A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the German city of Nordlingen, formed in a crater created by the impact of a binary asteroid with Earth.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the possibility that the farside of the Moon might bear the imprint of an ancient collision with a dwarf planet the size of Ceres.


• D-Brief notes that dredging for the expansion of the port of Miami has caused terrible damage to corals there.


• Dangerous Minds looks at the last appearances of David Bowie and Iggy Pop together on stage.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that China is on track to launch an ambitious robotic mission to Mars in 2020.


• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog talks about what sociological research actually is.


• Gizmodo reports on the discovery of a torus of cool gas circling Sagittarius A* at a distance of a hundredth of a light-year.


• io9 reports about Angola Janga, an independent graphic novel by Marcelo D'Salete showing how slaves from Africa in Brazil fought for their freedom and independence.


• The Island Review shares some poems of Matthew Landrum, inspired by the Faroe Islands.


• Joe. My. God. looks at how creationists are mocking flat-earthers for their lack of scientific knowledge.


• Language Hat looks at the observations of Mary Beard that full fluency in ancient Latin is rare even for experts, for reason I think understandable.


• Melissa Byrnes wrote at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the meaning of 4 June 1989 in the political transitions of China and Poland.


• Marginal Revolution notes how the New York Times has become much more aware of cutting-edge social justice in recent years.


• The NYR Daily looks at how the memories and relics of the Sugar Land prison complex outside of Houston, Texas, are being preserved.


• Jason C Davis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the differences between LightSail 1 and the soon-to-be-launched LightSail 2.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks in detail at the high electricity prices in Argentina.


• Peter Rukavina looks at the problems with electric vehicle promotion on PEI.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at when the universe will have its first black dwarf. (Not in a while.)


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Belarusians are not as interested in becoming citizens of Russia as an Internet poll suggests.


• Arnold Zwicky highlights a Pride Month cartoon set in Antarctica featuring the same-sex marriage of two penguins.

• This Universe Today article takes a look at the idea of building basic installations, the most ambitious like the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, on the Moon.


• Scientific American reports that NASA is preparing to declare the mission of the Mars Opportunity rover, active for 15 years, at an end.


• Popular Science looks at the likely procedures by which Planet Nine, if found, would be given a name.


• Universe Today considers the possibility that 'Oumuamua might be part of the debris cloud of a disintegrated interstellar comet.


• Scientific American notes the important discovery of two nearby galaxies apparently lacking in dark matter.

• Bad Astronomer notes the possibility that red dwarf exoplanets might, as AU Microscopii suggests, be made deserts. Centauri Dreams also examines the possibility that red dwarf exoplanets might be starved of volatiles.


• The Crux notes the extent to which the formation of our solar system was marked by chaos, planets careening about, looking at other planetary systems for guidance.


• D-Brief takes a look at the latest from the endangered Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica.


• Joe. My. God. notes that, in the home of the Danforth shooter in Toronto, DVDs from Alex Jones' Infowars were found along with more guns and ammunition.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper suggesting that organic agriculture contributes to a greater extent to climate change than regular agricultural systems.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at the evolution of the Chinese air force.


• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes that the Hayabusa2 probe is looking for touchdown sites on asteroid Ryugu for sampling.


• Roads and Kingdoms considers the humble sabich of Tel Aviv.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the Robert Leleux memoir The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy.


• Strange Company shares an old news clipping reporting on the murderous ghost that, in 1914, seems to have haunted the Croguennec family of Brittany.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the prospects for a hypothetical future Belarusian Orthodox Church.


• At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe takes a look at the relationship between inflation and the debt/GDP ratio.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at the picturesque community of Mollis, in mountainous central Switzerland.

• The mysterious cause of the "blood falls" of Antarctica has been uncovered. VICE's Motherboard reports.


• The Great Green Wall of Africa may not have prevented desertification in the Sahel, but it is a project that has left some positive legacies. Smithsonian Magazine reports.


• Universe Today considers if cyanobacteria could be used to help terraform Mars. (Maybe, though there would still be the planet's shortages of basic chemicals to deal with.)


• The Atlantic reports on the almost surprisingly revelatory nature of an Anders Sandberg paper imagining what would to the Earth if it became a mass of blueberries.


• WBUR reports on the discovery of a new pigment for my favourite colour blue, comprising (among other elements) the rare indium.

• The Toronto Islands are open for business this year, hopefully without any hitches. (Let there not be unexpected flooding.) Global News reports.


• The sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia has been freed from rat infestations, helping native life recover. National Geographic reports.


• Killing invasive deer on Haida Gwaii is the task of recruited sharpshooters from New Zealand. MacLean's reports.


• Controversy over a new museum to slavery on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe draws on all sorts of political and cultural and economic issues besetting the territory. The Atlantic reports.


• The exact language of the question to be asked of voters in the New Caledonia referendum on independence, coming this year, is a critical question. The Lowy Institute examines the issue.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares one picture of a vast galaxy cluster to underline how small our place in the universe is.


• The Boston Globe's The Big Picture shares some photos of Syrian refugee families as they settle into the United States.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the Dragonfly proposal for a Titan lander.


• The Crux notes the exceptional vulnerability of the cultivated banana to an otherwise obscure fungus.


• Bruce Dorminey notes NASA's preparation of the Clipper mission to investigate Europa.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas takes a look at the role of surveillance in the life of the modern student.


• Hornet Stories has a nice interview of Sina Grace, author of Marvel's Iceman book.


• Joe. My. God. reshared this holiday season a lovely anecdote, "Dance of the Sugar Plum Lesbians."


• JSTOR Daily took a look at why Americans like dieting so much.


