Several media outlets have incorrectly claimed that explosive solar flares were spotted during the April 8 total solar eclipse. But there were no flares during totality, so what did people see?
..."There are many (incorrectly) reporting that a solar flare was visible during the total solar eclipse," Ryan French, an astrophysicist at the National Solar Observatory in Colorado, wrote on the social platform X. "This is sadly untrue, and the bright feature seen by millions was actually a prominence. These are longer-lived plasma structures, and not explosive like flares."
...Unlike solar flares, which eject plasma as they explode from the sun's surface, prominences are plasma structures that remain connected to the solar surface for days or weeks, normally forming a large loop, according to NASA. Prominences can eventually snap and fling plasma into space like a CME, but this didn't happen during the eclipse.
...If you missed the eclipse, don't worry, it is still possible to rewatch NASA's live stream of the event.
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments
An attack would be retaliation for a strike in Syria that Iran blames on Israel.
...The intelligence that Iran could use drones and missiles to attack "regional assets" by Israel has been shared with U.S. lawmakers.
U.S. officials believe the attacks would be done in retaliation for Israel's airstrike in Damascus, Syria, last week, which killed a top commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps along with six other personnel. If Iran's retaliatory happens, officials believe the attacks have the potential to widen the scope of the war in Gaza.
"They're threatening to launch a significant attack on Israel," Biden said at a news conference Wednesday.
...According to one U.S. official, it's believed that Iran could choose to retaliate in a proportional response targeting an Israeli diplomatic facility like the Iranian diplomatic location that was struck on Monday in Syria. Or, the official said, it's possible that Iran could strike directly at Israel.
The Senate on Wednesday passed a measure to nullify a Transportation Department rule targeting highway greenhouse gas emissions.
The Congressional Review Act resolution, S.J. Res. 61 sponsored by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), passed the Senate 53-47. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) joined Republicans in support.
But if the resolution passes the House, President Joe Biden would veto it, the White House said in a statement of administration policy issued during the Senate vote.
The resolution would remove “a common-sense, good-government tool for transparently managing transportation-related GHG emissions and informing transportation investment decisions,” the White House said.
As a bill that would reauthorize a crucial national security surveillance program was blocked Wednesday by a conservative revolt, one GOP lawmaker had some choice words for his colleagues and the dysfunction in Washington.
“Frustrating” and “moronic,” Montana’s Congressman Ryan Zinke told Axios.
“When they complain that the train’s not on time … well, you guys are the ones blowing up the tracks,” he said.
The legislative impasse follows an edict earlier in the day from former President Donald Trump to “kill” the measure.
The breakdown comes months after a similar process to reform and reauthorize the surveillance program fell apart before it even reached the House floor. Speaker Mike Johnson has called the program “critically important” but has struggled to find a path forward on the issue, which has been plagued by partisan bickering for years. The procedural vote to bring up the bill Wednesday failed 193-228, with nearly 20 Republicans voting no
I'm not usually one for schadenfreude. Negative emotions are an unhealthy and unproductive way to live, bad karma, bad juju. Having said that…
The price of the Trump Media stock has now fallen over 50% since it went public two weeks ago. Today, it dropped 10%, closing at $33.58.
...As NBC News points out, Donald Trump is the biggest shareholder in the company, holding a nearly 60 percent stake. His shares are now worth less than $2.8 billion, a sharp drop from the more than $5 billion it was previously valued.
And it's not just Donald Trump who's taking a bath, losing his shirt, getting his tushy spanked… it's all the genius MAGA "investors" who wanted to stick it to the libs by… losing money?
The government is freaking us out on bird flu. It's not what they're saying—it's what they are not saying.
For more than two years the bird flu outbreak has caused devastating die offs among wild birds, wild mammals, and farmed birds. It's overwhelming, and much of the public has understandably tuned it out.
But we should expect a lot more vigilance from the federal government, which seems complacent in the face of the outbreak's newest and most frightening development to date. Last week, H5N1 made the first known jump into U.S. dairy cows and appeared to start spreading fast. Now this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the first case of the virus apparently spreading from cow to human. The USDA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in matching statements, were quick to assure the public that everything is fine.
But the potential risks of this spillover event are much bigger than either the government or industry leaders seem ready to publicly admit. The American food system relies on factory farming of animals, pushing hundreds of millions of them together into inhumane, unsanitary, dangerously overcrowded conditions. It's the perfect breeding ground for viruses, increasing the risk of mutations, the risk of rapid spread, and the risk of farm workers getting infected through direct exposure.
Did Elon Musk fib about the service breaking even?
In a brief announcement on his social media platform last year, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk celebrated that the company's Starlink broadband service had "achieved breakeven cash flow."
"Starlink is also now a majority of all active satellites and will have launched a majority of all satellites cumulatively from Earth by next year," he said at the time.
But according to a damning new report by Bloomberg, Musk may have once again rigged the numbers in his favor by greatly underplaying the costs involved in launching the satellites, when in reality the company is losing "hundreds of dollars on each of the millions of ground terminals it ships."
According to Bloomberg's sources, SpaceX's accounting was "more of an art than a science" and the much-hyped system isn't actually profitable, despite Musk's assurances.
The Biden administration straddled the line on a controversial Canadian oil pipeline in a court filing Wednesday, saying a lower court’s order to drain portions running through tribal land may violate a 1977 treaty but agreeing with a Native American tribe that the operator is trespassing on tribal land.
In an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, the Justice Department (DOJ) agreed with the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians that Enbridge “lacks any legal right to remain” on Chippewa land in Wisconsin. A lower court, the Western District of Wisconsin, “correctly rejected Enbridge’s arguments that the Administrative Procedure Act or the 1992 agreement authorizes it to remain on these lands,” DOJ lawyers wrote.
