hours.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

I don't know that we have enough observations to make that kind of conclusion.

True - as stated today in the dive discussion, only 21% of the deep has been mapped in detail so far. These deep dives, at least the ones we can access (Thx NOAA) are pretty rare and target interesting geologic areas. I've watched three counting today's dive.

A couple of years ago, I watched them dive some thermal vents which were wild with life. Much of the life we saw today, for example, might be considered sparse and it surely was exotic, but it seemed consistent as they ascended 1000 meters up the face of the fracture zone.

The dive tomorrow is another geologic exploration to an "unnamed" seamount south of their current position. The samples they take of the biology are incidental to actually looking at the geology and, if lucky, finding rock samples.

Today, for the geology team the face of the rift did not yield anything but sediment and a few rock nodules. Tomorrow there was mention of looking at biology/diversity over depth and geology.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

On a different topic - I've been watching the fine folks on the Okeanos Explorer cruise the water column at various depths:

Throughout the dive, we will complete at least five transects at depths of 1200, 900, 700, 500, and 300 meters (3,940, 2,955, 2,300, 1,640, and 985 feet). At each depth, we will observe organisms with video, sample key specimens, and collect water for eDNA. We will also use data collected using the remotely operated vehicle-based CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) instrument and shipboard multibeam sonar to identify the deep scattering layer, if possible, and target this depth for an additional transect, if logistics allow.

I was wondering if this has been done in the atmosphere? The submersible is able to "acquire" organisms, it matches speed and causes minimal disturbance to the marine environment. In the air, most machines are moving very fast, too fast to sample or record the life found above us. Balloons might work as might a hybrid UAV, but real time observing might be difficult, or we may already be sure there is no value and no unknown life exists in the miles above us.

In the depths, there are some very odd life forms, and no, I don't know what it is other than a jelly, and did not hear the scientists when it was observed today.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

ADAFRUIT sometimes carries a simple kit to measure soil moister based on soil resistance between two nails, a bit clunky looking but ...

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider) says the wind and electrical fields are used in kiting spiders. Highest found is 5 kilometers.

Journeys achieved vary from a few metres to hundreds of kilometres. Even atmospheric samples collected from balloons at five kilometres altitude and ships mid-ocean have reported spider landings. Ballooning can be dangerous (due to predators, and due to the unpredictable nature of long-distance ballooning, which may bring individuals to an unfavorable environment).

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

I noticed the composition of the probe end of a cheap moisture meter and it got me thinking. Looks like a copper shaft, a plastic (insulating) spacer and a zinc or similar tip. Probe insertion in moist soil will bridge between the zinc and copper, creating an electrochemical (galvanic) cell. Top end of the meter appears to be a galvanometer, driven by the cell's current. More moisture -> more current -> greater needle deflection.

The note on the packaging to be sure and thoroughly wipe off the probe after use supports this hypothesis.

I suppose I could like... look it up with some authoritative sources, but it's more fun to post my thoughts here.

View attachment 108159View attachment 108160

So, do you trust your meter?
I brushed the dust off of one I bought last year, a Ph and Moisture combo with the probe end which looks like yours and was out poking around today, wiping it off between probes, and finding my planter boxes all mid-range "moist." Tonight, after a very warm and breezy day, they were still reading the same thing. I watered anyway and tomorrow will check things again to see if the boxes are "more moist," sometimes I wonder if they loose their "charm" after a season of disuse.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Clicking on this link will take you to spaceweather.com for a spectacular time lapse series showing what is suspected to be the vapor trails from a Chinese rocket:

ZhuQue-2E is a new type of rocket powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. This "methalox" technology was developed by Landspace, and their ZhuQue-2 series of methane rockets are the first to reach orbit ahead of other companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX. Methalox offers several advantages over traditional rocket fuels like kerosene and hydrogen. Methane is more easily stored, burns cleaner, and can be produced on Mars.

The author is not sure exactly what type of maneuver caused the streaks.

edits: words

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiyttmA7YkA&list=TLPQMDkwNDIwMjV4UCCf_LYzLA&index=12


I've been watching Kilauea for a while and have never seen fountains like this!

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Episode 23 was unusual to this casual observer in a few ways. In the beginning, the north vent started with two small plumes separate from each other. A third began but was mostly filling the crater. Then there was an explosion and the two joined together and began growing (04:15 p.m.) and within an hour were 1,000 feet tall and arcing over the south vent (see above). The volume and height increased and the plume was bigger than any I have seen in my many visits.