• The LRB Blog considers the Thames Barrier, the meager protection of London against tides in a time of climate change.


• The Map Room Blog notes the digitization of radar maps of Antarctica going back to the 1960s.


• Marginal Revolution seems cautiously optimistic about the prospects of Morocco.
  
• Russell Darnley at maximos62 is skeptical about the prospects of the forests of Indonesia's Riau province.


• Stephanie Land at the NYR Daily talks about how she managed to combine becoming a writer with being a single mother of two young children.


• Out There argues a lunar fuel depot could help support crewed interplanetary exploration.


• Science Sushi notes genetic evidence the lionfish invasion of the North Atlantic off Florida began not with a single escape but with many.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel makes the argument an unmanned probe to Alpha Centauri could have significant technological spinoffs.


• Supernova Condensate makes the point, apropos of nothing at all, that spaceship collisions can in fact unleash vast amounts of energy.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, while Kazakhs see practical advantages to cooperation with Russia, they also see some problems.

• Elaina Zachos reports on the discovery of a remarkable intact petrified forest in Antarctica more than a quarter-billion years old, legacy of ancient Godwanaland, over at National Geographic.


• D-Brief reports on the remarkable adaptations of the forests of Godwanaland, now Antarctica, to six months without light.
  
• Universe Today reports that a hitherto unsupected plume from the mantle underneath Antarctica may be partially responsible for the ready melting of that continent's ice sheets.


• Justin Gillis and Jonathan Corum report on how the infrastructure of the American presence in Antarctica, including McMurdo station, is in desperate need for investment to compensate for decades of neglect, over at the New York Times.

• blogTO notes that the Toronto real estate market is now the most unaffordable of any in Canada.


• The Big Picture shares photos of melting Antarctica.


• Crooked Timber considers the economic benefits of open borders, and the costs.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos of posters from Paris in 1968.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the problems of legal education in California.


• The New APPS Blog thinks poorly of South Carolina's Republicans.


• Marginal Revolution wonders if China will do better than the United States at dealing with air pollution.


• The NYRB Daily considers the collection of Neapolitan Christmas crèches.


• Palun looks at seasonal affective disorder in northern Estonia.


• Peter Watts wishes his readers happy holidays.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the distribution of the populations of the US, Canada and Europe by latitude.


• The Volokh Conspiracy compares concerns over Muslim immigration to opposition to Turkish membership in the EU.


• Window on Eurasia argues populism will not lead to structural change and suggests Putin's policies are a consequence of his fatigue.

• Beyond the Beyond notes how astronomers are now collecting dust from space in their gutters, without needing to go to Antarctica.


• blogTO notes the many lost dairies of mid-20th century Toronto.


• The Dragon's Gaze looks at how volatiles freeze out in protoplanetary disks.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper considering the exploration of ocean worlds.


• Far Outliers links to a report of a Cossack mercenary working in North America for the British in the War of American Independence.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the grave and the life of Homer Plessy.


• Steve Munro looks at some possibly worrisome service changes for the TTC.


• pollotenchegg notes trends in urbanization in post-1970 Ukraine.


• Strange Maps looks at a scone map of the British Isles.

Rodney gathers us in the ship’s auditorium for a briefing. Both the Americans and the New Zealanders have invited us to visit. Zodiac landings will be conducted with military precision, with four groups of twelve passengers sent on the half hour, and a final raft of ten picked volunteers from the crew. In a nod to geopolitical realities, the Russians will be taken directly to the gift shop.

On the other side of the continent, the question of how to handle visitors at research bases has become vexing. The boom in Antarctic tourism now brings forty thousand people a year across the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula. At Palmer station (population 40), smaller ships are allowed to come ashore, but kept out of the buildings where work is done. Larger ships aren't allowed to land at all. Instead, volunteers from the base come aboard to brief the passengers and awkwardly sell souvenirs in the ship’s bar. Palmer handles about a dozen ships and over a thousand visitors every summer, sometimes on consecutive days, and the staff there feels the pressure.

Things are easier in the Ross Sea. This year only two ships—the Shokalskiy and its sister ship the Khromov—will visit this side of Antarctica, bringing about a hundred visitors. There are never going to be cruises here in any numbers. The trip takes too long and cannot be made comfortable. The same rounded bottom that keeps the Shokalskiy from snagging on sea ice makes it roll like crazy in open water. On a regular cruise ship, thirty degrees of roll sends grand pianos smashing into the walls, and leads to refunds, incident reports and investigations. The Shokalskiy rolls to thirty degrees every four seconds, back and forth, all the way across the Southern Ocean. A few times a day the ship tilts past forty degrees, the angle at which the grippy foam placemats on every surface release their hold on a coffee mug. And at least twice during the voyage, we roll past fifty degrees ①. At that point it makes more sense to try to stand on the walls than the floor.

Rodney says there is no cost-effective way to build a new passenger ship that could cruise the Ross Sea. The Russian charters ② are marginally profitable, but they are getting old, and are probably not worth overhauling. Few people have five weeks and tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a trip that can't even guarantee them a glimpse of their destination. The ban on heavy fuel oil, strict limits on the numbers of people who can land, ice safety requirements, and outrageous weather mean you will never see a Carnival cruise ship at McMurdo. And that’s for the best.

The only way tourists might come to the Ross Sea in numbers would be by air, but the memory of the 1979 crash, when an Air New Zealand plane flew into the side of Mt. Erebus, is too painful. There’s still visible wreckage on the volcano. Once the Russian ships are gone, the only people touring the Ross Sea will be dignitaries flown in by the various national programs, one-off charters, and the occasional mad sailor.