This beauty was about 15" in length and almost undetectable coiled up in the leaf litter under a large Live Oak. I strolled under the large, shady tree to beat the late morning heat for a few minutes, looked down, and this gorgeous little snake was right in front of me. Typical for this species, it was at first quick to strike- but then settled down nicely.

R.I.P. George (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008).

 

George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor and author who won four Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.

 

Carlin was especially noted for his political and black humor and his observations on language, psychology, and religion along with many taboo subjects. Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5-4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's right to regulate Carlin's act on the public airwaves.

 

Carlin's most recent stand-up routines focused on the flaws in modern-day America. He often took on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture.

 

He placed second on the Comedy Central cable television network list of the 10 greatest stand-up comedians, ahead of Lenny Bruce and behind Richard Pryor. He was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three - decade Johnny Carson era, and was also the first person to host Saturday Night Live.

 

Early life and career -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 

George Denis Patrick Carlin was born in New York City, the son of Mary (née Bearey), a secretary, and Patrick Carlin, a national advertising manager for the New York Sun. Carlin was of Irish descent and was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

 

Carlin grew up on West 121st Street, in a neighborhood of Manhattan which he later said, in a stand-up routine, he and his friends called "White Harlem", because that sounded a lot tougher than its real name of Morningside Heights. He was raised by his mother, who left his father when Carlin was two years old. At age 14 Carlin dropped out of Cardinal Hayes High School and later joined the United States Air Force, training as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana.

 

During this time he began working as a disc jockey on KJOE, a radio station based in the nearby city of Shreveport. He did not complete his Air Force enlistment. Labeled an "unproductive airman" by his superiors, Carlin was discharged on July 29, 1957. In 1959, Carlin and Jack Burns began as a comedy team when both were working for radio station KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas. After successful performances at Fort Worth's beat coffeehouse, The Cellar, Burns and Carlin headed for California in February 1960 and stayed together for two years as a team before moving on to individual pursuits.

 

1960s

 

In the 1960s, Carlin began appearing on television variety shows, notably The Ed Sullivan Show. His most famous routines were:

* The Indian Sergeant ("You wit' the beads... get outta line")

* Stupid disc jockeys ("Wonderful WINO...") — "The Beatles' latest record, when played backwards at slow speed, says 'Dummy! You're playing it backwards at slow speed!'"

* Al Sleet, the "hippie-dippie weatherman" — "Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning."

* Jon Carson — the "world never known, and never to be known"

 

Variations on the first three of these routines appear on Carlin's 1967 debut album, Take Offs and Put Ons, recorded live in 1966 at The Roostertail in Detroit, Michigan.

 

During this period, Carlin became more popular as a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson era, becoming one of Carson's most frequent substitutes during the host's three-decade reign. Carlin was also cast on Away We Go, a 1967 comedy show.

 

Carlin was present at Lenny Bruce's arrest for obscenity. According to legend the police began attempting to detain members of the audience for questioning, and asked Carlin for his identification. Telling the police he did not believe in government issued IDs, he was arrested and taken to jail with Bruce in the same vehicle.

 

Eventually, Carlin changed both his routines and his appearance. He lost some TV bookings by dressing strangely for a comedian of the time, wearing faded jeans and sporting a beard and earrings at a time when clean-cut, well-dressed comedians were in vogue. Using his own persona as a springboard for his new comedy, he was presented by Ed Sullivan in a performance of "The Hair Piece," and quickly regained his popularity as the public caught on to his sense of style.

 

In this period he also perfected what is perhaps his best-known routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television", recorded on Class Clown. Carlin was arrested on July 21, 1972 at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws after performing this routine.[28] The case, which prompted Carlin to refer to the words for a time as, "The Milwaukee Seven", was dismissed in December of that year; the judge declared the language indecent, stating that the language was indecent but cited free speech, as well as the lack of any disturbance. In 1973, a man complained to the FCC that his son had heard a later, similar routine, "Filthy Words", from Occupation: Foole, broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station in New York City. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC, which sought to fine Pacifica for allegedly violating FCC regulations which prohibited broadcasting "obscene" material. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC action, by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene" and the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience. F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978). The court documents contain a complete transcript of the routine.

 

The controversy only increased Carlin's fame (or notoriety). Carlin eventually expanded the dirty-words theme with a seemingly interminable end to a performance (ending with his voice fading out in one HBO version and accompanying the credits in the Carlin at Carnegie special for the 1982-83 season) and a set of 49 web pages organized by subject and embracing his "Incomplete List Of Impolite Words".

 

Carlin was the first-ever host of NBC's Saturday Night Live, debuting on October 11, 1975. (He also hosted SNL on November 10, 1984, where he actually appeared in sketches. The first time he hosted, he only appeared to perform stand-up and introduce the guest acts.) The following season, 1976-77, Carlin also appeared regularly on CBS Television's Tony Orlando & Dawn variety series.

 

Carlin unexpectedly stopped performing regularly in 1976, when his career appeared to be at its height. For the next five years, he rarely appeared to perform stand-up, although it was at this time he began doing specials for HBO as part of its On Location series. His first two HBO specials aired in 1977 and 1978. It was later revealed that Carlin had suffered the first of his three non-fatal heart attacks during this layoff period.

 

1980s and 1990s ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 

In 1981, Carlin returned to the stage, releasing A Place For My Stuff, and he returned to HBO and New York City with the Carlin at Carnegie TV special, videotaped at Carnegie Hall and airing during the 1982-83 season. Carlin continued doing HBO specials every year or every other year over the following decade-and-a-half. All of Carlin's albums from this time forward are the HBO specials.

 

Carlin's acting career was primed with a major supporting role in the 1987 comedy hit Outrageous Fortune, starring Bette Midler and Shelley Long; it was his first notable screen role after a handful of previous guest roles on television series. Playing drifter Frank Madras, the role poked fun at the lingering effect of the 1960s psychedelic counterculture. In 1989, he gained popularity with a new generation of teens when he was cast as Rufus, the time-traveling mentor of the titular characters in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and reprised his role in the film sequel Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey as well as the first season of the cartoon series. In 1991, he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children's show Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, a role he continued until 1998. He played "Mr. Conductor" on the PBS children's show Shining Time Station which featured Thomas from 1991 to 1993 as well as Shining Time Station TV specials in 1995 and Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales in 1996. Also in 1991, Carlin had a major supporting role in the movie The Prince of Tides along with Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand.

 

Carlin began a weekly Fox Broadcasting sitcom, The George Carlin Show, in 1993, playing New York City cab driver "George O'Grady". He quickly included a variation of the "Seven Words" in the plot. The show ran 27 episodes through December 1995.

 

In 1997, his first hardcover book, Brain Droppings, was published, and sold over 750,000 copies as of 2001. Carlin was honored at the 1997 Aspen Comedy Festival with a retrospective George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy hosted by Jon Stewart.

 

In 1999, Carlin played a supporting role as a satirically marketing-oriented Roman Catholic cardinal in filmmaker Kevin Smith's movie Dogma. He worked with Smith again with a cameo appearance in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and later played an atypically serious role in Jersey Girl, as the blue collar dad of Ben Affleck's character.

 

2000's --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 

In 2001, Carlin was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards.

 

In December 2003, California U.S. Representative Doug Ose introduced a bill (H.R. 3687) to outlaw the broadcast of Carlin's seven "dirty words", including "compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)". (The bill omits "tits", but includes "ass" and "asshole", which were not part of Carlin's original routine.)

 

The following year, Carlin was fired from his headlining position at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas after an altercation with his audience. After a poorly received set filled with dark references to suicide bombings and beheadings, Carlin stated that he couldn't wait to get out of "this fucking hotel" and Las Vegas in general, claiming he wanted to go back East "where the real people are". He continued to insult his audience, stating:

 

"People who go to Las Vegas, you've got to question their fucking intellect to start with. Traveling hundreds and thousands of miles to essentially give your money to a large corporation is kind of fucking moronic. That's what I'm always getting here is these kind of fucking people with very limited intellects."

 

An audience member shouted back that Carlin should "stop degrading us", at which point Carlin responded "Thank you very much, whatever that was. I hope it was positive; if not, well blow me." He was immediately fired by MGM Grand and soon after announced he would enter rehab for drug and alcohol addiction.

 

For years, Carlin had performed regularly as a headliner in Las Vegas. He began a tour through the first half of 2006, and had a new HBO Special on November 5, 2005 entitled Life is Worth Losing, which was shown live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Topics covered included suicide, natural disasters (and the impulse to see them escalate in severity), cannibalism, genocide, human sacrifice, threats to civil liberties in America, and how an argument can be made that humans are inferior to animals.

 

On February 1, 2006, Carlin mentioned to the crowd, during his Life is Worth Losing set at the Tachi Palace Casino in Lemoore, California, that he had been discharged from the hospital only six weeks previously for "heart failure" and "pneumonia", citing the appearance as his "first show back".

 

Carlin provided the voice of Fillmore, a character in the Disney / Pixar animated feature Cars, which opened in theaters on June 9, 2006. The character Fillmore is a VW Microbus with a psychedelic paint job, whose front license plate reads "51237" — Carlin's birthday.

 

Carlin's last HBO stand-up special, It's Bad for Ya, aired live on March 1, 2008 in Santa Rosa, CA at the Wells Fargo Center For The Arts. Many of the themes that appeared in this HBO special included "American Bullshit", "Rights", "Death", "Old Age", and "Child Rearing". Carlin had been working the new material for this HBO special for several months prior in concerts all over the country.

 

On June 18, 2008, four days before his death, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC announced that Carlin would be the 2008 honoree of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to be awarded in November of that year.

 

Personal life ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 

In 1961, Carlin married Brenda Hosbrook (born June 12, 1939, died May 11, 1997), whom he had met while touring the previous year, in her parents' living room in Dayton, Ohio. The couple had a daughter, Kelly, in 1963. In 1971, George and Brenda renewed their wedding vows in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brenda died of liver cancer a day before Carlin's 60th birthday, in 1997.

 

Carlin later married Sally Wade on June 24, 1998, and the marriage lasted until his death - two days before their tenth anniversary.

 

In December 2004, Carlin announced that he would be voluntarily entering a drug rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for his dependency on alcohol and painkillers.

 

Carlin did not vote and often criticized elections as an illusion of choice. He said he last voted for George McGovern, who ran for President in 1972 against Richard Nixon.

 

Religion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 

Although raised in the Roman Catholic faith, Carlin often denounced the idea of God in interviews and performances, most notably with his "Invisible Man in the Sky" and "There Is No God" routines. In mockery, he invented the parody religion Frisbeetarianism for a newspaper contest. He defined it as the belief that when a person dies "his soul gets flung onto a roof, and just stays there", and cannot be retrieved.

 

Carlin also joked that he worshipped the Sun, because he could actually see it, but prayed to Joe Pesci (a good friend of his in real life) because "he's a good actor", and "looks like a guy who can get things done!"

 

Carlin also introduced the "Two Commandments", a revised "pocket-sized" list of the Ten Commandments in his HBO special Complaints and Grievances, ending with the additional commandment of "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself."

 

Themes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 

Carlin's themes have been known for causing considerable controversy in the American media. His most usual topic was (in his words) humanity's "bullshit", which might include murder, genocide, war, rape, corruption, religion and other aspects of human civilization. His delivery frequently treated these subjects in a misanthropic and nihilistic fashion, such as in his statement during the Life is Worth Losing show: "I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse."

 

Language, from the obscene to the innocuous, had always been a focus of Carlin's work. Euphemisms that seek to distort and lie, and generally the use of pompous, presumptuous and downright silly language are often the target of Carlin's works.

 

Carlin also gave special attention to prominent topics in American Culture and Western Culture, such as: obsession with fame and celebrity, consumerism, Christianity, political alienation, corporate control, hypocrisy, child raising, fast food diet, news stations, self-help publications, patriotism, sexual taboos, certain uses of technology and surveillance, and pro-life, among many others.

 

Carlin openly communicated in his shows and in his interviews that his purpose for existence was entertainment, that he was "here for the show". He professed a hearty schadenfreude in watching the rich spectrum of humanity slowly self-destruct, in his estimation, of its own design; saying, "When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front-row seat." He acknowledged that this is a very selfish thing, especially since he included large human catastrophes as entertainment.

 

In a late-1990s interview with radio talk show host Art Bell, he remarked about his view of human life: "I think we're already 'circling the drain' as a species, and I'd love to see the circles get a little faster and a little shorter."

 

In the same interview, he recounted his experience of a California earthquake in the early-1970s as: "...an amusement park ride. Really, I mean it's such a wonderful thing to realize that you have absolutely no control... and to see the dresser move across the bedroom floor unassisted... is just exciting." Later he summarized: "I really think there's great human drama in destruction and nature unleashed and I don't get enough of it."

 

A routine in Carlin's 1999 HBO special You Are All Diseased focusing on airport security leads up to the statement: "Take a fucking chance! Put a little fun in your life! ... most Americans are soft and frightened and unimaginative and they don't realize there's such a thing as dangerous fun, and they certainly don't recognize a good show when they see one."

 

Carlin had always included politics as part of his material (along with the wordplay and sex jokes), but by the mid-1980s had become a strident social critic, in both his HBO specials and the book compilations of his material. His HBO viewers got an especially sharp taste of this in his take on the Ronald Reagan administration during the 1988 special What Am I Doing In New Jersey? broadcast live from the Park Theatre in Union City, New Jersey.

 

Death ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 

On June 22, 2008, Carlin was admitted to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California after complaining of chest pain. He died later that day at 5:55 p.m. PDT of heart failure at the age of 71.