Below, the USGS team describes a collapse or deflation during the eruption. I'm guessing that these huge fountains were caused by raising magma blowing through the vent holes at an angle and the continuous feed causes the deflation. The deflation has little to do with the strength of the plumes, (like squeezing a full balloon) but is a measurement of the magma exhausting from under the crater floor.

As the eruptions show many different structures, straight up fountains, arcs like last night, small bubbling founts with no significant height but huge volumes of magma and even events where the magma flushes back down the vent only to fill up the crater again, the dynamics under the craters must keep these volcanologists busy simply recording their observations.

Seismic readings may give some insight on the structure under the crater floor, but that is just a guess on my part.

https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/observatory-messages

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 09:30:36 HST
Ep. 23 precursory activity has increased. Summit inflation has slowly resumed. Small fountains up to 65 ft (20 m) occurred yesterday and this morning in north vent. Sustained fountaining could begin any time today or tomorrow

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 16:53:36 HST
Episode 23 sustained lava fountains began erupting from north vent at 4:15 p.m. Sunday, May 25. Robust fountaining began at 4:36 p.m. Lava is flowing out of north vent onto crater floor. Fountains over 100 ft (30 m) high and growing.

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 16:59:28 HST
Lava fountains from north vent are now exceeding 500 feet (150 m) in height.

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 17:11:26 HST
Episode 23 lava fountains from north vent are now nearly 1,000 feet (300 m) in height.

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 17:24:46 HST
Fountains from south vent began erupting at 5:15 p.m. and are growing rapidly. Fountains from north vent are exceeding 1,000 feet (300 m) in height.

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 18:11:06 HST
North vent lava fountains exceeding 1,000 ft (300 m) and south vent fountains exceeding 500 ft (150 m) in height. Lava flows covering crater floor. SO2 gas emissions estimated at 50,000-75,000 tonnes/day. A lot of suspended ash in plume.

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 19:21:14 HST
South vent fountains are now up to 800 ft (250 m) while north vent fountains are down to 500 ft (150 m) in height as of 7:15 p.m., Sunday, May 25. The UWD tiltmeter has recorded about 7 microradians of deflation in the past 2.5 hours.

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 22:10:24 HST
North vent stopped erupting at 9:48 p.m. South vent still erupting with lava fountains about 500 ft (150 m) high. Rate of summmit deflation is slowing.

Kilauea Message 2025-05-25 22:35:01 HST
South vent stopped erupting at 10:25 p.m. on Sunday, May 25. The summit has stopped deflating. Tremor is greatly reduced. Episode 23 of the ongoing Halema'uma'u eruption has ended. Vents and cooling lava flows will continue to glow.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Squirreling around in the USGS HVO page, there is a summary of episode 23 with some very cool videos, stills, and commentary by the team (scroll down after landing).

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Meanwhile, over at the USGS, an interesting essay on "What fans the flames observed at volcano vents?"

Just before and during the last eruption, there were flames dancing above the vents on Kilauea, flame not molten lava. This essay explains what happens to produce these phenomena.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Kilauea is again erupting, this is episode 25 of the 2025 year. It is really amazing, huge arc from the north vent and the south vent is starting up as well: (link is ytube live stream)

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Kilauea Message 2025-06-16 15:56:14 HST
Episode 26 lava fountaining will likely begin between June 18 and 20 based on current rates of summit inflation. This forecast window may change as new data come in. Fountaining could be preceded by hours to days of precursory activity.

The eruption remains paused. Summit inflation continues along with low level seismic tremor. Glow is visible overnight at the north and south vents. The average sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission rate during pauses is about 1,200 tonnes per day.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

In The Guardian's science section is an opinion piece by a number of scientists denouncing Trump's latest EO which

The new executive order allows political appointees to undermine research they oppose, paving the way for state-controlled science

The contributors go on to detail what this means and that at the administration regime wants to rewrite existing work and control all new work and punish the researchers to stray from the regime's chosen guidelines. Truly sneaky, chilling and costly moves upon the scientific community by a stupid and lazy regime.

Trump’s new ‘gold standard’ rule will destroy American science as we know it
by Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann and Brian Nosek

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

I started to watch "The Singing Detective" with Michael Gambon from the late 1980's last night. He is in the hospital with a horrible case of eczema to which the evil Doctors rattle off a litany of cortisone, prednisone, and then methotrexate. Same list of meds used to today to treat my rheumatoid arthritis and, I'd guess, just about any other immune system problem; lupus, eczema, psoriasis etc.

