Arrival - August 4

On our flight to Iceland, I watched "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once," but it was hard to hear over the engine noise, therefore difficult to make sense of it. When dinner was served, I got a vegetarian stir fry dish, a salad, roll & butter, and a grain bar. They were stingy with drink, handing out small glasses of pop instead of the whole can, but I still had some Dr Pepper that I had bought in Orlando, so I got through.

I started to watch the latest Wizarding World movie, couldn't hear the dialog, so I turned it off and tried to sleep. I managed to doze some, but didn't get any deep sleep. Hubby says he got about an hour of sleep. He elbowed me awake when it was time for breakfast, which was Greek yogurt and biscotti and a small glass of tomato juice. Nothing to write home about, but here I am, writing about it.

We got to Iceland about an hour late. There was a long line to get through customs, which consisted of looking at and stamping our passports, and asking how long we'd be staying. That was followed by a long walk to find our luggage. When we got to the lobby and found the cruise line people, we joined another long line while they made sure we were in the right line, and took our major luggage to send it to the ship. Eventually, they put us on a bus. When the bus was full, we were sent off on a 45-minute ride to the ship.

So, despite the delays, we got to Iceland more or less on time. Could have lived without the excitement of nearly missing our connection, though.

We were told a new volcano had started erupting on 8/3 in a valley beyond a ridge that ran parallel to the road for a time. We couldn't see the eruption, but we could see smoke and gases arising from beyond the ridge. I tried to memorize the sight; the smoke looked like a rising cloud, and the gasses outlined the 'cloud' in a misty pale blue. I'd love to try to paint that some day. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of it, as the camera was buried in one of our carry-on luggage, now located in the bowels of the bus.

Once we got to the pier, we were sent to an interim check-in building. Several times we joined long lines before we got out the other end. The first line took us to a security check point, where we had to get our carry-on luggage x-rayed. The next line was for somebody to look at our passports. Then a line where we had to sign some papers and collect our on-board room key. And the final line was for Icelandic official to look at and stamp our passports.

So we finally got onto the ship, but our cabin wasn't ready for us yet. We took our carry-on luggage up to deck 12 to have some lunch at the buffet. One thing we learned very quickly is that food at the buffet was not the greatest. But it was something to do while we waited. So we ate, and then Hubby walked around the decks and snapped some pictures of the scenery as seen from the ship. I sat in the buffet with our luggage and pulled out a notebook to start writing. Eventually, the ship announced that cabins were ready. Hubby returned, and we went to drop off our luggage.

We had a balcony! Hubby had bid on an upgrade to a balcony room, and it had gone through. Hooray! We didn't just have a window, we had a balcony where we could sit and watch the water go by.

Our 2 big suitcases hadn't quite arrived yet, but we could relax in our room. And now I have to close this, because I don't remember where we had supper that night, nor what we did, except unpack when our suitcases arrived. And being sleep deprived, we went to bed early.

Getting There - August 3rd

 I did everything I could to ensure we had a smooth flight to Iceland. We left the house at 10 AM for a 4:19 PM flight to Chicago, we had 3-hour lay-over in Chicago... What could go wrong? We checked in with our airline and got our boarding passes about 11:54, but couldn't check our bags until 12:19 PM. So we drug all our luggage to the closest food court to get something to eat. Then we drug all our luggage back to the ticket counter and got our 2 biggest suitcases checked in. When we went through TSA, it surprisingly wasn't very busy, but it seemed to take forever to get through it anyway. We went to our gate, arriving about 2 hours before they were supposed to start boarding. I sat down to wait with our carry-on luggage. Hubby, who works hard to get 10k steps walked every day, would sit for about 2 minutes at a time before getting up to go 'walk-about'.

Coming back from one of his walks, Hubby noticed our flight was delayed by 20 minutes. Not to worry; we would still have plenty of time to catch our next flight in Chicago. About the timie we should have started loading, the airplane finally came in. We heard an announcement that our flight was delayed until 5:30, and they would start loading at 4:30. Too late; it wasn't even 4 PM yet, and people were lining up to start loading.

The pilot was very wishy-washy about what time they were going to take off, even after they loaded everybody on the plane. They finally took off about 6:30 or so, more than 2 hours late, because of a storm in the Chicago area that was slowing everything down. They had to fly around the storm, and landed about 9:15, about 3 hours late. Luckily, the flight to Iceland was 'slightly' delayed, and we managed to hurry to the next concourse before they shut the doors, but had to check our carry-on luggage. BUT one of those held 2 laptops for us to use on the cruise, and they had to come out and be carried by us onto the plane.

So, we got situated in our seats and breathed a sigh of relief. Then the captain announced they had a minor mechanical problem, and hopefully, it would soon be fixed. We finally took off about 2 hours late and settled in to watch some movies.

Why Jupiter Has No Rings

The title is false, Jupiter does have rings, but they are so thin, they are very hard to see, even in the best of conditions.

But why does Jupiter not have big, beautiful rings like Saturn? A recent article I read said Jupiter's moons are to blame. If it didn't have all those giant moons, it would have rings much bigger and more spectacular than Saturn's.

A new study says that giant moons destroy rings before they have a chance to form. And the Galilean moons of Jupiter, one of which is the largest moon in the solar system, seem to be good at it. Therefore, it is unlikely Jupiter ever had large rings at any point.

Massive planets form massive moons, which prevent them from having substantial rings.

Well, I thought the article had more to it than that, but that seems to be the sum total of it.

In a 'related' video, which I didn't watch for lack of time, the headline said Jupiter may have 'eaten' some sibling planets while it was growing. That sound interesting, so I'll keep my eyes open for more on that, but I suspect it will be as thin as Jupiter's rings.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-solve-the-reason-why-jupiter-has-no-rings/ar-AAZRF0k?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBnbfcL

Wandering Jupiter

A few weeks ago, I explored the possibilities of what might happen if Neptune's orbit should get jiggled by a rogue sun wandering too close to our system. More recently, I read an article that explains that Jupiter has already done some wandering, in order to be in the orbit it's in.

Jupiter's current orbit averages 5.2 astronomical units (AU = the average distance between the sun and Earth). But researchers now say the gas giant started to form some 18 AU away, which is about twice as far out as present-day Saturn. Furthermore, Jupiter made that journey in about 700,000 years, which is the blink of an eye in astronomical terms.

The idea of a wandering Jupiter is not new; I've heard several theories about it. But this time there is some proof that Jupiter formed a long way from the sun and then migrated inward, and that proof came from the Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit.

Jupiter has 2 groups of Trojan asteroids that share its orbit around the sun. A large group is in front of the planet, and a smaller group follow it. Researchers ran numerous computer simulations that showed the early solar system through millions of years of evolution by 50-day increments.

The simulations showed that the inward migration of the giant planet always resulted in a larger swarm of Trojans in front of Jupiter than behind it. As Jupiter traveled inwards—propelled by gravitational interactions between the fledgling gas giant and the sun's protoplanetary disk—it created a wide zone of gravitational stability in front of it, leading to more asteroids being caught before it than behind it.

Other simulations that relied on Jupiter forming in its current position resulted in both groups of asteroids being the same size.

One more step to this becoming the solar system we know today.

I can't help but wonder what was happening to Venus, Earth and Mars during the 700,000 years that Jupiter came rolling so much closer.

 

"Trojan asteroids reveal Jupiter's great migration", Astronomy, July 2019