(Click to enlarge.)

Turkey Feathers. 18×24″, oil on panel.

This started as an action painting.

Just in time. Good with leftovers.

(CNN) Israel says it is ‘at war’ after Hamas surprise attack.

Israel’s hacking expertise is second only to NSA. Israel intensively monitors Gaza electromagnetic emissions. So how did Hamas evade detection? The definitive answer cannot be reached unless technological surprise can be excluded.  With exclusion, there are only a few possible categories:

• A new dark web infrastructure running on virgin hardware, concealed by something analogous to CDMA or spread spectrum.
• Steganography.
• The low-tech Kremlin solution: typewriters/carbons, paper and pencil.

If technological surprise reveals, it will come as a thunderclap.

How did Hamas gain confidence their plans were undetected? Do they have a mole?

 

 

 

 

(CNN) Prigozhin would be latest in line of Putin critics who met an early death.

Quoting from Putin Replaces Surovikin; the Search for a Suvorov Ends,

…As his public posture gets louder while Putin’s voice softens, why is Prigozhin still alive? The answer is the  premise of the syllogism: Putin’s overriding goal is to win his war.

Prigozhin is in conflict with the Conglomerate Imperative: Grow by absorption. The M.O.D. wants to own Wagner. This does not mean an immediate acquisition; absorption could result in the loss of Wagner’s edge.  But Putin’s clock is running; see Putin Disappears; Illness a Factor? Prigozhin risks a  prolonged, violent succession struggle…

The delicate balance of need/risk has since been overturned by the Wagner Group rebellion. The necessity of Prigozhin’s liquidation was augmented by his status as standard-bearer of the extreme right wing.

Like Prigozhin himself, the extreme right wing combines:

• Galvanic energy and ideology essential to co-opting national will in the service of naked aggression.
• A direct goad to the phlegmatic Russian military.
• Threat of a violent ethos to state power.

The need to manage is illuminated by  the incitements to violence of Aleksandr Dugin and Igor Girkin.  They have followers, who may not be   known or completely characterized by tendency towards violence. From this murky group come the assassins and revolutionaries of the Right.

The deeper the purge of this group, the safer Putin would be, while weakening the national will for extended war. The depth of a purge, shaping societal discourse, offers hints of how modest a “victory”  Putin would accept.

Power Transition in Russia? Revolution? Part 3 — Has Revolution begun?, advised “Watch Prigozhin.” Since Girkin has already been arrested, Prigozhin’s place is taken by Aleksandr Dugin, and more obscure acolytes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(CNN) The new twist in Hunter Biden’s case is a huge political headache for his father. Quoting,

But top GOP lawmakers immediately launched a flurry of attacks on Weiss, despite the fact that he was first appointed under Trump, claiming that far from insulating the case from political influence, his appointment as a special counsel was an attempt at a cover up. The GOP has turned against Weiss because he has not substantiated their evidence-free claims that Joe Biden conspired with his son to enrich their family while he was vice president and they also claim that the plea deal originally offered to Hunter Biden was a “sweetheart” agreement.

I’m not personally a believer. Perhaps Republican campaign strategists are, or claim to be. Quoting from Ezekiel 18:19-20-21-23 The Message (MSG),

“Do you need to ask, ‘So why does the child not share the guilt of the parent?’ “Isn’t it plain? It’s because the child did what is fair and right. Since the child was careful to do what is lawful and right, the child will live truly and well. The soul that sins is the soul that dies. The child does not share the guilt of the parent, nor the parent the guilt of the child. If you live upright and well, you get the credit; if you live a wicked life, you’re guilty as charged. “But a wicked person who turns his back on that life of sin and keeps all my statutes, living a just and righteous life, he’ll live, really live. He won’t die. I won’t keep a list of all the things he did wrong. He will live. Do you think I take any pleasure in the death of wicked men and women? Isn’t it my pleasure that they turn around, no longer living wrong but living right—really living?

My condolences to a president who, after the death of his first wife, commuted daily from his Delaware home to the Senate, to be a parent to his sons.

CNN Projection: Ohio voters reject effort that would make it harder to amend state constitution.

This was anticipated in Repeal of Roe Versus Wade; the Beginning of a Republican Decline.

Quoting,

The Democratic Party now possesses the active voice, against which there is no effective political counter-strategy.

