The Fun Never Stops

 

Let's take another look at that old adage about bad things happening in 3s. This time, it seems to be true. First, I had to take my car in to get its power steering looked at. I grew up with hydraulic power steering, but I couldn't find the power steering fluid reservoir, so I had to take it to the shop. I also asked about new tires, because I knew those were coming up on being bald.

In order to fix the power steering, they needed to get me a replacement steering column. Or for about half the price, a 'gently used' one. I opted for the used one. Plus, when they were looking underneath at my tires, they noticed all sorts of problems with the tire rods, and whatever else they found. My eyes kind of glazed over when they started listed all the things that needed attention. So, 10 days later, I finally got my car back, along with a whopping bill to go with it.

That was item #1.

Next, my 15-year-old computer turned itself off in the middle of a rainstorm. Now, when a computer is that old and is put through its paces nearly every day, you start expecting problems. For the life of me, I could not get the computer to turn back on and stay on. It wouldn't even get to the point where it wanted to know my password. That was on a Sunday, so the next day, I got up and disconnected the CPU from everything and ran it to Geek Squad, since it was under contract. Their 'make an appt now!' app gave me half an hour to get there, but their store is a pretty solid hour's drive away, so I was late.

Wouldn't you know it, they plugged it in, attached a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and the CPU behaved beautifully! Slow as molasses getting started, but that was normal. Just to be sure, I left it with them to do a diagnostic, and when I got home, I dug out a MacBook we only use when we're traveling. It works okay for checking email and composing rough draft, but is lousy at formatting or looking at Word docs you've already created.

But it would surf the net, so I kind of got through the 4 days my old computer was in the shop. When I finally got to pick it up, they had diagnosed it, updated it, and couldn't find any malware on it, so the bill was $0. I was so happy!

Still, I'm counting 'computer in the shop' as bad thing #2, because I got very little work done that week.

And it turns out that I went to the grocery store the day I was going to pick up my computer, and when I got home, I accidentally left my cell phone in the car. It was hot that day, and the windows were up, so when I climbed in in late afternoon to get my computer, I found my fone had been fried. Well, half fried. It still counts the steps I take (yea!), and it will still send and receive texts. But it won't send or receive phone calls. Won't even try.

I've done some preliminary research to find a replacement, and finding something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and have all sorts of bells and whistles that I will never figure out how to use is not easy. I'm used to an android, and even those are getting pricey. I even looked at jitterbug and alcatel flip fones. I like the idea of a flip fone that won't spend its time taking pictures of the inside of my pocket. But the downsides of the alcatel add up to quite a bit; the screen size is 2.8 inches, so I'd have to carry a magnifying glass to try to read it. It's not water resistant. And the battery life is 6.5 hours. Okay, I guess I'm back to look at androids.

Actually, I'm not looking at the time. I've decided not to get a new one until after our vacation, about mid-August. I asked one of my sons to look at my carrier's website and see if he could find something I could live with. But this item is probably going to cost me. Not to mention all the left-over minutes I have that won't transfer to a new fone.

So, a semi-fried fone is Item #3.

That's it. That's 3 bad things. I'm done now. Everything is going to be smooth sailing and peachy fine for a while.

Won't it?

So Close!

I made a promise that my new website would be up and running today. So, what am I doing today? Trying to figure out how to use my domain name - which I bought via Godaddy - to work with my hosting company. They thought I had bought a hosting package from Godaddy, and when I said I didn't, that I only bought the domain name via them, and asked what did I need to do to get this domain to work for them? Crickets. Less than crickets.

Don't get me wrong, I am pleased with the support I've gotten from these people as I tried (for 3 months) to get my new website set up. I've occasionally had to ask them to dumb their explanation down, as I'm not the most computer-literate person in the world. Any one of my sons can attest to this, as I still call them up (long-distance) to ask computer questions.

It's possible that they are working on this. Or, depending where they are located, it may be past quitting time for them, in which case, I won't hear from them until Monday.

