The Physicist and Philosopher - Tonight A Look Back on 2018

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Another NASA space telescope shuts down in orbit Less than a week after the Hubble Space Telescope went offline, the Chandra X-ray Observatory did the same thing. NASA said Friday that Chandra's automatically went into so-called safe mode Wednesday, possibly because of a gyroscope problem. Hubble went into hibernation last Friday due to a gyroscope failure. Both orbiting observatories are old and in well-extended missions: Hubble is 28, while Chandra is 19. Flight controllers are working to resume operations with both. NASA said it's coincidental both went "asleep" within a week of one another. An astronomer who works on Chandra, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted Friday that "Chandra decided that if Hubble could have a little vacation, it wanted one, too." Launched by space shuttles in the 1990s, Hubble and Chandra are part of NASA's Great Observatories series. The others are the Compton Gamma R...
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Portland police investigating far-right skirmishes with leftist protesters A weekend of right-wing violence on both coasts. Members of the far-right Patriot Prayer group and the white nationalist Proud Boys group clashed with Antifa demonstrators in Portland Saturday evening, resulting in several skirmishes during what has turned out to be a weekend of right-wing violence on both coasts. The altercations began Saturday afternoon when the far-right groups organized a “Flash March for Law and Order” under the leadership of Joey Gibson, a political activist and former Republican candidate for Senate in Washington. The march was planned in response to a demonstration against police brutality last week when an  elderly driver pushed his car through the crowd . The incident resulted in no injuries but angered many protesters who chased the car and beat the vehicle as it was stopped, accusing the driver of attempted to mow them down. Nearby police did not intervene. ...
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At least 10 killed after massive flash floods hit Mallorca, 5 months' worth of rain in 2 hours, Spain More than 230 mm (9 inches) of rain fell on Mallorca, Spain's Balearic Islands on October 9, 2018, causing one of the worst flash floods the island has seen in 25 years. At least 9 people have been killed and 6 others are still missing. The worst affected was the  island's  northeastern part. Local media described the floods as biblical. Average rainfall for the entire month of October in Mallorca is just 44.3 mm (1.7 inches). The  annual  rainfall varies across the island, from 350 mm (13.7 inches) in the south to 1 500 mm (59 inches) in the high areas on the Serra de Tramuntana mountain range. However, most of the island receives between 450 mm and 650 mm (17 - 25 inches) of precipitation over the year.​ The probability of 233 mm (9.17 inches) of rain falling in Colònia de Sant Pere [close to Sant Lorenç] in Mallorca, which was ...
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