We continue from Congressional UAP/UFO Hearings Part 1.

Reminder. This discussion requires that tic tacs are alien spacecraft, or from some parallel universe or hyperspace related to “here”, which may be false.

The tic tac descends from 80,000 feet  to near sea level in less than a second, or a few seconds, without breaking a sweat, which is attributed to advanced technology. What about the air? If it is a physical object, it pushes air.  A napkin calc follows, with these simplifications:

• Tic tac is cylindrical, 15 meters length by 5 meters diameter, with domed ends.
• Long axis is aligned with  the direction of travel.
• Weight of atmosphere above 80,000 feet is negligible.
• Atmosphere is 100% monatomic nitrogen, no oxygen.
• Collision of nitrogen  with the tic tac is perfectly elastic; the tic tac is not heated by the collision. The atom gains energy; the energy of the tic tac is unchanged.
• The nitrogen behaves according to simple kinetic theory, while actually it would become a plasma.  It has a temperature.
• The result is an estimate of the energy used, “work”, to push the atmosphere out of the path of the tic tac in the descent from 80,000 feet to near sea level.
• The calc is for 80,000 feet in 1 second, which is then scaled.

Spoiler. We should see something resembling an elongated nuclear explosion. If you’re not math inclined, skip to the end table.

Air pressure at sea level is 14.7 pounds per square inch. This is the weight of a square column of air 1 inch wide, mostly contained below 80,000 feet.

14.7 lbs/inch^2 = 22800 lbs/meter^2  = 207,000 kilograms over the area of the tic tac end cap, which is 19.53 meter^2. This is the total mass of the air displaced by the tic tac in its journey from 80,000 feet.

To approximate the reduction of momentum transfer of the domed ends compared to flat ends, 207,000 kg is reduced by 1/3.

The atoms of what was an air column acquire momentum of

p = 2.24 * 10^10 kilograms–meters/second

The kinetic energy of this mass is

E_total = p^2 / 2m = 1.9 * 10^15  Joules

The number of moles of what was the air column = 6.9 * 10^6 moles.

Multiplying by Avogadro’s number, the number of atoms is

N = 4.15 *  10^30

The average energy of an atom after collision with the tic tac is

E_one atom = 1.9 * 10^15 / N = 4.6 * 10^-16 Joules

Where K = Boltzmann’s constant, and T  is the Kelvin temperature, the average kinetic energy of a single atom is

E = 3/2 * KT

The temperature is

T = 4.6 *10^-16 / ( 1.38 * 10^-23 )  =  2.2 * 10^7 degrees Kelvin

= 30 million degrees Fahrenheit

TNT equivalent:

One ton of TNT is equivalent to  1.9 * 10^15 Joules of energy

The former air column has acquired energy equivalent to 460,000 tons of TNT.

Table

16 miles / second,  Mach 80,     30,000,000 F,   460,000 tons TNT

8 miles / second,  Mach 40,        7.5 million   F,     125,000 tons TNT

4 miles / second,  Mach 20,        2 million F,            31000 tons TNT

The calc is useful for a craft traveling at the velocity of thermal atoms. At slower speeds, this approximation becomes inapplicable.

We studied the air because we know more about air than tic tacs. What have we learned?

To be continued shortly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trash Talk, 30 x40″, oil on canvas.

(Click to enlarge)

A nostalgia piece,  inspired by a time when littering, not global warming or mass shootings, was a matter  of concern. That such a time existed is, of course, imaginary.

For puzzlers: A media logo, perhaps the most beautiful, is hidden in the painting.

Larry, you can call me any time.

(CNN) Officials and lawmakers push for more government transparency on UFOs.

All three witnesses provided testimony of unprecedented credibility. Their participation in a quasi-judicial process demands respect. It demands regard of David Grush as an honest broker of facts, until proven otherwise.

Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require  extraordinary proof.” The testimony does not by itself reach that standard. In the case of David Grush, it contradicts my understanding. I wonder if participants in relevant SAPs have themselves been deceived by excessive classification, robbing them of understanding their own activities. The U.S. has been collecting adversary aircraft since 1942,  in the same time frame as claims about alien spacecraft.