 

*************************************************************************************************

 

Comics Remember George Carlin: George Carlin Inspired a Generation of Comedians with His Groundbreaking Humor

By CLOE SHASHA

June 23, 2008

 

George Carlin gave more to his fellow comedians, actors and writers than a good laugh.

 

Responding to news of Carlin's death from heart failure at the age of 71, fellow funny men and women spoke about his groundbreaking humor, his brilliant mind, his big heart, and the effect he had on them and their profession.

 

"If there was ever a comedian who was a voice of their generation it was George Carlin," comedian and "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno told ABCNEWS.com. "Before George, comedians aspired to put on nice suits and perform in Las Vegas. George rebelled against that life. His comedy took on privilege and elitism, even railing against the game of golf. He never lost that fire. May he continue to inspire young people never to accept the status quo."

 

"George Carlin was a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy, actor Ben Stiller told ABCNEWS.com. "He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats and he will be missed."

 

Comedian Mike Myers, currently starring in "The Love Guru," told ABCNEWS.com: "George Carlin is one of the greatest comedians that ever lived. His irreverence, bravery, and the fact that he was his own man, has served as an inspiration to me and he will be sorely missed."

 

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel concisely expressed his esteem for Carlin. "Free speech never had a better or funnier friend than George Carlin," he told ABCNEWS.com.

 

Jack Burns, who performed in a comedy duo with Carlin, called Carlin a genius.

 

"I will miss him dearly," Burns told the Associated Press. "We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny (Bruce), and we were both blown away. It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

 

Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of "The View," paid tribute to Carlin on Monday's show.

 

"George Carlin was one of the first guys to inspire me that you could actually talk about stuff you knew," Goldberg said. "Him and Rich [Pryor], for me, two of the greats are gone, and I wanted to acknowledge that they're gone."

 

"The View" co-host Joy Behar also said she was affected by Carlin's death. "I just feel terrible when a comedian dies," Behar said. "Especially George Carlin, a wonderful comedian -- a trailblazer and an extremely brave comedian."

 

"The last of the great comics has left us, only to join the great comedy club in the sky," Rain Pryor, Richard Pryor's daughter, told ABCNEWS.com. "I will miss you, Mr. Carlin, as the world missed my father. Give Dad a hug for me!"

 

"Carlin was brilliant," Richard Pryor's writer Paul Mooney told ABCNEWS.com. "The world has lost a genius; the world has lost a mensch."

 

Caroline Hirsch, a comedian on Broadway who produced the show "Caroline's Comedy Hour" and started Caroline's Comedy Club in New York for rising comedians, commented on Carlin's success.

 

"He was so prolific," she told ABCNEWS.com. "He had so many stand-up specials, was just smart, brilliant and really a social commentator of the time. I remember in the 60s -- I mean, that's how I really got hooked on comedy -- he was a major factor in that. And it felt so good to meet this legend years later."

 

"George Carlin was The Beatles of stand-up comedy," Bill Hader, an actor ("Superbad") and comedian on "Saturday Night Live," told ABCNEWS.com. "His influence can be felt in every stand-up comedian today. His jokes were the first act I ever learned. I would spend recess performing it for all my friends."

 

Judd Apatow, a director of comedies, such as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up," recalled his childhood days following Carlin's comedy. "Nobody was funnier than George Carlin," Apatow told ABCNEWS.com. "I spent half my childhood in my room listening to his records, experiencing pure joy. And he was as kind as he was funny."

 

"He was one of the big ones," celebrity comedian Joan Rivers told ABCNEWS.com. "He was fearless in his comedy."

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Carlin's `7 words you can't say on TV': Overheard?

 

By FRAZIER MOORE.

 

NEW YORK (AP) — More than 30 years after George Carlin pronounced "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television," some of those words have lost their sting.

 

Some of those words still aren't welcome on the public airwaves (or, for that matter, in print) and they are still being debated in the courts.

 

But you can hear those words voiced in everyday discourse more than ever.

 

Carlin, who died Sunday at age 71, observed in his routine: "We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought — so be careful with words."

 

Good advice.

 

Carlin's seven words, he would caution ironically, "are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war."

 

Or course, times — and wars — have changed. At least one of Carlin's words (a rude term for urine) wouldn't raise an eyebrow on much of broadcast TV now.

 

Meanwhile, none of them is alien to premium cable. For many viewers, hearing those Words You Can't Say On Television being said on television helps make pay cable worth paying for.

 

Those words were heard on television in 1977, on Carlin's first HBO comedy special.

 

They fall into predictable categories: bodily waste; sexual acts (both socially acceptable and frowned upon); and female body parts.

 

"When he used those words he wasn't just trying to shock," said Richard Zoglin, who wrote about Carlin in his recent book, "Comedy at the Edge: How Standup in the 1970s Changed America."

 

"He was trying to make a statement that's familiar today, but wasn't so familiar back then: 'Why do we have this irrational fear of words?'"

 

Of this Magnificent Seven, only one, which refers to the female anatomy, retains the power to jolt nearly anyone within earshot. On an HBO sitcom a couple of years ago, the angry husband used this word to insult his wife. It nearly wrecked their marriage. More tellingly, the studio audience emitted an audible gasp.

 

Premium cable, and even basic cable, have far more freedom with content than broadcast programming, which is carried on public airwaves by stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission.

 

For broadcast, The Words are actually words the FCC says can't be heard before 10 p.m. — when the "safe harbor" for young viewers applies. But exactly what those words are, and under what circumstances they may be permissible, is currently unclear.

 

"The networks are being careful, because even in this kind of flux, you don't want to push too far," said T. Barton Carter, Boston University professor of communications and law. "Vagueness and inconsistencies in regulation can have a chilling effect on broadcasters."

 

The picture is further muddied by the fact that 80 to 90 percent of viewers get all their programming (from broadcast stations as well as cable networks) through their cable or satellite subscription, Carter added. Different indecency standards apply to channels whose difference is often undetectable to the audience.

 

The uncertain regulatory climate led to PBS distributing two versions of the Ken Burns documentary series "The War" last fall. Stations could choose the original version, or opt for a sanitized version of World War II, one that was free of any Words You'd Be Safer Not Saying On Television.

 

The FCC changed its policy on indecency following a January 2003 broadcast of the Golden Globes awards show by NBC when U2 lead singer Bono uttered the phrase "f------ brilliant." The FCC said the "f-word" in any context "inherently has a sexual connotation" and can trigger enforcement." That case has yet to be resolved.

 

Recently the U.S Supreme Court has entered a legal fight over curse words aired by Fox in 2002 and 2003 on the live broadcasts of "The Billboard Music Awards." Cher used the phrase, "F--- 'em." And Nicole Richie said, "Have you ever tried to get cow s--- out of a Prada purse? It's not so f------ simple."

 

Scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court this fall, the case would decide whether the government can ban "fleeting expletives," one-time uses of familiar but profane words.

 

Dropping an "f-bomb" on a broadcast won't automatically blast open the floodgates, said Tim Winter, president of Parents Television Council, but he warned, "It's a slow accumulation. First it's once every several months. Then it becomes once a month. Then it becomes once a night."

 

"That's our concern for some of the words that are at issue here," said Winter, who's also an avowed George Carlin fan: "It's unfortunate that a brilliant comedian like George Carlin is a poster child for the lawsuits that are out there."

 

Some of the archaeology is left in the ground for future generations and better technology, or out of respect for the dead.

Camera: Canon Canonet QL17GIII

Film: Fujifilm ETERNA 250D

 

All of my film photo, I love this the most ♥.

 

This is ME, the true me, the dark me, the undetectable me.

82-0803, a Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk of the US Air Force, on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Known as the Stealth Fighter, the F-117A lived a life of secrecy for many years.

 

It began in 1975 with a concept design from Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects team, more commonly as known as "Skunk Works". Project "Hopeless Diamond" was to produce an aircraft with significantly reduced radar cross section, making it practically invisible to enemy radars, but able to carry out combat missions. A technique known as faceting was used, which involved breaking up the ordinarily smooth airframe surface into a series of trapezoidal or triangular flat surfaces, thus scattering the radar reflections leaving very little to return to the radar receiver. In addition to this a Radar Absorbent Material (RAM) covered the entire aircraft. The Hopeless Diamond project was a "Black Project", highly classified, with very little even people even at the heart of The Pentagon knowing the project existed.

 

The success of the Hopeless Diamond concept lead to a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) for Lockheed Skunk Works division to build and test 2 60percent to scale flyable test aircraft, with this new project being called "Have Blue", which was again a highly classified Black Project with few people outside Lockheed and the Defense Department knowing the project even existed. Built using some of its parts off existing aircraft, such as landing gear from the A-10, off the shelf General Electric J85 engines, and fly-by-wire avionics from the F-16, the 2 test aircraft (1001 & 1002) were built in just a few months at the Lockheed factory in Burbank California. From there they were shipped to Groom Lake, better known as Aera 51, in the Nevada Dessert where a test program was carried out. With the exact date of first flight still classified, it is known however it first flew in January/February 1978, flown by veteran Lockheed test pilot William "Bill" Park at the controls. After a number of smooth test flights however, on the 4th May 1978, Have Blue 1001 damaged its landing gear and was unable to land safely. Park was ordered to eject from the aircraft and the aircraft was destroyed in the resulting crash. Park himself hurt his back in the ejection and was unable to fly again. During the test program it was proved the design was essentially undetectable by all airborne radars, with only the E-3 AWACS aircraft acquiring detecting it at very close ranges. Ground based radars again only detected it at very close ranges, mostly inside minimum ranges for missile launches, with no radars being able to "lock on" to the target.

 

With the success of the Have Blue test project, Lockheed was awarded a contract by the US Air Force for a production aircraft to be built, which became the F-117A Nighthawk.

The F-117's were originally based at Tonopah Test Range in the Nevada Desert. They operated secretly, with pilots and crews officially being based at Nellis Air Force Base in Los Vegas. They operated secretly for over a decade, completing missions in Panama and the Gulf War, with their existence being known to few outside the project. After the Gulf War, some of the secrecy was lifted, and their existence was acknowledged and they moved base to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in 1992. In 1999, during combat over Yugoslavia, an F-117 was shot down by a surface to air missile, becoming the first and only Nighthawk to be downed in combat. Wreckage of the aircraft is still on display in the Museum of Aviation in Belgrade, Serbia. It is rumored that parts of the aircraft were acquired by Russia and China for study into their own Stealth programs.

 

After further operations in Iraq in 2001 and 2003, the aircraft was officially retired in 2008, with the final flight taking place on 11th August 2008. They were not scrapped or sent to the Davis Monthan Air Force Storage base however. The remaining aircraft were ordered by congress to be kept in careful storage, allowing them to come back into service should the need arise. In fact many aircraft sightings were repeats reported between 2014 - 2019, included one occasion when 4 aircraft were reportedly from to the middle east in 2016, with one aircraft having to make an emergency landing in Kuwait at one stage. More recently they have become less shy, and have operated into Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar, and Fresno International Airport in California.

 

This particular aircraft, 803, carried the nickname "Unexpected Guest" and was part of the 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron known as the Ghost Riders. It was one of 6 F-117s which took part in the first combat mission for the type, participating in "Operation Just Cause" in Panama. It has the legacy of flying the most combat missions of any F-117, 78, before being withdrawn from use in 2007. It was demilitarised and the classified RAM material removed from it before it was placed on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in December 2019.

The sun shone down from a crystal-clear morning sky, lighting up the endless meadows and rolling hills stretching away before me in all directions. Far in the distance I could see the sunlight reflecting off the dew that had collected on the leaves of a moderate forest.

I breathed in the crisp, fresh morning air, and smiled.

“It’s days like these that make life worth living,” I said to myself, as the sun warmed my face.

I would have liked to just sit there all day, and enjoy what I had been given, but I had somewhere I needed to be, so with more than a tinge of regret I got up off the grass, and, shouldering my crossbow on it’s sling, headed down the hill.

—————————

About thirty minutes later, I neared one of the major roads that connected the borders of Lenfald and Loreos. The roads were all supposed to be closed off, but I immediately noticed a wagon, far off but getting closer, traveling towards me, which would mean the wagon was heading to Loreos, because that was the direction I had just come from. My suspicions were instantly alerted.

Why was a Lenfel wagon heading into Loreos? It just didn’t seem to make any sense.

Then, as I was pondering what I was seeing, my eyes caught movement at the edge of the trees lining the road. The horses pulling the wagon suddenly reared, whinnying with alarm.

A group of bandits swarmed out of the trees, and surrounded the wagon and it’s hapless driver.

A man wearing a silver Garheim helm stepped forward, and began conversing with the wagon’s driver. Their conversation became more and more animated and angry with each passing second, and I began to suspect if he kept arguing the merchant wasn’t long for this world.

Wether this merchant was stupid, or greedy or both, I wasn’t going to stand by and watch while these scummy Outlaws robbed him of everything in that wagon, and then maybe killed him too.

I slipped stealthily through the trees toward the road, being careful not to make any sound, and thus alert the robbers.

Within a minute I had closed the distance to the road to a little less then ten feet, and was able to hear the merchant protesting with the robbers.

“No, you don’t understand! This wagon contains all my wares! If you take them I’ll be destitute!”

Silver Helm sneered.

“That’s only if we chose to leave you alive. If we don’t then you won’t have worry about that, will you?”

The merchant paled.

“Y-you wouldn’t do that!” He blustered. “The authorities would be on you in an instant!”

At this all the Outlaws snickered.

“How could they, if they never knew what happened?” The sandy-haired outlaw standing at the front of the wagon said, in a nasally voice.

Silver Helm grinned evilly.

“You see, you’re in a no-win situation. If you don’t comply, we’ll just kill you now, and no-one will ever be the wiser.”