So... I suppose I should move on to other things, having done all I can do. I still need to work on my Mailchimp account. And go to the store and drug store to pick up groceries and prescriptions. Heck, there's some leatherwork I need to finish lacing, and make-up applications to practice. There's lots of stuff for me to do. (There always is.) I just need to make up my mind to move on.

I did the best I could. I guess it probably won't be live until Monday. Let's hope, okay?

Wandering Neptune?

I was perusing headlines the other day when I noticed one about Neptune. Normally, a headline about one of our planets grabs my attention and I read the article, but I was pressed for time that day, and decided to skip the article. Now I wish I'd read it.

The headline stated that all it would take to unravel our solar system was a star passing by and perturbing the orbit of Neptune. I have so-o-o many questions now about this possibly impending doom.

How big a star would it need to be? How big is the average rogue star? How close would the star have to get? How would that star appear to us here on Earth? Would we be able to feel any gravity or heat or radiation from that star? How much would it need to disrupt Neptune's orbit? What exactly would happen to the rest of the planets, once Neptune started to wander? How long would Earth have before it ultimately became uninhabitable?

So many questions, and no answers, because I didn't read the article. So I just now looked the article up, and read it.

Apparently, all it would take would be for the average distance between Neptune and the sun to be altered by 0.1%. Such a tiny change would increase the chance of the solar system descending into chaos 10 times higher. This 0.1% perturbation would be about 4.5 million kilometers (2.8 million miles). It would result in subtle changes to the orbits of the inner planets, reaching the Earth and Mars in about 20 million years. (Whew! I was afraid I might need to worry about it happening within my lifetime, or what's left of it.)

The team conducting the study ran 2,880 simulations with varying amounts of perturbations. 960 simulations had perturbations too small to be measured. In 4 of those, the resulting perturbation to Mercury's orbit resulted in it hitting Venus. In the remaining models, there were 26 that end in chaos; collisions between Mercury and Venus, Earth and Mars colliding, and some where Uranus, Neptune or Mercury were thrown out of the system.

They also estimated the chance of a star getting close enough to cause any of that, and concluded there were only about 20 chances over the next 100 billion years. So it doesn't seem very likely, given that our sun is only expected to last another 5 billion years.

 

https://www.iflscience.com/small-changes-to-neptunes-orbit-by-a-passing-star-could-wreck-the-entire-solar-system-64354

Death Throes

We've all heard that you can't take it with you. Well, scientists have discovered a dying star that is trying very hard to take its entire planetary system with it.

G238-44, a white dwarf located some 86 light-years away, seems determined it is not going alone. It's already made one attempt to end its system. You see, a white dwarf is what results when a star that is up to 8 times the mass of our sun reaches the end of its life. Once that star runs out of material to fuse, it puffs up to red giant size before ejecting its outer material. Then the core collapses to form a dense object that shines bright with the light of residual heat.

This process can put the inner planets right in the middle of that red giant until the outer shell is ejected and the core collapses. Scientists have discovered some planets that appear to have survived being gobbled up by a red giant phase, but not many, and they certainly don't appear to have any atmosphere or water left on them. When our sun hits that stage in a few billion years, the red giant produced could reach as far as Mars.

But we were talking about G238-44, which has reached the white dwarf stage, so it is currently much more dense than it used to be. Scientists studying it have been examining G238-44's atmosphere, and have found a plethora of 'heavy' elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, and iron. Most of these would have come from rocky worlds and inner system asteroids that probably 'survived' the red giant phase. The denser star is pulling them in and eating them.

But the nitrogen—and there seemed to be a lot of it—probably came from frozen worlds and asteroids such as exist in our Kuiper Belt. Apparently, the shift in gravity has perturbed their orbits, and the star is pulling them in and eating them also.

I wonder what the system will look like when all the planets and asteroids have been eaten, and the star cools into a massive hunk of... what? A huge rocky planet? A frozen gas giant with a big rocky core? What do you think it will be?

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/a-dead-star-has-been-caught-ripping-apart-its-planetary-system/ar-AAYGGzI?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBnb7Kz