Similarly, one could  pick apart the gimbal camera in the F-18 targeting pod, or the alleged sloppiness in analyzing recovered materials.  But for the first time, these issues do not subjectively diminish human testimony to the point of disregard. For the first time, we are faced by the inescapable question: What if it is all true?

The media tend to mix up the relevance of areas of knowledge. UFOs are not a question for aerospace engineering, which relies on Newton’s laws of motion — classical mechanics.  Only in a few  esoteric areas does aerospace touch on modern physics:

• GPS could not work without the Theory of Relativity.
• Radio communication with planetary space probes requires relativistic correction.
• Ion propulsion requires quantum mechanics.
• Modern electronics, where design of semiconductors requires quantum mechanics.

For practically everything else, aerospace relies on fields with mostly classical master equations:

• Navier–Stokes equations for aerodynamics.
• Lagrangian mechanics for structural analysis of airframes.
• Thermodynamic cycles  for propulsion.
• Materials science, where most analysis is classical, with exceptions like carbon fiber.

This means that if you gave flying saucer parts to Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, or Northrup-Grumman, their engineers wouldn’t know what to do with them. It is a problem of modern physics. They could hire outside physicists, but there is a  catch.

Contract physicists work with existing theories. No valid existing theory offers a hint at how a  flying saucer might work. There have been many attempts; the floor is littered with broken theories that that fail to predict what is already experimentally verified.

You have to be smart to be any kind of physicist. The hierarchy of achievement is a cruel reminder to those blessed with extreme intellects, of the rarity of extreme achievement. Ignoring the hundreds of years of patient mathematical advance that enabled, there is a hierarchy:

• At the top,  Newton and Einstein.
• Other 18th and 19th century giants.
• The small group of  the Thirty Years that Shook Physics, and less celebrated heroes.
• Developers of Second Quantization — QED,  the Standard Model, and the Particle Zoo.
• Mere Nobel Prize winners, from astrophysics to condensed matter physics.
• People who have managed to Do Something.
• People with doubtful theories that cannot be fully dismissed.
• Those who teach, managing to pass on the knowledge, which is no small feat.
• Industrial physics.
• Popularization of physics.

In this cruel-to-the-ego list, building the Bomb counts for little. These days, it’s considered an undergraduate subject.

So Boeing can’t just hire the brains to crack the UFO  problem. Their custody of crashed UFOs is pointless. Nevertheless, propelled by that which cannot be dismissed, the next article will speculate on:

***How do UFOs work?***

and why we are unlikely to find the answer on our own terms.

To be continued shortly.

 

 

(CNN) What are the cluster munitions the US is expected to supply Ukraine and why are they so controversial? Quoting,

The United States is expected to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine on Friday that will include cluster munitions for the first time, defense officials have told CNN.

In January, in Tanks for Ukraine, NFG? I wrote,

The Marines have turned in their tanks, mandated by their new littoral mission. A general principle can be distilled: Stealth multiplies lethality. Is it impossible to employ armored spearheads in Ukraine? If the abysmal performance of the Russian army continues, it is conceivable, though such assumption receives warning from von Clausewitz. Paraphrasing, the  enemy does not do what you want him to do; he does what he wants to do, which could be competence with the 9M133 Kornet.  Cluster munitions would be far more useful to Ukraine.

With little change, the argument of Tanks for Ukraine, NFG? , which is based on the characteristics of the modern ATGM, can be extended to tank vulnerability to air power when air superiority is lacking. It does not extend to artillery,  or cluster munitions delivered by artillery, which has greater possibilities of dispersal and camouflage.

Cluster munitions will be an effective force multiplier for Ukraine.

Sloppy CNN: Scientists find new clue in what led to megalodon’s demise. Quoting,

Through an analysis of fossilized megalodon teeth, scientists have discovered the extinct shark was partially warm-blooded, with a body temperature around 7 degrees Celsius (44 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than estimated seawater temperatures at the time, according to a study published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This is wrong; 44 should be 12.6. It seems someone mistakenly  used the formula for Celsius to Fahrenheit temperature conversion:

Temp_F  = Temp_C *9÷5 + 32

To be converted is the relationship of the Celsius unit of measure to the Fahrenheit unit of measure, which is:

Fahrenheit degrees  per Celsius degree = 9÷5

The number 32 must not be added.

This is sloppy journalism.