What, with the high priced, custom, high priced T-Cell therapies now available, we're entering a new age of highly profitable relief for sufferers everywhere.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

The folks on the Nautilus are diving today:

We've set sail on the Maritime Archaeology of Guadalcanal (NA173) expedition to conduct archaeological surveys of shipwrecks in the Iron Bottom Sound, one of the most significant battlefields of World War II.
... the team will spend three weeks using our ROVs in combination with the mapping capabilities of the University of New Hampshire's uncrewed surface vessel USV DriX to demonstrate new efficiencies in archaeological ocean exploration.

To watch live - https://nautiluslive.org/

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

I consider all pro sports unhealthy, since they're all borderline-damaging the participants, and were it up to me would ban all commercialization of "sports" (quoted because I don't consider spectator sports as valid sports to begin with).

It’s been like this at least since the gladiatorial games, no?

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

While living a few kilometers down from CERN, we would sometimes discuss small black holes and the impact they might have on the area surrounding the collider. Were we far enough away? It is kinda deep, 100 meters, would that protect us?
This was when they were working on the new magnets so no real science was going on, just idle speculation while drinking.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

spaceweather.com has a summary of the July 14, 2000 "Bastille Day" solar storm, the strongest storm so far this century.
It's worth a read, just to remember the event and its magnitude.

They also published this note for later tonight:

RE-ENTRY ALERT! The AXIOM-4 Dragon Capsule with 4 astronauts onboard has undocked from the International Space Station and is heading for a splashdown off Long Beach at approximately 2:31am PDT on July 15th. The fireball (plasma wake) of reentry will be visible over a wide area of California and western Nevada. The reentry track will pass the San Francisco Bay Area at about 2:23am PDT.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

As a reader of spaceweather.com, I'm grateful to Dr. Phillips for his broad ranging insights over the years in space weather, climate, and astronomy.

Today, July 21, 2025, he is commenting on Dr. Avi Loeb and team's latest dive into the alien space probe theory Dr. Loeb posited a few years ago when 'Oumuamua' visited our solar system. They are now speculating that the latest visitor from intergalactic space is also a probe, based on some very preliminary calculations on what we're calling comet 3I/ATLAS.

In a paper co-authored by Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl, he lays out nine ideas consistent with it being an intentional alien visitor.

Dr. Phillips goes on to present 5 of these 9 points and discusses them briefly:

Taken together, these points read more like a collection of curious coincidences than compelling evidence of alien tech. Even the authors admit as much: "This paper is contingent on a remarkable but, as we shall show, testable hypothesis, to which the authors do not necessarily ascribe, yet is certainly worthy of an analysis and a report," they wrote.

Interesting and hopefully, this does what the authors intend, lead to a discussion of the object and the observations we can make about it.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Mary Gaillard, Who Broke a Ceiling in Subatomic Research, Dies at 86 (NYT gift link)

Overcoming discrimination in a mostly male preserve, she did groundbreaking work that showed experimentalist physicists where and how to look for new particles.

No Nobel for you, wrong gender.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

The Nautilus is diving around the Marshall Islands now, live stream just started, 13:00 PDT @ ~2700 m.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Elsewhere, heavens-above.com has this animated display of the Starlink array.

Found at sciencenews.com in the 08/05/2025 article on the THE GREAT STARLINK RE-ENTRY EVENT.
While Dr. Phillips doesn't slam SpaceX any more than is needed, his pointer to the aluminum-oxide degradation to the ozone layer is worth pondering.

To put this into perspective: Before the first Starlink launches began in 2019, only about 40 to 50 satellites re-entered per year. SpaceX just brought down ten years' worth in only six months, adding an estimated 15,000 kilograms of aluminum oxide to the upper atmosphere.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

I seem to recall that micrometeorites deposit significantly more metals into the atmosphere

Phillips says:

That means reentry debris could soon rival the natural influx of meteoroids, but with very different chemistry. Meteors are mostly rock. Satellites are mostly metal.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Schizophrenia is not a single disease, it is a very consuming one, taking up large numbers of both medical resources, research, and of course, millions of shattered lives. In the April 25, 2025 New Yorker, Rachel Aviv follows the trajectory of a woman with a 20 year history of mental illnesses, who is finally "cured" of her delusions when she undergoes chemotherapy with rituximab, a medication that targets antibodies involved in the body’s immune response. Over the course of a few months, she is returned to her family and was facing a long plan to restore her shattered health.

