Prayers for Pigeon Forge.
What a pigeon she was.

The War on US Farmers

The utter idiocy of participating in Israel’s war on Iran is being driven home hard in the negative effects on America’s ability to feed itself: US grain farmers have been plunged into their worst financial crisis in four decades as the war with Iran drives up diesel and fertilizer costs, the Financial Times reported on […]

https://voxday.net/2026/08/26/the-war-on-us-farmers/

🪐 A Wobbling “Peanut” Asteroid May Still Carry Traces of Ancient Water

NASA’s Lucy mission has revealed one of the strangest small worlds ever seen up close: asteroid Donaldjohanson — a young, peanut-shaped rock in the main asteroid belt that tumbles through space and still preserves chemical hints of liquid water from its distant past.

Lucy flew past Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, at about 30,000 mph, coming within just 650 miles of the asteroid. The encounter was meant partly as a rehearsal before Lucy reaches Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids in 2027. Instead, it became a science story of its own.

Donaldjohanson does not rotate like a simple spinning rock. Data from Lucy show that it tumbles end-over-end once every 10.5 Earth days, while also wobbling around its long axis every 26.5 days — more like an unstable top than a normal asteroid.

Its shape is just as unusual. Donaldjohanson is a contact binary: two lobes joined by a narrow neck, giving it a cosmic peanut-like form. Scientists think it formed about 155 million years ago, when fragments from a violent collision gently came back together under their own gravity.

Since then, sunlight has been slowly reshaping it. Through the YORP effect — a tiny torque caused when sun-warmed surfaces radiate heat back into space — Donaldjohanson’s spin appears to have slowed by at least a factor of 10 over the last 20–60 million years. As the rotation changed, loose material likely slid down its slopes, softening craters and reshaping the surface.

But the most intriguing clue came from Lucy’s infrared data: iron-rich clay minerals on the surface. These minerals form in the presence of liquid water, meaning Donaldjohanson’s parent body once experienced aqueous alteration. But unlike Bennu and Ryugu, which contain magnesium-rich clays suggesting longer exposure to water, Donaldjohanson’s chemistry points to a much shorter episode.

🔹 Donaldjohanson is a bilobed “contact binary” asteroid
🔹 It tumbles on two axes, with rotation periods of 10.5 and 26.5 days
🔹 Its current body likely formed around 155 million years ago
🔹 Sunlight gradually slowed its spin through the YORP effect
🔹 Iron-rich clays suggest liquid water was present — but only briefly
🔹 The flyby was also a successful rehearsal for Lucy’s Trojan asteroid encounters, beginning with Eurybates in August 2027

Important caveat: this was a fast flyby, not an orbital mission or a sample return. Lucy measured the surface remotely; the asteroid’s interior remains unknown.

Still, Donaldjohanson matters because it gives scientists a rare comparison point. Bennu and Ryugu are near-Earth asteroids with long migration histories. Donaldjohanson is a much younger main-belt object that stayed closer to its birthplace. Its strange shape, unstable spin, and brief water history offer a fresh clue to how small bodies evolved — and how water-rich material may have moved through the early Solar System.

📄 Sources: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec0503

#NASA #LucyMission #Asteroid #PlanetaryScience #SolarSystem

Some good news, apparently courtesy of Steven Miller: https://x.com/desitechsuppoat/status/2092065100484198569

NEW: 🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran plans to reverse-engineer US stealth JASSM Cruise Missile - Tabnak reports

A largely Intact JASSM Cruise Missile that failed to explode was discovered and seized by the Iranian army during the war

@Megatron_ron

Three Secret Service Officials — Including Communications Chief — Escorted Out and Stripped of Security Clearances Amid Reported Criminal Leak Probe — FBI and CIA Reportedly Involved

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/three-secret-service-officials-including-communications-chief-escorted/

🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Putin is about to escalate

Russia continues a major military buildup in the Bryansk region of western Russia, fueling speculations that the Russian Armed Forces could potentially reopen the Chernigov front in northern Ukraine.

Belarus has ordered an unplanned nationwide military readiness check.

The public should not assume that something extraordinary is about to happen- Alexander Volfovich, Secretary of Belarus’ Security Council.

@Megatron_ron

A pro-Ukrainian account just posted a picture of Tim Curry from Command and Conquer Red Alert and claimed that he was a Russian general that was KIA

"X, the social media mouthpiece of free speech absolutist Elon Musk, has reportedly sent legal takedown notices to Nitter and related service XCancel over alleged data scraping and rules violations."
https://www.theregister.com/legal/2026/08/26/nitter-no-more-x-sends-in-the-lawyers-to-shut-down-open-source-project/5292548#:~:text=X%2C%20the%20social%20media%20mouthpiece%20of%20free%20speech%20absolutist%20Elon%20Musk%2C%20has%20reportedly%20sent%20legal%20takedown%20notices%20to%20Nitter%20and%20related%20service%20XCancel%20over%20alleged%20data%20scraping%20and%20rules%20violations.

In 2008, molecular analysis of collagen from a 68-million-year-old T. rex confirmed its closest living relative includes Gallus gallus domesticusthe(the domestic chicken). We took this living dinosaur relative and genetically manipulated them to grow faster and bigger just so we could eat them.

Did you know? 🎓

My Huntsville Hamfest Forum...

"Did Oliver Heaviside remove part of Maxwell's theory? Do scalar waves exist? Are there electromagnetic waves that travel without transverse electric and magnetic fields? This talk examines the origins of these claims, from Maxwell's original equations and Heaviside's vector reformulation to modern electromagnetics. This talk explores where longitudinal fields appear in real radio systems, how they differ from the "scalar waves" of popular literature, and why understanding them can improve our intuition about antennas, propagation, and energy flow."

https://aetherczar.substack.com/p/video-did-heaviside-delete-maxwell