However, the administration also wrote that the district court did not properly consider U.S. obligations under a 1977 treaty with Canada in ordering the closure of the pipeline, and that the appeals court should reconsider the decision by Judge William Conley to halt it by 2026. The Justice Department did not take a position on whether the order did in fact violate the treaty.
The Bad River Band has been engaged in the legal battle with Enbridge since 2019, specifically seeking to shut down a portion of the pipeline known as Line 5 that runs through Wisconsin and Michigan.
The fossil fuel giant is suing investors to intimidate them from ever trying to influence corporate decisions.
ExxonMobil has launched an extraordinary lawsuit against two investment firms for the alleged offense of filing climate-focused shareholder proposals. The fossil fuel giant’s underlying goal: killing a federal regulatory effort that would make it easier for all U.S. shareholders to voice environmental and social concerns about the companies they own.
Critics say the company is also trying to intimidate shareholders from ever proposing such resolutions again in the future — under threat of being tied up in expensive litigation and incurring punitive financial penalties.
If successful, the Exxon lawsuit could set a legal precedent wrestling control away from regulators and cracking down on activist investors working to enact more climate-friendly policies.
Exxon’s unprecedented lawsuit was filed in January in a Republican-dominated judicial circuit that has become the go-to court system for corporate victories. The suit aims to convince judges to supersede financial regulators who have long been responsible for deciding whether publicly traded companies are required to allow shareholder votes on resolutions.
A New York-based campaign official for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who raised the possibility that voting for the independent presidential candidate would help Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden previously promoted false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and attended “Stop the Steal” rallies after the election, including the rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC, that preceded the deadly riot at the US Capitol.
Rita Palma, who has identified herself as the Kennedy campaign’s state director in New York, also repeatedly called Trump her “favorite president,” according to tweets along with comments she posted on the conservative social media site Parler that have since been made private.
According to a KFILE examination of those now-private posts, Palma also posed for a photo at the former Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, alongside Sidney Powell – the pro-Trump attorney who pleaded guilty in Georgia’s election subversion case.
...There is no indication Palma went to the Capitol or was violent on January 6, but tweets from that day show her in DC for Trump’s rally. Palma later dismissed that day’s violence as the work of a few attendees.
“Jan 6 was not a riot. A small group of people were trouble. It was 99.9 peaceful, respectful. I was there,” she wrote.
...Climate change is expected to shift the areas where coffee can grow, with some researchers estimating that the most suitable land for coffee will shrink by more than half by 2050, and hotter temperatures will make the plants more vulnerable to pests, blight, and other threats. At the same time, demand for coffee is growing, as upwardly mobile people in traditionally tea-drinking countries in Asia develop a taste for java.
“The difference between demand and supply will go like that,” Kunz put it during a Zoom interview, crossing his arms in front of his chest to form an X, like the “no good” emoji. Small farmers could face crop failures just as millions of new people develop a daily habit, potentially sending coffee prices soaring to levels that only the wealthy will be able to afford.
To stave off the looming threats, some agricultural scientists are hard at work breeding climate-resilient, high-yield varieties of coffee. Kunz, the founder and chair of a “flavor engineering” company called Stem, thinks he can solve many of these problems by growing coffee cells in a laboratory instead of on a tree. A number of other entrepreneurs are taking a look at coffee substitutes of yore, like the barley beverage Kunz grew up drinking, with the aim of using sustainable ingredients to solve coffee’s environmental problems — and adding caffeine to reproduce its signature jolt.
Here's a silver lining to global monopoly capitalism: it means we're all fighting the same enemy, who is using the same tactics everywhere. The same coordination tools that allow corporations to extend their tendrils to every corner of the Earth allows regulators and labor organizers to coordinate their resistance.
That's a lesson Mercedes is learning. In 2023, Germany's Supply Chain Act went into effect, which bans large corporations with a German presence from using child labor, violating health and safety standards, and (critically) interfering with union organizers.
...Workers at Mercedes' factory in Vance, Alabama are trying to join the UAW, and Mercedes is playing dirty, using the tried-and-true union-busting tactics that have held workplace democracy at bay for decades. The UAW has lodged a complaint with the NLRB, naturally.
But the UAW has also filed a complaint with BAFA, the German regulator in charge of the Supply Chain Act, seeking penalties against Mercedes-Benz Group AG.
That's a huge deal, because the German Supply Chain Act goes hard. If Mercedes is convicted of union-busting in Alabama, its German parent-company faces a fine of 2% of its global total revenue, and will no longer be eligible to sell products to the German government. Chomp.
"Higgs' work has and will continue to shape the field for many years to come and is possibly the largest success story of 21st-century theoretical physics."
On April 8, 2024, British theoretical physicist Peter Ware Higgs passed away at the age of 94. It was almost 12 years ago, on July 4, 2012, in a fairly inauspicious lecture hall located in Geneva, Switzerland, when Higgs became an iconic figure in modern science.
That was the day it was announced that collisions between particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility — arguably the most ambitious and audacious science experiment ever — revealed the existence of the Higgs Boson.
The discovery of the Higgs boson, named for Higgs himself, has been vital for the field of particle physics. It was the last occupant of the particle zoo that's needed to complete what's known as the "Standard Model of particle physics," the best description we have of the universe on the smallest of scales.
For Higgs, born in Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K. to a Scottish mother and an English father on May 29, 1929, the moment was met with an outflow of emotion. This was unsurprising, given that this announcement represented the culmination of five decades of his work, and validated a theory that he refused to give up on.
Got an eclipse story? Share it with us in the comments!
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) eeff, Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw