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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Eight and a half years into its grand tour of the solar system, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft was ready for another encounter. It was Jan. 24, 1986, and soon it would meet the mysterious seventh planet, icy-cold Uranus.
Over the next few hours, Voyager 2 flew within 50,600 miles (81,433 kilometers) of Uranus' cloud tops, collecting data that revealed two new rings, 11 new moons and temperatures below minus 353 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 214 degrees Celsius). The dataset is still the only up-close measurements we have ever made of the planet.
Three decades later, scientists reinspecting that data found one more secret.
Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus's atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about the planet's one-of-a-kind magnetic environment.
[...] Readings from inside the plasmoid — as Voyager 2 flew through it — hinted at its origins. Whereas some plasmoids have a twisted internal magnetic field, DiBraccio and Gershman observed smooth, closed magnetic loops. Such loop-like plasmoids are typically formed as a spinning planet flings bits of its atmosphere to space. "Centrifugal forces take over, and the plasmoid pinches off," Gershman said. According to their estimates, plasmoids like that one could account for between 15 and 55% of atmospheric mass loss at Uranus, a greater proportion than either Jupiter or Saturn. It may well be the dominant way Uranus sheds its atmosphere to space.
How has plasmoid escape changed Uranus over time? With only one set of observations, it's hard to say.
"Imagine if one spacecraft just flew through this room and tried to characterize the entire Earth," DiBraccio said. "Obviously it's not going to show you anything about what the Sahara or Antarctica is like."
But the findings help focus new questions about the planet. The remaining mystery is part of the draw. "It's why I love planetary science," DiBraccio said. "You're always going somewhere you don't really know."
More information: Gina A. DiBraccio et al. Voyager 2 constraints on plasmoid‐based transport at Uranus, Geophysical Research Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1029/2019GL083909
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday March 29 2020, @05:07PM
There is a site variable that gates when the message such as this appears at the top of the main page:
The current value is: 20
It is also used as a gate as to when the selection controls are displayed on the submissions list page.
Simple workaround:
Submit more, general-interest stories. Once there are 20 or more story submissions in the "general" submissions queue, the controls will automatically re-appear! I say "general interest" insomuch as I mean non-coronavirus story submissions. Those are classified as "hold" so we can keep them in one place for creating a roundup of the submissions; these do not count towards the gating threshold.
Some History:
Back on the old site, there was a problem with someone posing a long screed shortly after a story went live. There was far more text present than could be explained other than a cut-and-paste of a previously constructed comment. As I understand it, it was thought they were monitoring the story submissions queue. When they saw one that hit a "hot button" for them, and there were only a few pending stories, they could reasonably expend the energy to craft a comment to push an agenda, lay in wait for the story to hopefully go live, and then get first post (or very close to it). Being early in the discussion afforded a couple perceived benefits. Increased visibility (the 100th comment to a story is less likely to be seen by everyone than the first). Even if it were to be modded down below many people's threshold (set in their preferences), it took a while for people to notice, perform the moderation, and drop the comment score. In the interim, many people had already loaded the article and were viewing it and this yet-to-be-downmodded comment. This, too, increased the visibility and served to help them push their agenda.
On the other hand, when there are a large number of story submissions, one is less certain that the effort involved in writing the piece will be efficacious. It could well be that the selected story would not be released and all their work was for nought.
Here be Dragons:
I could easily change that value and/or the template which examines it, but I am too-well-aware of the law of unintended consequences. Rather than dash in, make a change, and find myself spending perhaps days tracking down corner-cases, I think it best that some consideration to the ramifications be made, first. Only after some deliberation and discussion of the pros and cons would it make sense to me to roll out a change.
Wit is intellect, dancing.