Milky Way over French Alp Hoodoos

Real castles aren't this old. And the background galaxy is even older. Looking a bit like an alien castle, the pictured rock spires are called hoodoos and are likely millions of years old. Rare, but found around the world, hoodoos form when dense rocks slow the erosion of softer rock underneath. The pictured hoodoos survive in the French Alps and are named Demoiselles Coiffées -- which translates to English as "Ladies with Hairdos". The background galaxy is part of the central disk of our own Milky Way galaxy and contains stars that are typically billions of years old. The photogenic Cygnus sky region -- rich in dusty dark clouds and red glowing nebulas -- appears just above and behind the hoodoos. The featured image was taken in two stages: the foreground was captured during the evening blue hour, while the background was acquired from the same location later that night.
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Image Credit & Copyright: Benjamin Barakat
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220516.html
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Music, Film, TV and Political News Coverage

What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun earlier this month, throwing a cloud of fast-moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth. Part of this cloud impacted our Earth's magnetosphere and, bolstered by a sudden gap, resulted in spectacular auroras being seen at some high northern latitudes. Featured here is a particularly photogenic auroral corona captured above a forest in Sweden from a scenic perch overlooking the city of Östersund. To some, this shimmering green glow of recombining atmospheric oxygen might appear like a large whale, but feel free to share what it looks like to you. The unusually quiet Sun of the past few years has now passed. As our Sun now approaches a solar maximum in its 11-year solar magnetic cycle, dramatic auroras like this are sure to continue.
... Image Credit & Copyright: Göran Strand
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220322.html
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Dear fellow member,

I woke up this morning to the following news (not from my ususal paper) ...



My thoughts go out to the current and future victims of this horror show directed by Putin et al. The normal parents and children trapped in their homes for fear of bombs or preparing to leave.
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It is clear that the talking has finished from the Russian side. It is time for ACTION from the rest of the world.

Peace.
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The recent wave of book challenges inspired Diffenbaugh to join forces with the local Firefly Bookstore and start the Banned Book Club. Since January, she and other young people in her area have been meeting every other week to discuss classic and contemporary titles that have been contested.

www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/us/banned...

www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/20...

It works!

A WOMAN has gone viral after starring on a serious BBC news report with a giant SEX TOY perched on a bookshelf behind her.Yvette Amos was seen chattin

Taylor Hawkins dies at age of 50. He was found dead in hotel room

www.reddit.com/r/mildlypenis/com...

Lanyon Quoit burial chamber, Cornwall, England



Pi Day

Did Neolithic humans build this structure to celebrate Pi Day? Not likely. Pi Day is a relatively recent phenomenon—invented by a physicist in 1988 and designated by Congress a national holiday in 2009. But it's already almost certainly the most popular holiday celebrating a mathematical constant. While Pi Day is a young tradition, the number π (pi) itself has been a fascination since antiquity, when it was first calculated as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
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You probably know that March 14 was chosen for Pi Day since the date expressed numerically (in month/date format) matches the number's first digits, 3.14. Aside from eating pie to celebrate, some people go to great lengths to memorize digits that go way beyond 3.141592…, which earns them bragging rights in some, um, circles. The world record is a staggering 70,000 digits after the decimal point—the remarkable feat was achieved by 21-year-old student Rajveer Meena in 2015.

Take a moment from your Pi Day revelry to appreciate the unintentional π symbol formed by this Neolithic burial chamber in Cornwall, England. As the morning sun warms Lanyon Quoit's ancient stones, it's impossible not to wonder who built it and how, since it predates metal tools and is older than Egypt's pyramids. Theories abound, of course, but could π have been involved?
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...got to do with Zelensky's piano skills