“Factually incorrect,” I said, stepping out of the tree-line, and loosing a bolt from my crossbow.

The bolt struck an Outlaw with a huge mop of greasy black hair right in the chest.

Before Greasy Hair had even hit the ground I was moving forward, dropping my crossbow in the grass, and closing the distance between myself and Nasally Voice in flash.

Caught off-guard, Nasally Voice nevertheless managed to thrust his spear at me, aiming for my chest. Seemingly by magic I deflected it away from me, and grabbed it behind the head as it slid by me. Yanking the spear forward, and thus nearly throwing Nasally Voice off his feet, I swung my katana in a vicious downward arc, burying the blade deep in his neck.

The sudden explosion of movement spooked the merchant’s horses, and they reared, the brown one bringing his hooves down on the hapless outlaw blocking the road ahead, crushing him flat.

Leaving my sword in Nasally Voice’s neck as he fell, I reversed my grip on his spear, spun in a half-circle and flung it overhead across the way, right at the outlaw coming up from behind the wagon. Before the spear had even buried itself in the thug’s chest I was once again moving, drawing a dirk from my belt as I charged Silver Helm.

Alerted to the danger he was in by my blindingly fast attacks to his underlings, I expected Silver Helm to be ready for my onslaught. Instead, he turned and ran like scared goat!

“Coward,” I muttered, and threw the dirk at his retreating back.

A half-second later, Silver Helm was no more.

Which left just one outlaw for me to deal with. He looked from one fallen comrade to another, shocked that the rest of his fellow robbers were suddenly nothing more than memories. He started to back up, and I could tell he was about to run for it, when he suddenly noticed I had no weapon. He abruptly changed his mind, and charged at me. I waited until he was right in front of me, then suddenly ducked under his axe swing, spun on my heel, and slammed my left foot into his back. The outlaw was flung off his feet, and his axe spun away.

As I advanced forward he jumped to his feet and swung a roundhouse punch. I blocked it with my forearm, curling my hand around his wrist, and flipped him over my back, slamming him down on the hard-packed road, and dislocating his wrist.

The fight (along with his breath), was completely knocked out of him.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, and looked up at the open-mouthed merchant, who was still sitting in his wagon.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

He said nothing in return, evidently still in shock, so I turned away from him and went first to retrieve my crossbow from the grass, then to get my sword from Nasally Voice’s corpse. As I was levering my katana free of where it was stuck, I heard an almost undetectable sound from behind me.

Spinning around, I found to my shock, the merchant almost on top of me, swinging at my head with a short sword!

I was caught off-guard (which never happens to me!), and it almost cost me my life. Only my instinct and lightning-reflexes spared me from a very messy end.

As the sword swung at my face, I dropped to the ground and rolled, springing to my feet in one fluid motion. To my surprise the fake merchant had already changed his attack and was coming at me again. This guy had to have some serious training to have compensated for my surprise move that quickly.

To make matters worse, not only was I unarmed, as I had set my crossbow down to get my sword, but I also noticed out the corner of my eye the outlaw I’d winded getting to his feet and coming at me, axe in his left hand.

Assessing the situation in the time it took my two assailants to reach me, I feinted towards Fake Merchant, then charged Dislocated Wrist at the last second.

Before either of them had processed this, I had bowled Dislocated Wrist over and was running flat out for Silver Helm’s body, my eyes locked on the handle of my dirk sticking out of the corpse’s back.

The two would-be killers charged after me, Fake Merchant moving surprisingly fast for his bulk.

Nearing Silver Helm’s body, I sensed the two assailants had almost caught up to me, so I dove for the corpse. As I passed over the body, hands outstretched to break my fall, my dirk slid free and shot into my grasp.

Hitting the ground on the other side, I rolled to my feet and brought the dirk up, right into Dislocated Wrist’s gut. He stopped short, and looked from the blade in his gut to my face, and back again, puzzled as to how it got there.

“Night night,” I quipped darkly, and pulled the dirk free, turning to face Fake Merchant, as Dislocated Wrist hit the road.

Fake Merchant stopped short when he saw the murderous look in my eyes. He began to back up, as I stepped towards him. This ended when the other suddenly found himself backed up against the wagon, with nowhere left to go.

As I continued forward, he suddenly seemed to realize there was no getting out of this one and stabbed his sword at me. I threw my left hand out and down. His sword was ripped from his grasp and slammed to the road.

“What the-? H-how did you do that?” He stuttered.

I placed the tip of my dirk under his chin.

“I’ll do the asking. Who are you? Who set this up? And why?” I demanded, digging the knifepoint into the other’s throat with each question.

Fake Merchant laughed.

“I’m an Areani missy.” He said.

“So Jarius set this whole thing up?”

“Not Jarius.”

“Who then? Who would gain anything from this?”

Fake Merchant grinned.

“You won’t get the answer from me.”

I smiled darkly.

“Want to bet?”

“Yep,” he said, and bit down on what I had first thought was a gold tooth, but was evidently a poison capsule.

There was nothing I could do but watch in horror as he started foaming at the mouth, and collapsed on the ground.

Fake Merchant was dead in seconds.

“Damn!” I kicked his body in frustration.

Turning away from him, I surveyed the carnage all around me, then looked at the wagon.

Well, at least I’ve got a faster mode of transportation now.

 

————————————————

 

So, I only just noticed the dark green flag is missing from my signature block, and unfortunately I've already taken the MOC apart, so reshooting it is out of the question. Just pretend you don't see it missing. ;)

 

Previous Chronicle stories start here.

Yellowstone National Park (Arapaho: Henihco'oo or Héetíhco'oo) is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

 

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the Continental United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in the park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river "Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (Rock Yellow River). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is not clear.

 

The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

 

The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote a number of detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Ferdinand V. Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".

 

By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds and the current system of park roads.

 

During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.

A large arch made of irregular-shaped natural stone over a road

 

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.

 

In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended management of Yellowstone's elk population.

 

The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (321,272 ha; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) burned.

 

The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (898,317 ha; 3,468.420 sq mi) in area, larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (35,220 ha; 136.00 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.

 

The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Teton Range and the Madison Range to the southwest and west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).

 

Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).

 

Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.

 

Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

 

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile (1 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cubic miles (2,450 km³) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and created the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cubic miles (280 km³) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.

 

Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts to world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.

Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring.

 

A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with >80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.

 

Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years, but the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.

 

The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge of earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome— areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement— had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. However, these changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.

 

Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including a 7.5‑magnitude quake that struck just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but damage was minimal.

 

For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over a four-day span under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6.34am; reports indicated no damage. This was the biggest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.

 

Over 1,700 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, Lodgepole Pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and Whitebark Pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.

 

There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between the months of May and September. The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.

 

In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.

 

Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact to the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases.

 

Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by using up nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time consuming and expensive.

  

Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion.

Bison graze near a hot spring

 

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. In fact, about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported case of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock has been filed. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that bison are the "likely source" of the spread of the disease in cattle in Wyoming and North Dakota. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management sending hundreds to slaughter. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and on Elk Island in Alberta.

Elk Mother Nursing Her Calf

 

To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly harass bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–97, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.

A reintroduced northwestern wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Starting in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park

 

By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.

 

An estimated 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully. Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population. Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.

 

Population figures for elk are in excess of 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

 

In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. The wolverine is another rare park mammal, and accurate population figures for this species are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.

 

Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes in the Snake River drainage from U.S. Government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law. Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and Prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the Boreal Chorus Frog.

 

311 species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded, however only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.

 

As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark which protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines —the most common tree species in the park— generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.

 

About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people— in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained fire fighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, though it is closed to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September— the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. Current policy is to suppress all human caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose on the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.

 

In an effort to minimize the chances of out of control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires which are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions which allow fire fighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, fire fighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. Fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. Fire Management Plans were implemented, detailing that natural fires should be allowed to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.

 

1988 started with a wet spring season although by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. A total of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participated in the suppression efforts, at a cost of 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilian lives were lost, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.

 

Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals— surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.

 

from Wikipedia

  

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the 6.5-meter Clay Telescope in Chile have identified the smallest supermassive black hole ever detected in the center of a galaxy. This oxymoronic object could provide clues to how larger black holes formed along with their host galaxies 13 billion years or more in the past.

 

Astronomers estimate this supermassive black hole is about 50,000 times the mass of the sun. This is less than half the mass of the previous smallest black hole at the center of a galaxy.

 

“It might sound contradictory, but finding such a small, large black hole is very important,” said Vivienne Baldassare of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, first author of a paper on these results published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We can use observations of the lightest supermassive black holes to better understand how black holes of different sizes grow.”

 

The tiny heavyweight black hole is in the center of a dwarf disk galaxy, called RGG 118, located about 340 million light years from Earth, and was originally discovered using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

 

Researchers estimated the mass of the black hole by studying the motion of cool gas near the center of the galaxy using visible light data from the Clay Telescope. They used the Chandra data to figure out the X-ray brightness of hot gas swirling toward the black hole. They found the outward push of radiation pressure of this hot gas is about 1 percent of the black hole’s inward pull of gravity, matching the properties of other supermassive black holes.

 

Previously, scientists had noted a relationship between the mass of supermassive black holes and the range of velocities of stars in the center of their host galaxy. This relationship also holds for RGG 118 and its black hole.

  

“We found this little supermassive black hole behaves very much like its bigger, and in some cases much bigger, cousins,” said co-author Amy Reines of the University of Michigan. “This tells us black holes grow in a similar way no matter what their size.”

 

The black hole in RGG 118 is nearly 100 times less massive than the supermassive black hole found in the center of the Milky Way. It’s also about 200,000 times less massive than the heaviest black holes found in the centers of other galaxies.

 

Astronomers are trying to understand the formation of billion-solar-mass black holes from less than a billion years after the big bang, but many are undetectable with current technology. The black hole in RGG 118 gives astronomers an opportunity to study a nearby small supermassive black hole.

 

Astronomers think supermassive black holes may form when a large cloud of gas, with a mass of about 10,000 to 100,000 times that of the sun, collapses into a black hole. Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes. Alternately, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun’s mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.

 

“We have two main ideas for how these supermassive black holes are born,” said Elena Gallo of the University of Michigan. “This black hole in RGG 118 is serving as a proxy for those in the very early universe and ultimately may help us decide which of the two is right.”

 

Researchers will continue to look for other supermassive black holes that are comparable in size or even smaller than the one in RGG 118 to help decide which of the models is more accurate and refine their understanding of how these objects grow.

 

A preprint of these results is available online. The other co-author of the paper is Jenny Greene, from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, manages Chandra's science and flight operations.

 

An interactive image, podcast, and a video about the findings are available at:

 

chandra.si.edu

 

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:

 

www.nasa.gov/chandra

The chili pepper (also chile, chile pepper, chilli pepper, or chilli[3]), from Nahuatl chīlli (Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈt͡ʃiːlːi] (About this soundlisten)), is the berry-fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum which are members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae.[4] Chili peppers are widely used in many cuisines as a spice to add pungent 'heat' to dishes. Capsaicin and related compounds known as capsaicinoids are the substances giving chili peppers their intensity when ingested or applied topically. Although this definition would technically include bell peppers, in common language they are often two discrete categories: bell peppers and chili peppers.

 

Chili peppers originated in Mexico.[5] After the Columbian Exchange, many cultivars of chili pepper spread across the world, used for both food and traditional medicine. This diversity has led to a wide variety of varieties and cultivars, including the annuum species, with its glabriusculum variety and New Mexico cultivar group, and the species of baccatum, chinense, frutescens, and pubescens.

 

Cultivars grown in North America and Europe are believed to all derive from Capsicum annuum, and have white, yellow, red or purple to black fruits. In 2016, the world's production of raw green chili peppers amounted to 34.5 million tons, with China producing half.[6]

 

Contents

  

1 History

1.1 Origins

1.2 Distribution to Europe

1.3 Distribution to Asia

2 Production

3 Species and cultivars

4 Intensity

4.1 Common peppers

4.2 Notable hot chili peppers

5 Uses

5.1 Culinary uses

5.2 Ornamental plants

5.3 Psychology

5.4 Medicinal

5.5 Chemical irritants

5.6 Crop defense

5.7 Food defense

6 Nutritional value

7 Spelling and usage

8 Gallery

9 See also

10 External links

11 Further reading

12 References

History

 

Origins

 

Capsicum fruits have been a part of human diets since about 7,500 BC, and are one of the oldest cultivated crops in the Americas,[7] as origins of cultivating chili peppers are traced to east-central Mexico some 6,000 years ago.[8][9] They were one of the first self-pollinating crops cultivated in Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America.[7]

 

Peru is the country with the highest cultivated Capsicum diversity because it is a center of diversification where varieties of all five domesticates were introduced, grown, and consumed in pre-Columbian times.[10] Bolivia is the country where the largest diversity of wild Capsicum peppers is consumed. Bolivian consumers distinguish two basic forms: ulupicas, species with small round fruits including C. eximium, C. cardenasii, C. eshbaughii, and C. caballeroi landraces; and arivivis with small elongated fruits including C. baccatum var. baccatum and C. chacoense varieties.[10]

 

Distribution to Europe

 

When Christopher Columbus and his crew reached the Caribbean, they were the first Europeans to encounter Capsicum. They called them "peppers" because, like black pepper of the genus Piper known in Europe, they have a spicy, hot taste unlike other foods.[11]

 

Distribution to Asia

 

The spread of chili peppers to Asia occurred through its introduction by Portuguese traders, who – aware of its trade value and resemblance to the spiciness of black pepper – promoted its commerce in the Asian spice trade routes.[7][11][12] It was introduced in India by the Portuguese towards the end of the 15th century.[13] In 21st century Asian cuisine, chili peppers are commonly used across diverse regions.[14][15]

 

Production

 

Green chili production – 2016

Region(Millions of tons)

China17.4

Mexico2.7

Turkey2.5

European Union2.3

Indonesia2.0

Spain1.1

United States0.9

World34.5

Source: FAOSTAT of the United Nations[6]

In 2016, 34.5 million tonnes of green chili peppers and 3.9 million tonnes of dried chili peppers were produced worldwide.[6] China was the world's largest producer of green chilis, providing half of the global total. Global production of dried chili peppers was about one ninth of fresh production, led by India with 36% of the world total.[6][16]

 

Species and cultivars

 

See also: List of Capsicum cultivars

There are five domesticated species of chili peppers. Capsicum annuum includes many common varieties such as bell peppers, wax, cayenne, jalapeños, Thai peppers, chiltepin, and all forms of New Mexico chile. Capsicum frutescens includes malagueta, tabasco, piri piri, and Malawian Kambuzi. Capsicum chinense includes the hottest peppers such as the naga, habanero, Datil and Scotch bonnet. Capsicum pubescens includes the South American rocoto peppers. Capsicum baccatum includes the South American aji peppers.[17]

 

Though there are only a few commonly used species, there are many cultivars and methods of preparing chili peppers that have different names for culinary use. Green and red bell peppers, for example, are the same cultivar of C. annuum, immature peppers being green. In the same species are the jalapeño, the poblano (which when dried is referred to as ancho), New Mexico, serrano, and other cultivars.

