A Bit More Detail

• Ryan Anderson at anthro{dendum} looks at the unnatural history of the beach in California, here.


• Architectuul looks at the architectural imaginings of Iraqi Shero Bahradar, here.


• Bad Astronomy looks at gas-rich galaxy NGC 3242.


• James Bow announces his new novel The Night Girl, an urban fantasy set in an alternate Toronto with an author panel discussion scheduled for the Lillian H. Smith Library on the 28th.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the indirect evidence for an exomoon orbiting WASP-49b, a possible Io analogue detected through its ejected sodium.


• Crooked Timber considers the plight of holders of foreign passports in the UK after Brexit.


• The Crux notes that astronomers are still debating the nature of galaxy GC1052-DF2, oddly lacking in dark matter.


• D-Brief notes how, in different scientific fields, the deaths of prominent scientists can help progress.


• Bruce Dorminey notes how NASA and the ESA are considering sample-return missions to Ceres.


• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the first test flights of the NASA Mercury program.


• The Dragon's Tales looks at how Japan is considering building ASAT weapons.


• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the first test flights of the NASA Mercury program.


• Far Outliers looks how the anti-malarial drug quinine played a key role in allowing Europeans to survive Africa.


• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox considers grace and climate change.


• io9 reports on how Jonathan Frakes had anxiety attacks over his return as Riker on Star Trek: Picard.


• JSTOR Daily reports on the threatened banana.


• Language Log looks at the language of Hong Kong protesters.


• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how a new version of The Last of the Mohicans perpetuates Native American erasure.


• Marginal Revolution notes how East Germany remains alienated.


• Neuroskeptic looks at the participant-observer effect in fMRI subjects.


• The NYR Daily reports on a documentary looking at the India of Modi.


• Corey S. Powell writes at Out There about Neptune.


• The Planetary Society Blog examines the atmosphere of Venus, something almost literally oceanic in its nature.


• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money considers how Greenland might be incorporated into the United States.


• Rocky Planet notes how Earth is unique down to the level of its component minerals.


• The Russian Demographics Blog considers biopolitical conservatism in Poland and Russia.


• Starts With a Bang's Ethan Siegel considers if LIGO has made a detection that might reveal the nonexistence of the theorized mass gap between neutron stars and black holes.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at Marchetti's constant: People in cities, it seems, simply do not want to commute for a time longer than half an hour.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little looks at how the US Chemical Safety Board works.


• Window on Eurasia reports on how Muslims in the Russian Far North fare.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at cannons and canons.

• Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.


• Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.


• The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.


• D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.


• Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the American government's expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.


• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union's Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.


• Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.


• Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.


• io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.


• Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his "space pirate" suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.


• JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.


• Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.


• Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.


• This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.


• Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.


• Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.


• The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang'e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.


• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.


• The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.


• Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.


• Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.


• Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.


• Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of the discovery of asteroid 2019 AQ3, a rare near-Venus asteroid.


• Centauri Dreams notes the how the choice of language used by SETI researchers, like the eye-catching "technosignatures", may reflect the vulnerability of the field to criticism on Earth.


• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers what is to be done about Virginia, given the compromising of so many of its top leaders by secrets from the past.


• The Crux notes how the imminent recovery of ancient human DNA from Africa is likely to lead to a revolution in our understanding of human histories there.


• D-Brief notes how astronomers were able to use the light echoes in the accretion disk surrounding stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070 to map its environment.


• JSTOR Daily considers the snow day as a sort of modern festival.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to his consideration of the plans of the German Empire to build superdreadnoughts, aborted only by defeat. Had Germany won the First World War, there surely would have been a major naval arms race.


• The NYR Daily looks at two exhibitions of different photographers, Brassaï and Louis Stettner.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares an evocative crescent profile of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons, and crescent profiles of other worlds, too.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the mystery of why there is so little antimatter in the observable universe.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map exploring the dates and locations of first contact with aliens in the United States as shown in film.


• Window on Eurasia notes a new push by Circassian activists for the Circassian identity to be represented in the 2020 census.

• Wired asks what is to be done with the toxic brine produced by desalination plants.


• This article from The Atlantic tells the story of the last glacier in Venezuela, disappearing as the climate warns and as the county falls apart.


• Universe Today notes the discovery of a mysterious streak in the upper atmosphere of Venus.


• A new study via Universe Today suggests potentially Earth-like exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars might not receive enough high-energy photons to support plant life.


• Universe Today suggests that the mysterious AT2018cow event saw the formation of either a black hole or a neutron star.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait suggests that strange markings in the upper atmosphere of Venus might well be evidence of life in that relatively Earth-like environment.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly raves over Babylon Berlin.


• Centauri Dreams considers, fifty years after its publication, Clarke's 2001.


• Crooked Timber considers Kevin Williamson in the context of conservative intellectual representation more generally.


• D-Brief considers "digisexuality", the fusion of the digital world with sexuality. (I think we're quite some way off, myself.)


• The Dragon's Tales considers evidence suggesting that the agricultural revolution in ancient Anatolia was achieved without population replacement from the Fertile Crescent.


• Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the flight of Apollo 6, a flight that helped iron out problem with the Saturn V.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas is not impressed by the idea of the trolley problem, as something that allows for the displacement of responsibility.


• Gizmodo explains why the faces of Neanderthals were so different from the faces of modern humans.


• JSTOR Daily considers if volcano-driven climate change helped the rise of Christianity.


• Language Log considers, after Spinoza, the idea that vowels are the souls of consonants.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money engages in a bit of speculation: What would have happened had Clinton won? (Ideological gridlock, perhaps.)