Aviv also cites research done in Spain in 2007 on patients with

"delusions, hallucinations, and sudden changes in their behavior, like agitation and inappropriate giggling. Within days or weeks, they deteriorated, developing seizures, losing consciousness, or struggling to breathe. Dalmau discovered that they had a form of encephalitis, inflammation of the brain. Their immune systems had misidentified the NMDA receptor—a protein in the brain that affects mood and memory—as foreign and produced antibodies that attacked it. When these patients were treated with immunotherapy, the majority of them recovered completely, sometimes within a month."

The essay mentions other studies, one where the catatonic patient were discovered to have lupis and the autoimmune therapies were able to restore them to consciousness.
Aviv is clear that the percentage of those thought to have an immunological caused psychosis is very low, estimated to be around 1% of the cases diagnosed.

Bartley estimates that between one and five per cent of people who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia actually have an autoimmune condition—a figure he based on his own lab’s research, which has not yet been published, and also on a German study of a thousand patients, the most extensive study of autoimmune psychosis so far. “Even one per cent ends up being almost a million people in the world who should be treated with a different kind of medicine,” he said.

I found the essay to be well written and though provoking. If this branch of research broadens, it could help so many people.

the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (S.N.F.) Center for Precision Psychiatry and Mental Health, at Columbia, which is working to uncover biologically distinct subtypes of illness that have been obscured by the broad categories in the DSM.

a search for autoimmune schizophrenia returned a long list to select from, here are two:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/archive/news/...-autoimmune-disorders-and-psychosis-confirmed
https://www.the-scientist.com/is-the-immune-system-to-blame-for-schizophrenia-69871

In all cases, more research is needed.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Not to be flippant but this reminds me of Mondaugen's Law in Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon:

"Personal density," Kurt Mondaugen in his Peenemunde office not too many steps from here, enunciating the Law which will one day bear his name, "is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth."
"Temporal bandwidth" is the width of your present,your now... The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth.
Gravity's Rainbow
p. 509

I think it is crucial to try and include at least one other person in daily life in order to check bad assumptions or provide a reality check against poorly-informed or simply garbage online content.

My wife has a long distance pal, a woman she knew in childhood and reconnected with in the last few years, who has no friends and avoids most social contact. She calls her pal at least once a week but plans it so she can limit the time she spends on the phone with her. It is a coast to coast relationship.
My wife limits the time due to the repeated doom saying her pal does almost every time they speak. My wife tried for a while to direct her pal to senior centers and other places where the old and lonely can go for companionship but gave up. As her pal has no interest in any thing outside her dismal view of life, she simply stews in this cycle. My wife keeps calling to make sure her pal doesn't put her head in the oven but she is one of the few people her pal ever interacts with. Weird, but I think a lot of old people have this problem, they go sour and no one wants to engage with them any longer.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/lone...s-and-social-isolation-tips-staying-connected

Loneliness and social isolation are different, but related. Loneliness is the distressing feeling of being alone or separated. Social isolation is the lack of social contacts and having few people to interact with regularly. You can live alone and not feel lonely or socially isolated, and you can feel lonely while being with other people.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

I've been following the ship Nautilus as it maps the south Pacific, it was diving on some unexplored seamounts earlier this month, but is now in acoustic mapping mode using its trick sonar as it transits. Current status on their website states that they will be crossing the equator and the international dateline today (or yesterday). It seemed that could only be in one place so thought I'd look it up. Seems that dateline is not as one would imagine, it crosses over the south Pacific like a gerrymandered Texas county.

As they post:

We are continuing mapping during our transit to the Howland and Baker Islands. The ship is planned to simultaneously cross the equator and dateline today.

I'm guessing they mean the point on the dateline just east of the Gilbert Islands?

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

There is an aurora to been seen in a volcano webcam from Iceland:

No guarantees on how long it will last ...

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

A non-scientific irradiation anecdote:
When I was in 5th grade, circa 1962, the fine folks who ran the Hanford site invited us and other school kids to visit some site in the Richland/Kennewick area. Our tour included the machines which irradiated potatoes. I recall the exhibit which showed football sized potatoes (after) compared with the large russets we normally grew in the area.
I don't recall wearing a dosimeter nor any warning about radiation, but that could be due to the fog of time.
I do know that I grew to be a 6', 250 lb strapping youth before I graduated high school. Many of my classmates were "husky" as well.
My sisters, who did not go on this field trip, remained normal sized and my older brother is also "normal" for his cohort.
I am still an outlier in the family now with 4 generations on the books.
Completely conjectural but a fun story.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Kilauea has started another eruptive cycle a few hours ago and has fountains from the north vent - very pretty


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk0tfYDxrUA