 

Peppers are commonly broken down into three groupings: bell peppers, sweet peppers, and hot peppers. Most popular pepper varieties are seen as falling into one of these categories or as a cross between them.

 

Intensity

 

See also: Hottest chili pepper

The substances that give chili peppers their pungency (spicy heat) when ingested or applied topically are capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) and several related chemicals, collectively called capsaicinoids.[18][19] The quantity of capsaicin varies by variety, and on growing conditions. Water-stressed peppers usually produce stronger pods. When a habanero plant is stressed, by absorbing low water for example, the concentration of capsaicin increases in some parts of the fruit.[20]

 

When peppers are consumed by mammals such as humans, capsaicin binds with pain receptors in the mouth and throat, potentially evoking pain via spinal relays to the brainstem and thalamus where heat and discomfort are perceived.[21] The intensity of the "heat" of chili peppers is commonly reported in Scoville heat units (SHU). Historically, it was a measure of the dilution of an amount of chili extract added to sugar syrup before its heat becomes undetectable to a panel of tasters; the more it has to be diluted to be undetectable, the more powerful the variety, and therefore the higher the rating.[22] The modern method is a quantitative analysis of SHU using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to directly measure the capsaicinoid content of a chili pepper variety. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, and crystalline-to-waxy solid at room temperature, and measures 16,000,000 SHU.

 

Capsaicin is produced by the plant as a defense against mammalian predators and microbes, in particular a fusarium fungus carried by hemipteran insects that attack certain species of chili peppers, according to one study.[23] Peppers increased the quantity of capsaicin in proportion to the damage caused by fungal predation on the plant's seeds.[23]

 

Common peppers

  

Red Bhut Jolokia and green bird's eye chilies

A wide range of intensity is found in commonly used peppers:

 

Bell pepper0 SHU

New Mexico green chile0–70,000 SHU

Fresno, jalapeño3,500–10,000 SHU

Cayenne30,000–50,000 SHU

Piri piri50,000–100,000 SHU

Habanero, Scotch bonnet, bird's eye100,000–350,000 SHU[24]

Notable hot chili peppers

 

The top 8 world's hottest chili peppers (by country) are:

 

CountryTypeHotness

United StatesPepper X3.18M SHU(*)[25]

WalesDragon's Breath2.48M SHU(*)[26]

United StatesCarolina Reaper2.2M SHU(*)[27]

Trinidad and TobagoTrinidad moruga scorpion2.0M SHU(*)[28]

IndiaBhut jolokia (Ghost pepper)1.58M SHU[29]

Trinidad and TobagoTrinidad Scorpion Butch T1.463M SHU[30]

EnglandNaga Viper1.4M SHU[31]

EnglandInfinity chili1.2M SHU[32]

NOTE: SHU claims marked with an asterisk (*) have not been confirmed by Guinness World Records.[33]

 

Uses

 

Culinary uses

  

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Chili pepper pods are, technically, berries. When used fresh, they are most often prepared and eaten like a vegetable. Whole pods can be dried and then crushed or ground into chili powder that is used as a spice or seasoning. Chilies can be dried to prolong their shelf life. Chile peppers can also be preserved by brining, immersing the pods in oil, or by pickling.

 

Many fresh chilies such as poblano have a tough outer skin that does not break down on cooking. Chilies are sometimes used whole or in large slices, by roasting, or other means of blistering or charring the skin, so as not to entirely cook the flesh beneath. When cooled, the skins will usually slip off easily.

 

The leaves of every species of Capsicum are edible. Though almost all other Solanaceous crops have toxins in their leaves, chili peppers do not.[citation needed] The leaves, which are mildly bitter and nowhere near as hot as the fruit, are cooked as greens in Filipino cuisine, where they are called dahon ng sili (literally "chili leaves"). They are used in the chicken soup tinola.[34] In Korean cuisine, the leaves may be used in kimchi.[35] In Japanese cuisine, the leaves are cooked as greens, and also cooked in tsukudani style for preservation.

 

Many Mexican dishes, including variations on chiles rellenos, use the entire chili. Dried whole chilies may be reconstituted before grinding to a paste. The chipotle is the smoked, dried, ripe jalapeño. In the northern Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora, chiltepin peppers (a wild pepper) are used in cheeses and soups to add spiciness to dishes. In southern Mexico, mole sauce is used with dried chiles, such as ancho and chipotle peppers. Chiles are used in salsas. Mexican households usually grow chile plants to use in cooking.

 

In India, most households always keep a stock of fresh hot green chilies at hand, and use them to flavor most curries and dry dishes. It is typically lightly fried with oil in the initial stages of preparation of the dish. Some states in India, such as Rajasthan, make entire dishes only by using spices and chilies.[citation needed]

 

Chili is a staple fruit in Bhutan. Bhutanese call this crop ema (in Dzongkha) or solo (in Sharchop). The ema datshi recipe is entirely made of chili mixed with local cheese.

 

Chilies are present in many cuisines. Some notable dishes other than the ones mentioned elsewhere in this article include:

 

Arrabbiata sauce from Italy is a tomato-based sauce for pasta always including dried hot chilies.

Stroncatura ammullicata, from Calabria, is pasta dish usually seasoned with peperoncino (Calabrian chili), olive oil, garlic, black olives, anchovies, parsley and toasted breadcrumbs.

Puttanesca sauce is tomato-based with olives, capers, anchovy and, sometimes, chilies.

Paprikash from Hungary uses significant amounts of mild, ground, dried chilies, known as paprika, in a braised chicken dish.

Chiles en nogada from the Puebla region of Mexico uses fresh mild chilies stuffed with meat and covered with a creamy nut-thickened sauce.

Curry dishes usually contain fresh or dried chiles.

Jambalaya is Cajun dish where the flavors of chicken, shrimp, and Andouille sausages are enhanced by Cayenne pepper. Jambalaya is also sometimes served with a regional hot sauce made from Tabasco peppers.

Jerk Chicken is prepared in the Caribbean region of Jamaica, the flavor of the dish owing to Scotch Bonnet Chiles, Allspice, and Thyme.

Kung pao chicken (Mandarin Chinese: 宫保鸡丁 gōng bǎo jī dīng) from the Sichuan region of China uses small hot dried chilies briefly fried in oil to add spice to the oil then used for frying.

Mole poblano from the city of Puebla in Mexico uses several varieties of dried chilies, nuts, spices, and fruits to produce a thick, dark sauce for poultry or other meats.

Nam phrik are traditional Thai chili pastes and sauces, prepared with chopped fresh or dry chilies, and additional ingredients such as fish sauce, lime juice, and herbs, but also fruit, meat or seafood.

'Nduja, a more typical example of Italian spicy specialty, from the region of Calabria, is a soft pork sausage made spicy by the addition of the locally grown variety of peperoncino(Calabrian chili).

Paprykarz szczeciński is a Polish fish paste with rice, onion, tomato concentrate, vegetable oil, chili pepper powder and other spices.

Pipérade is a dish from the Basque region of France that incorporates Piment d’Espelette into the recipe.

Sambal terasi or sambal belacan is a traditional Indonesian and Malay hot condiment made by frying a mixture of mainly pounded dried chili's, with garlic, shallots, and fermented shrimp paste. It is customarily served with rice dishes and is especially popular when mixed with crunchy pan-roasted ikan teri or ikan bilis (sun-dried anchovies), when it is known as sambal teri or sambal ikan bilis. Various sambal variants existed in Indonesian archipelago, among others are sambal badjak, sambal oelek, sambal pete (prepared with green stinky beans) and sambal pencit (prepared with unripe green mango).

Som tam, a green papaya salad from Thai and Lao cuisine, traditionally has, as a key ingredient, a fistful of chopped fresh hot Thai chili, pounded in a mortar.

Tavuk Kebabi uses mint and Aleppo pepper as a marinade that imparts flavor to skewered pieces of chicken which are grilled before serving.

Tưởng Ớt or Sốt Ớt (literally meaning sauce-chilli), is a chili sauce or paste commonly used with meat or other dishes. Fresh red chillies may also be eaten with rice dishes as well, or be served in bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwich).

Fresh or dried chilies are often used to make hot sauce, a liquid condiment—usually bottled when commercially available—that adds spice to other dishes. Hot sauces are found in many cuisines including harissa from North Africa, chili oil from China (known as rāyu in Japan), and sriracha from Thailand. Dried chilies are also used to infuse cooking oil.

 

Ornamental plants

 

The contrast in color and appearance makes chili plants interesting to some as a purely decorative garden plant.

 

Black pearl pepper: small cherry-shaped fruits and dark brown to black leaves

Black Pearl Pepper.

Black pearl pepper

Black Hungarian pepper: green foliage, highlighted by purple veins and purple flowers, jalapeño-shaped fruits[36]

Bishop's crown pepper, Christmas bell pepper: named for its distinct three-sided shape resembling a red bishop's crown or a red Christmas bell[37]

Psychology

 

Psychologist Paul Rozin suggests that eating chilies is an example of a "constrained risk" like riding a roller coaster, in which extreme sensations like pain and fear can be enjoyed because individuals know that these sensations are not actually harmful. This method lets people experience extreme feelings without any significant risk of bodily harm.[38]

 

Medicinal

 

Capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that makes them hot, is used as an analgesic in topical ointments, nasal sprays, and dermal patches to relieve pain.[39]

 

Chemical irritants

 

Main article: Pepper spray

Capsaicin extracted from chilies is used in pepper sprays and some tear gas formulations as a chemical irritant, for use as less-lethal weapons for control of unruly individuals or crowds.[40] Such products have considerable potential for misuse, and may cause injury or death.[40]

 

Crop defense

 

Conflicts between farmers and elephants have long been widespread in African and Asian countries, where elephants nightly destroy crops, raid grain houses, and sometimes kill people. Farmers have found the use of chilies effective in crop defense against elephants. Elephants do not like capsaicin, the chemical in capsicum chilies that makes them hot. Because the elephants have a large and sensitive olfactory and nasal system, the smell of the chili causes them discomfort and deters them from feeding on the crops. By planting a few rows of the pungent fruit around valuable crops, farmers create a buffer zone through which the elephants are reluctant to pass. Chili dung bombs are also used for this purpose. They are bricks made of mixing dung and chili, and are burned, creating a noxious smoke that keeps hungry elephants out of farmers' fields. This can lessen dangerous physical confrontation between people and elephants.[41]

 

Food defense

 

Birds do not have the same sensitivity to capsaicin, because it targets a specific pain receptor in mammals. Chili peppers are eaten by birds living in the chili peppers' natural range, possibly contributing to seed dispersal and evolution of the protective capsaicin in chili peppers.[42]

 

Nutritional value

 

Peppers, hot chili, red, raw

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)

Energy166 kJ (40 kcal)

Carbohydrates

8.8 g

Sugars5.3 g

Dietary fiber1.5 g

Fat

0.4 g

Protein

1.9 g

VitaminsQuantity

%DV†

Vitamin A equiv.

beta-Carotene

6%

48 μg

5%

534 μg

Vitamin B6

39%

0.51 mg

Vitamin C

173%

144 mg

MineralsQuantity

%DV†

Iron

8%

1 mg

Magnesium

6%

23 mg

Potassium

7%

322 mg

Other constituentsQuantity

Water88 g

Capsaicin0.01g – 6 g

Link to USDA Database entry

Units

μg = micrograms • mg = milligrams

IU = International units

†Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults.

Source: USDA FoodData Central

While red chilies contain large amounts of vitamin C (table), other species contain significant amounts of provitamin A beta-carotene.[43] In addition, peppers are a rich source of vitamin B6 (see table).

 

Spelling and usage

 

The three primary spellings are chili, chile and chilli, all of which are recognized by dictionaries.

 

Chili is widely used in English of the United States[44] and Canada.[45] However, it is also commonly used as a short name for chili con carne (literally "chili with meat"),[44] which most versions are seasoned with chili powder, which in turn can refer to pure dried, ground chili peppers, or to a mixture containing other spices.

Chile is the most common Spanish spelling in Mexico and several other Latin American countries,[46] as well as some parts of the United States[47] and Canada, which refers specifically to this plant and its fruit. In the Southwest United States (particularly New Mexico), chile also denotes a thick, spicy, un-vinegared sauce made from this fruit, available in red and green varieties, and served over the local food, while chili denotes the meat dish. The plural is chile or chiles.