• Lovesick Cyborg explores how the advent of the cheap USB memory stick allowed North Koreans to start to enjoy K-Pop.


• Russell Darnley considers the transformation of the forests of Indonesia's Riau forest from closed canopy forest to plantations.


• The Map Room Blog shares some praise of inset maps.


• Neuroskeptic considers how ketamine may work as an anti-depressant.


• The NYR Daily considers student of death, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.


• Justin Petrone of north! shares an anecdote from the Long Island coastal community of Greenport.


• Personal Reflection's Jim Belshaw considers the iconic Benjamin Wolfe painting The Death of General Wolfe.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Casey Dreier notes cost overruns for the James Webb Space Telescope.


• pollotenchegg maps recent trends in natural increase and decrease in Ukraine.


• Roads and Kingdoms talks about a special Hverabrauð in Iceland, baked in hot springs.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shares his own proposal for a new Drake Equation, revised to take account of recent discoveries.


• Vintage Space considers how the American government would have responded if John Glenn had died in the course of his 1962 voyage into space.


• Window on Eurasia considers the belief among many Russians that had Beria, not Khrushchev, succeeded Stalin, the Soviet Union might have been more successful.

• Does Venus have a much weaker magnetic field than the Earth because Venus, unlike the Earth, did not suffer a massive Moon-creating impact? Universe Today reports.


• M.R. O'Connor tells the story of how scientists managed to figure out how amazingly long the Greenland shark can live. The New Yorker has it.


• Climate Central notes how, thanks to global warming, maple syrup season is starting earlier every year and the heartland of production is moving ever more to the north.


• At Wired, Joshua Sokol reports on the distant and mysteriously massive black hole J1342+0928. How did it become so incredibly massive--780 million solar masses--when the universe was less than a billion years old?

• When the sun becomes a red giant, Europa and Enceladus will become superheated greenhouses without Earth-like phases.


• A new model of early Venus suggests it could have had oceans and Earthly temperatures less than a billion years ago.


• Past activity around the volcanoes of Mars means that these areas could have been refuges for life.


• On the discovery of acrylonitrile on Titan, a membrane-forming chemical that could permit life in the super-cold.

• Centauri Dreams looks at the SPECULOOS red dwarf observation program.


• The Crux examines VX nerve agent, the chemical apparently used to assassinate the half-brother of North Korea's ruler.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos of the inhabitants of the Tokyo night, like gangsters and prostitutes and drag queens.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money examines Donald Trump's tepid and belated denunciation of anti-Semitism.


• Language Log looks at the story of the Wenzhounese, a Chinese group notable for its diaspora in Italy.


• The LRB Blog looks at the by-elections in the British ridings of Stoke and Copeland and notes the problems of labour.


• The Map Room Blog shares a post-Brexit map of the European Union with an independent Scotland.


• Marginal Revolution reports that a border tax would be a poor idea for the United States and Mexico.


• The NYRB Daily looks at the art of the medieval Tibetan kingdom of Guge.


• Otto Pohl notes the 73rd anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Chechens and the Ingush.


• Supernova Condensate points out that Venus is actually the most Earth-like planet we know of. Why do we not explore it more?


• Towleroad notes Depeche Mode's denunciation of the alt-right and Richard Spencer.


• Whatever's John Scalzi considers the question of feeling empathy for horrible people.


• Window on Eurasia notes the thousands of Russian citizens involved with ISIS and examines the militarization of Kaliningrad.

The Obama administration has been pursuing a visit to Mars for years. But Obama may be overlooking an easier target, if the arguments of one NASA researcher (and numerous supporters) are to be believed. While Mars may seem to be an attractive destination, we should consider sending people to Venus instead, these people argue.

Obama's essay conjures images of NASA habitats on the Red Planet like we saw in the film “The Martian.” But that future is a long way off: As the actual author of “The Martian” has said, it's far more likely that NASA's first manned Mars mission will involve humans orbiting a few times and coming back. Even Elon Musk says he'll be creating a “cargo route” to Mars long before he sends actual people to land there.

You see, Mars is a challenging destination. It's far away, the gravity is a fraction of Earth's — posing additional health hazards beyond the lack of atmospheric radiation shielding — and you have to be suited up just to breathe outside.

By contrast, Venus is a lot closer to Earth than Mars is. At their closest points, Venus is only 25 million miles away, compared with Mars's 34 million miles. The shorter distance means you'd need less time and fuel to get there, reducing the cost. And although Venus's surface temperature is hot enough to melt metal, and the crushing pressure will squish you like a bug, the upper atmosphere is actually rather habitable.

“At about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system,” wrote Geoffrey Landis, a NASA scientist, in a 2003 paper. Landis has spent much of his career dreaming up ways to make a human trip to Mars actually feasible, so he knows what he's talking about.

• blogTO reports that Honest Ed's will have its final sign sale this weekend.


• D-Brief looks at the New Horizons probe's next target after Pluto, and reports that Venus is tectonically active.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the mechanics of the antimatter sail.


• Dangerous Minds features a video of France Gall singing about computer dating in 1968.
  
• The Dragon's Gaze considers biological fluorescence as a marker for life on red dwarf exoplanets.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on a wall of taco trucks set to face Donald Trump in Las Vegas.


• The LRB Blog notes the flailings of the Nigerian president.


• The NYRB Blog reports on how Brexit will wreck a British economy dependent on single market access.


• Transit Toronto notes that preliminary work has begun on the Scarborough subway.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr links to an editorial of his arguing that it should be made easier for Americans to migrate.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Russia is losing a third world war over brainpower and looks at the problems of sleeping districts in Moscow, a legacy of Soviet misplanning.