Chilli was the original Romanization of the Náhuatl language word for the fruit (chīlli)[48] and is the preferred British spelling according to the Oxford English Dictionary, although it also lists chile and chili as variants.[48] Chilli (and its plural chillies) is the most common spelling in India,[49] Sri Lanka,[50] Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore and South Africa.

The name of the plant is unrelated to that of Chile,[48] the country, which has an uncertain etymology perhaps relating to local place names. Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico are some of the Spanish-speaking countries where chilies are called ají, a word of Taíno origin.

 

Though pepper originally referred to the genus Piper, not Capsicum, the latter usage is included in English dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary [51] and Merriam-Webster.[52] The word pepper is also commonly used in the botanical and culinary fields in the names of different types of pungent plants and their fruits.[51]

 

Gallery

 

The habanero pepper

 

Immature chilies in the field

 

The Black Pearl cultivar

 

Cubanelle peppers

 

Ripe chili pepper with seeds

 

Scotch bonnet chili peppers in a Caribbean market

 

Chili peppers drying in Kathmandu, Nepal

 

Removing veins and seeds from dried chilies in San Pedro Atocpan

 

Dried chili pepper flakes and fresh chilies

 

Chili pepper dip in a traditional restaurant in Amman, Jordan

 

Dried Thai bird's eye chilies

 

Green chilies

 

Guntur chilli drying in the sun, Andhra Pradesh, India

 

Sundried chili at Imogiri, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

 

New Mexico chiles dried on the plant in Mesilla, New Mexico

 

Chili pepper wine from Virginia

 

Ristras of chili peppers drying in Arizona.

 

Choricero peppers

 

Pickled chili in India

 

Peperoncino chili in Tropea, Italy with a sign saying "Il Viagra Calabrese" (the Calabrian viagra).

 

See also

 

Chili grenade, a type of weapon made with chili peppers

Hatch, New Mexico, known as the "Chile Capital of the World"

History of chocolate, which the Maya drank with ground chili peppers

International Connoisseurs of Green and Red Chile, organization for the promotion of chili peppers

Peppersoup

Ristra, an arrangement of dried chili pepper pods

Salsa (sauce)

Sweet chili sauce, a condiment for adding a sweet, mild heat taste to food

Taboo food and drink, which in some cultures includes chili peppers

troybooks.co.uk/a-witch's-natural-history.html

 

CHAPTER 7:

'ADDER'S FORK AND BLIND-WORM'S STING': THE MAGICAL REPTILE

 

It was one of those romantic and magical moments which, as one discovers later, it is impossible quite to replicate – but fear not. The cliché will have been subverted by the end of this paragraph. We had spent a blissful, mutually indulgent weekend in a thatched coaching inn, somewhere near to the heart of the Cotswolds. It was sunny beyond expectation, so we walked to the next village, admiring the crazy-eyed chickens which stood, cock-headed on a stone wall, as though expecting something importune, like the hatching of a Cockatrice. We poked around the church, shadowed at every window by suitably pagan yews, and then walked on by some bucolic alley which promised nothing in particular – only an idyll. At one side of it there was a stream, and at the other, another of those Cotswold walls, embedded in an earthen bank. The path led to an archetypal cottage of rough-hewn stone; wicker archways and roses in the garden. Ivy thrust wormlike roots through the crevices in the stone wall, creating dappled arbours suitable for those who dwelt within. This first warm day of spring, they were sluggish, absorbing the rays of the low sun, slow moving with a constant hiss, sliding viscerally through gaps in the stones. There was only one way to approach them: bare-footed, respectful, with wonder, and not fear. The adjoining stream was evidently their larder: here, frogs would conglomerate to mate, oozing frogspawn. The grass snakes would catch them by their toes, and gulp them down alive, so that the croak could still be heard within the gaping gullets. The struggle would continue awhile, within their guts. Later in the year, the grass snakes would feast on tadpoles, diving in the bubbling gushes, and gobbling them on lush grass. Their skins grown old, they would slide through twigs to slough them, their eyes glazed. The snakes live there to this day. We go back to see them sometimes, just for the sake of it.

 

You may have had any of a number of reactions to the paragraph above. It may have incited fear or disgust; if so, I pity you, and there is little more to be said. Indeed, I am surprised you started reading at all. Or perhaps you will opt for the Freudian interpretation: snakes have no limbs, and the more advanced species do not even possess pelvic girdles – hence they are phallic. Watson wasn’t being romantic at all – he was blinded by his lust, which he was hoping to satisfy behind the hedgerow around the corner. I fear that Freudians are secularised Christians who see a serpent coiled around every tree, and the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is filled with semen. This is to oversimplify snakes, just as it is to over-exaggerate the difference between eros and agape. The real reason why snakes are intensely romantic creatures for me is that they are entwined with my past; my memories, including the one I have just recalled are all lovingly wrapped in serpentine coils.

 

Growing up in south-eastern Australia, my first encounters with snakes were characterised by one emotion alone: awe. The first snake I remember encountering (I might have been five) was a red-bellied black snake swimming across a pond. As it emerged, my father turned it gently with his walking stick, and the scales on the underside were like a streak of undulating blood in the tussocky grass. It was not stupendously venomous by Australian standards, but well enough equipped to kill a small child. I remember when an expert herpetologist visited our school, commanding our obedient silence as he milked a sinuous taipan, its venom drooling into a plastic phial as he pinched it behind the jaw. It produces more venom than any other snake in the world; enough to make any health and safety legislator blue in the face. My first death adder was encountered on the road to Forbes, the town in the semi-arid zone of New South Wales which was the centre for the daring exploits of the bushranger Ben Hall – a man who must have met innumerable snakes before his life terminated at the end of a rope. It lay flaccid at the side of the road, seemingly too fat to form coils, and too torpid to move as I crouched to photograph it, half camouflaged against the rust-red earth. The poison glands in its head could have killed ten children of my body mass, and then could have killed ten more, as fast as a man can moisten his mouth after he has spat himself dry. And then there was that delicious moment when I was a teenage volunteer at the R.S.P.C.A, and a worried-looking family brought something bulging like blancmange inside a pillow case. I took one look inside, let out a shout of triumph, and delved within, my arms entwined with loving twists of diamond python. Once, years later, I was wearing him around my neck when I answered the door to some Jehovah’s Witnesses: a more effective repellent of intinerant evangelists has never been discovered.

 

Britain has three snake species, and among these, only one is venomous, albeit comparatively mildly so. In common with that of rattlesnakes and other forms of viper, Adder venom is primarily a haemotoxin, attacking the red blood cells and causing haemorrhage, in contrast to the neurotoxic venom of elapid snakes. Adder bites rarely cause human deaths unless they have not bitten for some time, or unless the victim is already infirm, or very young, but these have been enough to gain the snake both notoriety and folkloric significance. Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native incidentally records much of this folklore when Clym Yeobright finds his mother lying in the furze with an injured foot: “It was swollen and red. Even as they watched, the red began to assume a more livid colour, in the midst of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller than a pea, which was found to consist of a drop of blood, which rose above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemisphere.” The immediate diagnosis, “She has been stung by an adder”, reflects the old country belief that the adder “stings” with its tongue. An adder’s fangs hinge backwards when not in use, and so are not immediately obvious in dead specimens, so that the “adder’s fork” used by the witches in Macbeth was long considered to be the origin of the poison. (Oddly, the Adder’s tongue fern, which was considered efficacious in the treatment of snakebites, is not forked at all, and the “blind worm” or slow worm, whose “sting” they also throw into the cauldron, is in fact a harmless, legless lizard.) Yeobright’s acquaintance Sam tells him, “There is only one way to cure it. You must rub the place with the fat of other adders, and the only way to get that is by frying them.” Sam accordingly goes out with his lantern, and returns with three adders hanging from his walking stick. Two of them are already dead, for – tellingly – he has killed them earlier that day whilst at work furze-cutting, and the third is still alive, for the fat is, apparently, only efficacious when fried from an adder which has just been killed. However, Sam is well-versed in adder lore, for he knows that the fat of the dead ones may still be potent: “as they don’t die till the sun goes down they can’t be very stale meat”. The assumption that adders cannot die until sunset is no doubt a reflection of the snake’s resilience, for a mortally wounded adder will often writhe and make its escape, dying some hours later. Another onlooker at Mrs Yeobright’s bedside, Christian Cantle, thinks that the serpent of the Garden of Eden lives on in the adder, and cries, “Look at his eye – for all the world like a villainous sort of black currant. ‘Tis to be hoped he can’t ill wish us! There’s folks on the heath who’ve been overlooked already. I will never kill another adder as long as I live.” In fact, whilst the grass snake and the smooth snake both have rounded pupils in their eyes, the adder’s pupils are elliptical, narrowing to slits in bright light. Elliptical pupils are normally characteristic of nocturnal creatures such as cats and geckoes, and therefore perhaps more suggestive of the Evil Eye. The three adders are duly chopped and fried, and their fat used to anoint the wound. When the doctor arrives, he affirms that the remedy is recommended by the medical experts, “Hoffman, Mead, and I think the Abbé Fontana”, but Mrs Yeobright dies in any case, the poor adder being deemed only partially responsible. Modern adder bites are treated with antihistamines and blood transfusions, although the affected area may also be treated with witch hazel – an update, perhaps, on the viper’s bugloss treatment recommended by Dioscorides in the first century.

 

Other aspects of adder-lore are similarly attributable to the doctrine of signatures: if an adder is poisonous, it must also be medically efficacious. Thus the shed skins of adders are sometimes tied around the forehead to relieve headaches. Further aspects of the folklore are probably inspired by flawed observation. Country folk have often maintained that baby adders will climb into their mother’s mouth and hide in her stomach when threatened. As adders bear their young alive, being ovo-viviparous, it is possible that this myth arose when heavily gravid females were killed and cut open to reveal the living young inside. Female adders do also form protective associations with their young, and it has been suggested that the disappearance of the young into the mother’s mouth is merely an optical illusion: they are in fact crawling underneath her belly and hiding themselves there whilst the mother’s mouth is open in self-defence.

 

An even older myth concerning the live-bearing adder was first recorded by Herodotus, and survived in a variety of forms into the medieval bestiaries: in the act of mating, the female was supposed to bite off the male’s head, only to be repaid in kind by her young, who eat their way out of her body, killing her. According to Pliny the coveted adder-stone of the druids was supposedly obtained when adders congregated and joined their heads together, and somehow extruded the stone encased in bubbles of froth. Adders do indeed meet and join their heads together; the beautiful “dance” of the adders is in fact a ritualised combat between two males for the possession of a mate, but the snakes do not froth at the mouth. Perhaps the dance of the adders was once observed on a coastal heath, and the cluster of bubbles was a whelk’s egg case which chanced to be blown there by the wind – a likely candidate, given that Pliny described the end result as pock-marked and cartilaginous. Another congregation of adders occurs when they entwine themselves together in clumps in order to hibernate. They sometimes remain intertwined when they emerge in spring, making them easy targets for the butt of a gamekeeper’s gun: perhaps this, too, gave rise to the idea that the snakes congregated in order to produce the adder-stone.

 

More difficult to explain is the insistence that adders can kill airborne skylarks by spitting at them and causing them to plummet to the ground; this, one fears, is an example of folklore inspired by pure malice. Never mind. The adder got his own back on human beings long ago, when he caused the battle of Camlann. Both Arthur and Mordred told their men not to charge unless a sword was drawn by the opposing side, but “Ryght so cam out an addir of a lytyll hethe-buysshe, and hit stange a knight in the foote. And so whan the knyght felte hym so stonge, he loked downe and saw the addir; and anone he drew his swerde to sle the addir, and thought none other harme.” The rest, of course, is history, or something very like it, and we leave Arthur and Mordred to assail each other with stings of their own. It was not, in any case, the adder’s first experience of battle. Hannibal had appreciated the martial potential of venomous snakes long before, and his method was absurdly simple: imprison them en-masse in earthenware jars, shake them up a bit, and throw them at the Romans.

 

The modern fear of snakes is a degenerate form of the awe with which they were once regarded: an awe which is admirably communicated in D.H. Lawrence’s poem, ‘Snake’, in which the serpent is recognised as “one of the lords/ Of life.” One of the adder’s greatest defenders, W.H. Hudson, suggested that the Judeo-Christian hatred of snakes was a reaction against polytheistic religions which invariably regarded them as sacred. The adder itself was a living mystical sigil, a writhing wyrm whose markings suggest written characters or ogham script. Occasionally one finds an adder whose underside is as plainly marked as the zigzag-patterned dorsal side, and it is said that these markings form the words: “If I could hear as well as see/ No man of life would master me”. Snake-handling goddesses are regarded with awe the world over, from the Babylonian Lamashtu, through the Aztec Coatlicue (Lady of the Skirt of Serpents) to the Hindu triple goddess Kali, whose hair was composed of snakes, like that of the Gorgon Medusa. Isis began her career as a snake-goddess – a cobra goddess to be precise – and her most eloquent convert, Apuleius, describes her rising out of the sea with the moon hanging above her forehead, and “Vipers arising from the left-hand and right-hand partings of her hair supported this disc”. Hecate carried two snakes, one symbolising healing, and the other sickness and death; perhaps it is her image – or one of her priestesses - that we see in the beautiful Cretan figurine of a woman, bare-breasted in a fashionable bodice and layered skirt, who holds two snakes in her upraised hands. According to Seneca, the much-maligned Medea, another beautiful priestess of Hecate, also bared her breasts and tossed her hair when she handled snakes, and in order to make her potion, which could either heal or kill, she evoked “everything snakelike”. It is a pity that her memory has been besmirched by Appolonius of Rhodes, who made her betray her people and the serpent-guardian of the golden fleece to that brazen pirate Jason, and by Euripides, who made her murder her own children in revenge for his subsequent faithlessness. Awe of venomous snakes, combined with a reckless handling of them, was characteristic of the Bacchic and Orphic mysteries immortalised by the murals of Pompeii; indeed, Orpheus’s descent into Hades was an attempt to retrieve his beloved, who had been killed by snakebite. Combat with snakes is also invariably imbued with religious significance: the lamentable ophidiophobia of St. George the dragon-slayer, and St. Patrick, who allegedly drove all of the snakes out of Ireland, has a more spiritually significant pedigree in the battle between Apollo and Python, and Thor’s wrestlings with the Midgard Serpent – conflicts which perhaps represent the overthrow of female deities by male ones. Even Moses was not averse to a bit of snake shamanism, for it was he who erected the brazen serpent, and following his example, Christian sects such as the Gnostics and the Ophists have depicted Christ crucified as a snake, and consecrated the Eucharist with live serpents. It comes as no surprise that they were soon condemned as heretical, although the caduceus, a serpent entwined around a staff associated with Asclepius, the god of healing, remains to this day a symbol of medicine. Asclepius himself carried two phials of blood from the gorgon Medusa: one to kill, and the other to resurrect – a pagan eucharist indeed.

 

Perhaps the most beautiful and most subtly erotic snake-myth of all is the story of Cadmus, described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Cadmus once killed a gigantic serpent, and raised an army by sowing its teeth into the soil. Now, he has grown old, and wonders whether the gods are annoyed with him: “If this is what the gods are angry over, may I become a serpent, with a body stretched full-length forward.” The words have barely left his lips before he begins to transform. His legs are the first to disappear, and whilst he still possesses arms, he urgently embraces his wife. In her desperation, she pleads with the gods to transform her too, whilst Cadmus, now thoroughly ophidian, glides silkily between her breasts and entwines his body about her neck. She reaches to stroke her serpent husband’s scaly skin, and as she does so, she too is transformed, and they make for the woods before the horrified onlookers can beat their brains out or use their vital organs as ancient equivalents to Viagra. Touchingly, Cadmus and is wife are non-venomous; they are indeed “most gentle serpents” who never harm human beings. Perhaps they are pythons, retaining their vestigial pelvic girdles where their legs used to join their bodies. Would that all human beings were given the choice between advancing senility and an eternity as a loving serpent; I know which I would choose. Cleopatra must have been groping towards the same conclusion when she grasped the asp.

 

In any case, it is the snake’s own physiology which is the source of the religious awe it inspires. Anyone who has ever handled a snake knows that it is a creature of exceeding grace and dignity: its scales are smooth as polished jewels, and its undulating mode of locomotion is reminiscent of the movement of flowing water. This fluidity has made it the embodiment of a creator spirit. Even the spirit of Elohim, the creator in the book of Genesis, is first envisaged as moving on the face of the waters, as only a snake can do – an insight which was clearly understood by William Blake when he created his image of a serpent-bodied ‘Elohim Creating Adam’. Snakes can dislocate their jaws at will, enabling them to swallow prey which seems impossibly large: a creature which can engulf lesser beings in this way (anacondas have been known to swallow grown men), is bound to be regarded with awe. Snake venom is not only lethal; it also has psycho-active properties, although the reader is advised not to try this at home. It is amazingly durable: a stuffed snake is as venomous as a live one. Male snakes have a double penis, just like the devil, and female snakes have a paired clitoris – a notion which opens up all sorts of possibilities. A snake discards its skin when it has grown old; it even becomes blind and doddering like a geriatric when the scale which covers the eyeball turns opaque immediately prior to sloughing. It is therefore a metaphor for death and resurrection. When a snake strikes, it often does so with a speed undetectable to the human eye, so it is imbued with mystical power. If one approaches it in the right way, one may handle an adder without retribution – they have indeed been kept as pets by stalwart individuals – but one false move precipitates the lightning strike. Thus snakes are capricious, like the gods. Oviparous snakes like the grass snake, whose young do not hatch in the process of parturition, lay leathern eggs, and there is something mystical about these too; perhaps they, and not the whelk’s egg-case, are in fact the ovum anguinis of the druids.

 

Anguis is not, however, the generic name of a snake, but of the lowly slow-worm: not a venomous snake, but a legless lizard. Formerly, it was known as a blind-worm, presumably because its eyes, which have closable lids, are relatively smaller than those of snakes. It is quite harmless, and as its name suggests, rather sluggish in comparison to an adder or smooth snake energised by the sun. Its English relatives, the viviparous and sand lizards, are equally benign, and indeed frequently fall prey to our snakes. It is perhaps more difficult to ascribe magical significance to the Squamata, but the Romans seem to have done so, for they sculpted mystical hands out of bronze, with toads, snakes, tortoises and lizards crawling up towards the fingertips. No one knows their significance; perhaps they were fertility or healing charms, or wards against the evil eye. It is noteworthy, perhaps, that all of the animals depicted are cold blooded – but beyond that there is little to be said, save that the hands are clearly objects of power.

 

On the whole, however, if the snake’s biology makes it a likely metaphor for the divine, lizards are clearly earthy and mortal. With some notable warm-weather exceptions, they are not venomous; nor can they dislocate their jaws. They change their skins as snakes do, but slough them in flakes and ribbons rather than slipping them off like gloves. To the uninitiated, they seem altogether prosaic, but any inquisitive crow will tell you a different story. If you would capture a lizard, you must seize it by the head or the body. Grasp it by the tail, and the entire appendage will detach itself by splitting down the middle of one of the vertebrae, whilst the frenzied animal makes its escape through the undergrowth. More perplexing still, the severed tail will continue to undulate and squirm after it has been severed from the spinal column, as energised and frantic as one of Galvin’s frog-legs probed with an electrode. Your quarry is safe, and will soon grow a false tail – albeit one without vertebrae – and you have nothing to show for your pains but this threshing bit of scale and bone and gristle. In short, all of the English reptiles are object-lessons for the witch: the grass snake and the smooth snake are her images of occult beauty and erotic power; the adder is her psychopomp and her defense; but the lizard is her most practical guide of all, for he will provide her means of escape should the witch-finder seize her by the tail.

 

The stealthy Night Raider prowls the Brikverse to hunt down and disable lost convoys and vulnerable orbital stations. Its shrouded engines and angular design make it nearly undetectable to conventional sensor systems, allowing it to unleash a deadly surprise attack with its multiple cannons and armor-piercing missiles. The Rubrum Crucesignatis has a standing bounty on all Night Raiders, but its uncanny aptitude at hit-and-fade tactics have made it difficult to catch.

 

The Empire of Luchardsko is a cool-looking, if lore-light, faction created by Falk for Brikwars. One of my favorites.

If you are not French, it’s likely you haven’t ever heard the word “Saintonge”, and have no clue what it means. If you are French, it’s probably the same thing. Unless, that is, you are a fan of Romanesque, in which case you know that Saintonge, that small region of France centered around the town of Saintes (hence the name), not far from the Atlantic Ocean, just North of Bordeaux... features the highest density of Romanesque churches of all the country!

 

I had never visited that area of France, and so in the middle of October 2021, I took that long overdue trip and stayed two weeks in Saintes, driving left and right daily to photograph all the most significant Romanesque churches... and unfortunately leaving out many others, as they are so thick on the ground!

 

The church that we examine today is dedicated to saint Pierre-ès-Liens (Saint Peter-in-Chains) and is located in the village of Thaims.

 

There are several reasons why this church is truly unique and stands out among all those other Saintonge Romanesque churches.

 

The first reason is that it has doors on almost all sides: there is one on each arm of the transept, and if we can admit that the door at the end of the northern arm is a porte des morts leading into the cemetery (as we saw yesterday in Corme–Écluse), the one leading out of the southern transept arm is a lot more curious, especially since it is significantly decorated —as far as decorations go on this very simple church. I would have leaned towards a door opening onto a cloister if this church had, at any point in time, been an abbey or priory church, but there is absolutely zilch historical evidence of that.

 

Neither is there any mention of relics that would have been the subject of a pilgrimage, with the need to organize the flow of pilgrims entering through one door and exiting via another and besides, there is no ambulatory inside the church, whose floor plan remains very simple, even though it is in the shape of a Latin cross, which is rather unusual in Saintonge, as we have seen repeatedly.

 

The second reason is that it features a nicely rounded apse, also unusual in Saintonge where three-sided or five-sided apses are the norm. Note that the apse collapsed in the 20th century and had to be rebuilt, but that was done using the same stones whenever possible, and the job was very nicely done, and is virtually undetectable.

 

The third reason, and the most significant, is that this church is about the only one in the whole region that was built over a Roman villa, and a large and tall one, with big parts of it still showing, as you will see in some of the photos. The church itself is older than most of its Saintonge sisters, having been built, for the most part, during the 1000s.

 

The very elegant and sober nave. No adornments, even the capitals of archaic shape are bare. There are some adorned capitals in the apse, but they are 12th century.

 

The rib vaulting over the choir was added for reinforcement (that bell tower must be terribly heavy!) in the early 13th century.

Astronomers estimate 50 000 sources of near-infrared light are represented in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Their light has travelled through various distances to reach the telescope’s detectors, representing the vastness of space in a single image. A foreground star in our own galaxy, to the right of the image centre, displays Webb’s distinctive diffraction spikes. Bright white sources surrounded by a hazy glow are the galaxies of Pandora’s Cluster, a conglomeration of already-massive clusters of galaxies coming together to form a mega cluster. The concentration of mass is so great that the fabric of spacetime is warped by gravity, creating a natural, super-magnifying glass called a 'gravitational lens' that astronomers can use to see very distant sources of light beyond the cluster that would otherwise be undetectable, even to Webb.

 

These lensed sources appear red in the image, and often as elongated arcs distorted by the gravitational lens. Many of these are galaxies from the early Universe, with their contents magnified and stretched out for astronomers to study.

 

[Image Description: A crowded galaxy field on a black background, with one large star dominating the image just right of center. Three areas are concentrated with larger white hazy blobs on the left, lower right, and upper right above the single star. Scattered between these areas are many smaller sources of light; some also have a hazy white glow, while many other are red or orange.]

 

Read more

 

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, I. Labbe (Swinburne University of Technology), R. Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh), A. Pagan (STScI); CC BY 4.0

I love that at ISO 3200, the noise is almost undetectable on the D90.

Although damaged by a blast from Sk1 the aliens piloted the UFU successfully into a large pond where the ice was frozen. It is quite well camouflaged - and of course if the ice melts it will fall underwater and be totally undetectable.

 

inspired by Gerry Andersons TV series UFO.

Over fifty years ago, a supernova was discovered in M83, a spiral galaxy about 15 million light years from Earth. Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to make the first detection of X-rays emitted by the debris from this explosion.

 

Named SN 1957D because it was the fourth supernova to be discovered in the year of 1957, it is one of only a few located outside of the Milky Way galaxy that is detectable, in both radio and optical wavelengths, decades after its explosion was observed. In 1981, astronomers saw the remnant of the exploded star in radio waves, and then in 1987 they detected the remnant at optical wavelengths, years after the light from the explosion itself became undetectable.

 

A relatively short observation -- about 14 hours long -- from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2000 and 2001 did not detect any X-rays from the remnant of SN 1957D. However, a much longer observation obtained in 2010 and 2011, totaling nearly 8 and 1/2 days of Chandra time, did reveal the presence of X-ray emission. The X-ray brightness in 2000 and 2001 was about the same as or lower than in this deep image.

 

This new Chandra image of M83 is one of the deepest X-ray observations ever made of a spiral galaxy beyond our own. This full-field view of the spiral galaxy shows the low, medium, and high-energy X-rays observed by Chandra in red, green, and blue respectively.

 

The new X-ray data from the remnant of SN 1957D provide important information about the nature of this explosion that astronomers think happened when a massive star ran out of fuel and collapsed. The distribution of X-rays with energy suggests that SN 1957D contains a neutron star, a rapidly spinning, dense star formed when the core of pre-supernova star collapsed. This neutron star, or pulsar, may be producing a cocoon of charged particles moving at close to the speed of light known as a pulsar wind nebula.

 

If this interpretation is confirmed, the pulsar in SN 1957D is observed at an age of 55 years, one of the youngest pulsars ever seen. The remnant of SN 1979C in the galaxy M100 contains another candidate for the youngest pulsar, but astronomers are still unsure whether there is a black hole or a pulsar at the center of SN 1979C.

 

These results will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The researchers involved with this study were Knox Long (Space Telescope Science Institute), William Blair (Johns Hopkins University), Leith Godfrey (Curtin University, Australia), Kip Kuntz (Johns Hopkins), Paul Plucinsky (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Roberto Soria (Curtin University), Christopher Stockdale (University of Oklahoma and the Australian Astronomical Observatory), Bradley Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute), and Frank Winkler (Middlebury College).

 

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

 

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83sn/

 

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/STScI/K.Long et al., Optical: NASA/STScI

 

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

 

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

 

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

  

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Bounty hunters are always having to try and outthink fugitives and criminals. Fett has come up with a new idea, and wants feedback from Stormtrooper Bruce and the guys.

 

Fett: Guys, look at the new droid I built. It has an array of camera and listening devices, and can leave undetectable tracking devices whenever necessary.

 

STB: Well, I must admit it looks like something I've seen before.

 

TK-432: It's so cute. Will you make me one?

 

TK-1110: I think being cute is a decoy, who doesn't like cute things?

 

Fett: Exactly! Kids will want to take it home and once my target shows up I can move in.

 

STB: Brilliant. Think of the possibilities.

 

TK-1110: But why not just use drones?

 

Fett: Because that's what everyone expects. And they're boring. Just look at that face. Who would suspect anything from that?

 

TK-432: Does it speak Bocce? It looks like a protocol droid and they speak Bocce.

 

Fett: It'll be programmed specifically for each culture I send it to.

 

STB: It just looks so familiar, I just can't place it.

 

TK-432: Does it do windows? I'd want one that does windows.

 

TK-1110: You big dummy, you don't have any windows.

 

Fett: But that's a good idea, I could program it for domestic chores, too.

 

TK-432: What about nachos. I'd want one that can make great nachos, too.

 

Fett: Wow! I'm loving this feedback. I can program culinary skills, too.

 

TK-1110: It just sounds better and better. A droid like that? Everyone would want one, including me. You could retire from bounty hunting and just sell these droids!

 

STB: Wait a minute. That's one of those toy droids from that gift shop on Mos Eisley, isn't it? One of those mini-giants.

 

Fett: Yes, I confess - they had a BoGo sale and I bought a dozen. But what great feedback. Now I know what I need to do make these work and catch even the most elusive bad guys. Just one problem.

 

STB: It's going to take ages for you to make it work right?

 

Fett: Bingo. By then I'll be too old to care.

 

STB: Too bad. Guess it's back to boring drones.

 

Fett: And it seemed like such a good idea. So, um... since I'm already here, mind if I join you? Couldn't help but notice it's Movie Night.

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Viewing Large is always fun. Just click on the image.

 

The German Type 212 class, is a highly advanced design of non-nuclear submarine developed by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) for the German and Italian Navies. It features diesel propulsion and an additional air-independent propulsion (AIP) system using Siemens proton exchange membrane (PEM) compressed hydrogen fuel cells. The submarine can operate at high speed on diesel power or switch to the AIP system for silent slow cruising, staying submerged for up to three weeks without surfacing and with no exhaust heat. The system is also said to be vibration-free, extremely quiet and virtually undetectable.

 

Type 212 is the first fuel cell propulsion system equipped submarine series.

 

Builders: Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH (HDW) Kiel Germany.

 

Name U-34

Laid down December 2001

Launched July 2006

Commissioned 3 May 2007

 

On the Clyde for Joint Warrior 2016-1

Joint Warrior is a UK tri-Service multinational exercise that involves numerous warships, aircraft, marines and troops.

The German Typ XXVII B Midget Submarine "Seehund" crewed my some Valiantbricks Kriegsmarine figures. The Seehund was the last and also largest midget submarines used by german forces. The boats were operated by a special detachment of the Kriegsmarine, called "K-Verband" or "Kleinkampfverbände". The Seehund was about 11,86 m long and had a width (with torpedos) of about 1,7 m making it rather narrow, compared to other small submarines. Powerd by a 6 cylinder diesel engine Büssnig NAG 60HP and an additional 25HP electric engine, the Seehund was capable of diving 30 meters under the surface. It was armed with 2 G7e Torpedos with a good range. With a full load of diesel the crew of 2 men could go stay about 6-7 days in the open sea, though while dived they were forced to come to the surface rather quickly, since they only had air for about 45 minutes. Being in this narrow tube also had physical and mental consequences for the 2 crewmen and they often took Pervitin in order to stay focused. Production of the Seehund began in September 1944 and the first combat action took place on the 31. of december 1944. With about 400 Seehuns orderd only 285 were completed. Although also the Seehund was rather dangerous to crew, with a lot of men not returning due to mechanical issues, the Seehund was a major impovement to the 2 earlier used Midget Submarines the "Molch" and the "Biber" which had much higher casulty rates. Also in terms of comabt usage, the Seehund was much more succesfull, with about 9 enemy trading ships destroied and the french destroyer "La Combattante". The Seehunds made the alliied high command panic, since they were undetectable by sonar systems. So in order to find 3 Seehunds 500 boats and 1500 planes were used by the alliies. Their main area of operation was the English channel. (Source: Harald Fock, Marine Kleinkampfmittel) My Seehund is built in minifigure scale, featuring a spinning propeller and some decals.

Since the Spyrius faction of Classic Space never got a big flagship, I decided to build them one for SHIPtemeber 2023. The Spyrius Primus is the Spyrians' mothership where they bring all of the technology they steal from the other Space factions to bring them back to their home planet. It has the same kind of saucer shape as their other ships which allows them to be undetectable by the Space Police's radar. It is equipped with a powerful triple engine and two quad-laser cannons for defense and quick getaways. It features interior for the bridge, cargo bay, and the hallways. The bridge can serve as a detachable escape pod. The ring was inspired by Chris Wight’s Steampunk Mega Wheel Design. Thanks to Diego from 1980somethingspace.com for the Spyrius background.

This cap provide valuable buffs like invisibility, immunity to crowd control, or increased that "Plutonic Theory",was the idea that the earth was formed due to intense heat in the earth, stems from Pluto, the opposing theory of which is the Neptunian Theory which states that the formation of the earth was caused by the agency of water.Pluto was originally not the god of the underworld. Pluto is cognate with the Greek word "Ploutos" (wealth, cf. plutocracy), and, under the original name Plutus, was considered by the Romans as the giver of gold, silver, and other subterranean substances. Because these "gifts" were mined, Pluto became recognized as the god of the physical underworld, which in turn helped him become recognized as the god of the spiritual underworld and thus death. This brought about his mythological relationship to the Greek god Hades. Because the mythology of these gods is more known than the actual religious roles of the gods, Pluto is identified as the counterpart to the Greek Hades (which is only true in mythology).

Hades's Cap of Invisibility (ハデスの隠れ兜, Hadesu no Kakure Kabuto?), also called the Cloth of Concealment (身隠しの布, Mikakushi no Nuno?), is the cap of invisibility owned by Hades. It is the prototype of all Noble Phantasms that “hides the figure.” Normally kept by Gilgamesh in the form of a sash, anything covered or enclosed by the cloth cannot be observed through magecraft and optical means. Using optical magic to block all forms of magical detection and any presence of magical emanations from the wearer, it is incredibly effective against those relying solely on magecraft to detect enemies. It does not obscure sound, smell, body temperature, or the wearer's tracks, so its usage is mostly situational. Without such indicators being readily apparent, it is possible to easily walk by enemies while keeping quiet, and it allows for the easy kidnapping of others through Bounded Fields without detection. While in its sash form, it can be held by multiple people at once, and it can wrap up itself automatically to return to its cap form. The cloth of which it is made of is of a very complex weave estimated to have "reached five dimensions", and complete reproduction of the cloth is impossible for humans.

In classical mythology, the Cap of Invisibility (Ἄϊδος κυνέην (H)aidos kuneēn in Greek, lit. dog-skin of Hades) is a helmet or cap that can turn the wearer invisible. It is also known as the Cap of Hades, Helm of Hades,[2] or Helm of Darkness. Wearers of the cap in Greek myths include Athena, the goddess of wisdom, the messenger god Hermes, and the hero Perseus. The Cap of Invisibility enables the user to become invisible to other supernatural entities, functioning much like the cloud of mist that the gods surround themselves in to become undetectable. Invisibility is found on Blue Entoloma, Namira's Rot, Nirnroot, & Spider Egg so you'll need at least 2 of these reagents. Also you must avoid all reagents with Detection: Cornflower, Torchbug Thorax, White Cap, or Wormwood.So find things that combine with up to 2 of the invisibility reagents without using the Detection reagents. If by recovery you mean Stamina Recovery, you're out of luck as there are no reagents which both restore Stamina and grant Invisibility, making it impossible to get pairs for both effects with at most 3 reagents. If you mean Health Recovery, you can start with Blue Entoloma as your common reagent for both Invisibility & Restore Health, adding in one other Invisibility reagent (Namira's Rot or Spider Egg -- avoiding Nirnroot because of its Ravage Health property) and one other Restore Health reagent (Bugloss, Butterfly Wing, Columbine, Luminous Russula, Mountain Flower, or Water Hyacinth). Which other reagents you choose aside from Blue Entoloma will determine what other effects you may receive. Using Blue Entoloma, Butterfly Wing, + Spider Egg would add both Restore Health & Sustained Restore Health to Invisibilty. Or using Blue Entoloma, Namira's Rot, + Columbine would add immune to knockback/disabling effects to the Restore Health & Invisibility. The helmet of invisibility was a magical item of Hades. Hades gave the helmet to Perseus, to help him on his quest to retrieve Medusa's Head and kill the Kraken. However, Hades was under the orders of Zeus. Perseus used it to sneak into Andromeda's room where he witnessed her spirit being taken away by a giant vulture. He then uses it again the next night but follows the vulture to Calibos' Lair. There, he witnesses Calibos giving Andromeda's Spirit a new riddle.THis is a scam In the end, Calibos figures out that Perseus is there and attacks him, but Perseus manages to escape. However, The Helmet of Invisibility then falls into the swamp and vanishes forever. Because of this, Zeus orders Athena to give Perseus her owl, but she denies and tells Hephaestus to make a mechanical version.

 

Square is the emblem of the created world and nature as opposed to the uncreated and the creator... square and cube symbolize fixation and stability and are associated with earth....The square allows the man an orientation in the horizontal plane. He's got imposes on chaos a system of four cardinal directions to order the world. This spatial orientation gives rise to square and orthogonal shapes emblematic of the habitat of sedentary populations. The square and cube symbolize fixation and stability and are associated with earth. The sky covers, the earth supports. The square symbolizes the earth and Man in its imperfection. In the case of the semi-square, it is the complementarity of the visible and the invisible. In China, in the texts of the Ancients of the Tao, it was told:"Heaven is a Round, the Earth is a Square". In Beijing, the forbidden city, which is the seat and symbol of power, is structured squarely, while the palace of heaven, which symbolizes spirituality and the divine, is made up of three circular monuments.

In Mecca, pilgrims walk around the Kaaba cube in a circular way. Through this act of faith, Islam spiritually squares the circle. The square is the construction plan of many temples (Angkor in Cambodia, Borobudur to Java) but they are very often written in circular spaces (hilltop, circle of hills) or surmounted by circular shapes (stupas). If the Ka' ba of Mecca is presented as a square shape, the faithful followers of the ka' ba of Mecca move around describing circular routes. In India, in the drawings of meditation mandalas, one can see the circle and the square associated with it. They represent the ideal harmony of a couple of opposites, heaven and earth, divine and human. Although the properties of the square are strictly opposed to those of the circle, these two geometric figures are associated, especially in religious architecture. Indeed, often, the base of the buildings present a square structure to symbolize the earth, while their circular roofs symbolize the sky.

 

The square in a vertical position, close to the diamond, indicates the dynamics of the square, the movement, i. e. the principle of life. It shall describe methods for working with these Magic Squares to construct and charge sigils. The mathematical definition of a Magic Square is an arrangement of distinct integers in a square grid in which the integers of each row, column and diagonal all add up to the same number. While a full exploration into the history of Magic Squares is beyond our current scope, suffice it to say that their use in mathematics and mysticism is well documented in Asia as early as the 7th century B.C.E. By the early Renaissance, Magic Squares were popularized in Europe and made their way into western magical traditions via the later writings of Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Cornelius Agrippa. Of primary importance to this post is a grouping of seven squares between the orders of 3 and 9 that were identified as planetary in nature. These were each attributed to one of the seven classical planets based on the emanation sequence of the kabbalistic sefirah associate with that planet.The square summarizes the symbolism of the number four, order of the Universe and the necessary opposition of opposites. It is a symbol of unity, wholeness and balance of the four psychic functions: thought, sensation, intuition, feeling. "The square is an anti-dynamic figure that is anchored on four sides. This symbolizes the stop, or the instant sampled. The square implies an notion of stagnation, solidification and perhaps even stabilisation in perfection "(Jean Chevalier - Alain Gheerbrant).It also represents the four directions of the compass and thus allows man to orientate himself in space. The square establishes a coordinate system. It imposes a structure on chaos and brings order to the world. In his work,"Signs, symbols and myths", Luc Benoist explains this point:"If the earth is characterized by the square, it is because the sun fixes its axes thanks to the extreme points of its course, which divides it into four parts, each representing a season, at the same time as one of the cardinal points".

  

Evidence for a recoiling black hole has been found using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM-Newton, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and several ground-based telescopes. This black hole kickback was caused either by a slingshot effect produced in a triple black hole system, or from the effects of gravitational waves produced after two supermassive black holes merged a few million years earlier.

 

The discovery of this object, located in this composite image, comes from a large, multi-wavelength survey, known as the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS). This survey includes data from Chandra, HST, XMM- Newton, as well as ground-based observatories. Of the 2,600 X-ray sources found in COSMOS, only one -- named CID-42 and located in a galaxy about 3.9 billion light years away -- coincides with two very close, compact optical sources (The two sources are seen in the HST data, but they are too close for Chandra to resolve separately.) In this image, the X-ray source detected by Chandra is colored blue, while the Hubble data are seen in gold.

 

The galaxy's long tail suggests that a merger between galaxies has occurred relatively recently, only a few million years earlier. Data from the Very Large Telescope and the Magellan telescope give evidence that the difference in speed of the two optical sources is at least three million miles an hour.

 

The X-ray spectra from Chandra and XMM-Newton provide extra information about CID-42. Absorption from iron-rich gas shows that gas is moving rapidly away from us in the rest frame of the galaxy. This could be gas in the galaxy between us and one of the black holes that is falling into the black hole, or it could be gas on the far side of the black hole that is blowing away.

 

Taken together, these pieces of information allow for two different scenarios for what is happening in this system. In the first scenario, the researchers surmise that a triple black hole encounter was produced by a two-step process. First, a collision between two galaxies created a galaxy with a pair of black holes in a close orbit. Before these black holes could merge, another galaxy collision occurred, and another supermassive black hole spiraled toward the existing black hole pair.

 

The interaction among the three black holes resulted in the lightest one being ejected. In this case, the optical source in the lower left of the image is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) powered by material being pulled along by, and falling onto, the escaping supermassive black hole. The source in the upper right is an AGN containing the black hole that resulted from a merger between the two remaining black holes.

 

In this slingshot scenario, the high-speed X-ray absorption can be explained as a high-speed wind blowing away from the AGN in the upper right that absorbs light from the AGN in the lower left. Based on its optical spectrum, the AGN in the upper right is thought to be obscured by a torus of dust and gas. In nearly all cases a wind from such an AGN would be undetectable, but here it is illuminated by the other AGN, giving the first evidence that fast winds exist in obscured AGN.

 

An alternative explanation posits a merger between two supermassive black holes in the center of the galaxy. The asymmetry of the gravitational waves emitted in this process caused the merged black hole to be kicked away from the center of the galaxy. In this scenario, the ejected black hole is the point source in the lower left and a cluster of stars left behind in the center of the galaxy is in the upper right. The observed X-ray absorption would be caused by gas falling onto the recoiling black hole.

 

Future observations may help eliminate or further support one of these scenarios. A team of researchers led by Francesca Civano and Martin Elvis of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) will publish their work on CID-42 in the July 1st edition of The Astrophysical Journal.

 

The second scenario, concerning the recoil of a supermassive black hole caused by a gravitational wave kick, has recently been proposed by Peter Jonker from the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht as a possible explanation for a source in a different galaxy. In this study, led by Peter Jonker from the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht, a Chandra X-ray source was discovered about ten thousand light years, in projection, away from the center of a galaxy. Three possible explanations for this object are that it is an unusual type of supernova, or an ultraluminous X- ray source with a very bright optical counterpart or a recoiling supermassive black hole resulting from a gravitational wave kick.

 

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/cid42/

 

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al. Optical: NASA/STScI

 

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

 

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

 

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

The stealthy Night Raider prowls the Brikverse to hunt down and disable lost convoys and vulnerable orbital stations. Its shrouded engines and angular design make it nearly undetectable to conventional sensor systems, allowing it to unleash a deadly surprise attack with its multiple cannons and armor-piercing missiles. The Rubrum Crucesignatis has a standing bounty on all Night Raiders, but its uncanny aptitude at hit-and-fade tactics have made it difficult to catch.

 

The Empire of Luchardsko is a cool-looking, if lore-light, faction created by Falk for Brikwars. One of my favorites.

The stealthy Night Raider prowls the Brikverse to hunt down and disable lost convoys and vulnerable orbital stations. Its shrouded engines and angular design make it nearly undetectable to conventional sensor systems, allowing it to unleash a deadly surprise attack with its multiple cannons and armor-piercing missiles. The Rubrum Crucesignatis has a standing bounty on all Night Raiders, but its uncanny aptitude at hit-and-fade tactics have made it difficult to catch.

 

The Empire of Luchardsko is a cool-looking, if lore-light, faction created by Falk for Brikwars. One of my favorites.

Yellowstone National Park (Arapaho: Henihco'oo or Héetíhco'oo) is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

 

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the Continental United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in the park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river "Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (Rock Yellow River). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is not clear.

 

The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

 

The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote a number of detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Ferdinand V. Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".

 

By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds and the current system of park roads.

 

During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.

A large arch made of irregular-shaped natural stone over a road

 

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.

 

In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended management of Yellowstone's elk population.

 

The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (321,272 ha; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) burned.

 

The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (898,317 ha; 3,468.420 sq mi) in area, larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (35,220 ha; 136.00 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.

 

The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Teton Range and the Madison Range to the southwest and west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).

 

Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).

 

Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.

 

Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

 

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile (1 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cubic miles (2,450 km³) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and created the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cubic miles (280 km³) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.

 

Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts to world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.

Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring.

 

A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with >80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.

 

Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years, but the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.

 

The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge of earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome— areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement— had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. However, these changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.

 

Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including a 7.5‑magnitude quake that struck just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but damage was minimal.

 

For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over a four-day span under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6.34am; reports indicated no damage. This was the biggest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.

 

Over 1,700 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, Lodgepole Pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and Whitebark Pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.

 

There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between the months of May and September. The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.

 

In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.

 

Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact to the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases.

 

Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by using up nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time consuming and expensive.

  

Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion.

Bison graze near a hot spring

 

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. In fact, about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported case of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock has been filed. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that bison are the "likely source" of the spread of the disease in cattle in Wyoming and North Dakota. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management sending hundreds to slaughter. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and on Elk Island in Alberta.

Elk Mother Nursing Her Calf

 

To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly harass bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–97, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.

A reintroduced northwestern wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Starting in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park

 

By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.

 

An estimated 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully. Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population. Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.

 

Population figures for elk are in excess of 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

 

In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. The wolverine is another rare park mammal, and accurate population figures for this species are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.

 

Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes in the Snake River drainage from U.S. Government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law. Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and Prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the Boreal Chorus Frog.

 

311 species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded, however only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.

 

As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark which protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines —the most common tree species in the park— generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.

 

About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people— in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained fire fighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, though it is closed to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September— the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. Current policy is to suppress all human caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose on the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.

 

In an effort to minimize the chances of out of control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires which are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions which allow fire fighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, fire fighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. Fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. Fire Management Plans were implemented, detailing that natural fires should be allowed to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.

 

1988 started with a wet spring season although by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. A total of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participated in the suppression efforts, at a cost of 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilian lives were lost, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.

 

Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals— surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.

 

from Wikipedia

  

If you are not French, it’s likely you haven’t ever heard the word “Saintonge”, and have no clue what it means. If you are French, it’s probably the same thing. Unless, that is, you are a fan of Romanesque, in which case you know that Saintonge, that small region of France centered around the town of Saintes (hence the name), not far from the Atlantic Ocean, just North of Bordeaux... features the highest density of Romanesque churches of all the country!

 

I had never visited that area of France, and so in the middle of October 2021, I took that long overdue trip and stayed two weeks in Saintes, driving left and right daily to photograph all the most significant Romanesque churches... and unfortunately leaving out many others, as they are so thick on the ground!

 

The church that we examine today is dedicated to saint Pierre-ès-Liens (Saint Peter-in-Chains) and is located in the village of Thaims.

 

There are several reasons why this church is truly unique and stands out among all those other Saintonge Romanesque churches.

 

The first reason is that it has doors on almost all sides: there is one on each arm of the transept, and if we can admit that the door at the end of the northern arm is a porte des morts leading into the cemetery (as we saw yesterday in Corme–Écluse), the one leading out of the southern transept arm is a lot more curious, especially since it is significantly decorated —as far as decorations go on this very simple church. I would have leaned towards a door opening onto a cloister if this church had, at any point in time, been an abbey or priory church, but there is absolutely zilch historical evidence of that.

 

Neither is there any mention of relics that would have been the subject of a pilgrimage, with the need to organize the flow of pilgrims entering through one door and exiting via another and besides, there is no ambulatory inside the church, whose floor plan remains very simple, even though it is in the shape of a Latin cross, which is rather unusual in Saintonge, as we have seen repeatedly.

 

The second reason is that it features a nicely rounded apse, also unusual in Saintonge where three-sided or five-sided apses are the norm. Note that the apse collapsed in the 20th century and had to be rebuilt, but that was done using the same stones whenever possible, and the job was very nicely done, and is virtually undetectable.

 

The third reason, and the most significant, is that this church is about the only one in the whole region that was built over a Roman villa, and a large and tall one, with big parts of it still showing, as you will see in some of the photos. The church itself is older than most of its Saintonge sisters, having been built, for the most part, during the 1000s.

 

The unexplained door...

Yellowstone National Park (Arapaho: Henihco'oo or Héetíhco'oo) is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

 

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the Continental United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in the park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river "Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (Rock Yellow River). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is not clear.

 

The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

 

The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote a number of detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Ferdinand V. Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".

 

By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds and the current system of park roads.

 

During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.

A large arch made of irregular-shaped natural stone over a road

 

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.

 

In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended management of Yellowstone's elk population.

 

The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (321,272 ha; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) burned.

 

The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (898,317 ha; 3,468.420 sq mi) in area, larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (35,220 ha; 136.00 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.

 

The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Teton Range and the Madison Range to the southwest and west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).

 

Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).

 

Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.

 

Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

 

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile (1 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cubic miles (2,450 km³) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and created the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cubic miles (280 km³) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.

 

Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts to world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.

Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring.

 

A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with >80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.

 

Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years, but the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.

 

The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge of earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome— areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement— had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. However, these changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.

 

Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including a 7.5‑magnitude quake that struck just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but damage was minimal.

 

For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over a four-day span under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6.34am; reports indicated no damage. This was the biggest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.

 

Over 1,700 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, Lodgepole Pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and Whitebark Pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.

 

There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between the months of May and September. The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.

 

In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.

 

Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact to the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases.

 

Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by using up nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time consuming and expensive.

  

Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion.

Bison graze near a hot spring

 

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. In fact, about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported case of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock has been filed. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that bison are the "likely source" of the spread of the disease in cattle in Wyoming and North Dakota. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management sending hundreds to slaughter. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and on Elk Island in Alberta.

Elk Mother Nursing Her Calf

 

To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly harass bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–97, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.

A reintroduced northwestern wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Starting in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park

 

By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.

 

An estimated 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully. Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population. Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.

 

Population figures for elk are in excess of 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

 

In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. The wolverine is another rare park mammal, and accurate population figures for this species are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.

 

Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes in the Snake River drainage from U.S. Government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law. Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and Prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the Boreal Chorus Frog.

 

311 species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded, however only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.

 

As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark which protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines —the most common tree species in the park— generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.

 

About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people— in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained fire fighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, though it is closed to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September— the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. Current policy is to suppress all human caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose on the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.

 

In an effort to minimize the chances of out of control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires which are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions which allow fire fighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, fire fighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. Fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. Fire Management Plans were implemented, detailing that natural fires should be allowed to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.

 

1988 started with a wet spring season although by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. A total of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participated in the suppression efforts, at a cost of 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilian lives were lost, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.

 

Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals— surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.

 

from Wikipedia

Of all the times I imagined flying this chicken coop, none of those scenarios started the way it's actually gone down.

 

Two seconds of a garbled announcement over the intercoms, then the power just shuts off. Every light, every holding cell. Most of us took the opportunity; only person I saw staying put was Shrike, huddled in the far corner of her quarters, whispering to herself.

 

The guards didn't stop any of us. They were all rushing right past the inmates, yelling into earpieces. Vertigo and Harkness reasoned that they must be headed for the armory, and trailed behind to retrieve their own belongings. Frost, a few others and myself were skeptical of the situation, and made our way to freedom in a slower fashion.

 

Doctor Light made the mistake of trying to brighten the hallways again, which only served to reveal himself to King Shark as the first substantial meal to be had in weeks. Just as Clinton was entertaining the idea that this could all be a plan of Waller's to scratch out the disloyal members of the squad, something... someTHINGS... tore through the reinforced wall like it was cling wrap, and disemboweled Chronos in a heartbeat.

 

Desmond and Enchantress foolishly thought they could dispatch the newcomers simply enough. The rest of us bolted long before we could witness the pair be enveloped by the endless horde of decaying forms. Some of them were familiar, looking past their soulless eyes and the bones that no longer fit inside their skin.

 

Turner insisted on trying to help up a guard who had lost half his blood through a stomach wound. I saw him heaving the soldier over his neck and disappearing down a corridor that led to Waller's own fortified office. Every wall looked like Swiss cheese by now, from the dead burrowing in at every angle; Turner's route collapsed on him before he had made it a dozen yards.

 

In favor of arming ourselves, now that it was clear this was no drill, Monroe and I split from the pack when the majority vote was to let Frost ice them until their core temperatures were low enough to mimic death that they could possibly be undetectable to the invaders. Sounded like bull.

 

We ran straight into Copperhead just inside the armory. He took a piece of my calf in his jaw before Monroe beat him at his own game, clawing him apart. I painstakingly donned my suit as an extremely-dead Vertigo descended from the ceiling and turned his corrupted powers on Monroe, leaving him a warped, furry puddle.

 

My wrist guns keep them at bay, but they won't go down for good. And Shark just picked up my blood trail.

 

Waller, if we both make it out of this without a black ring on each of our fingers, I'm going to put you down myself.

 

I'm sorry Zoe.

Galaxy cluster Abell S1077, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

 

The cluster acts as a magnifying glass, its gravity high enough to warp even the fabric of space-time. This effect distorts the path that light from distant galaxies takes when it travels through the cluster, as can be seen here in the bright arcs smeared around the centre of Abell S1077.

 

The phenomenon of gravitational lensing allows astronomers to see objects that are aligned behind the cluster and that would otherwise be undetectable from Earth.

 

This image is based in part on data spotted by Nick Rose in the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.

   

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: N. Rose

Yellowstone National Park (Arapaho: Henihco'oo or Héetíhco'oo) is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

 

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the Continental United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in the park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river "Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (Rock Yellow River). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is not clear.

 

The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

 

The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote a number of detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Ferdinand V. Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".

 

By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds and the current system of park roads.

 

During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.

A large arch made of irregular-shaped natural stone over a road

 

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.

 

In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended management of Yellowstone's elk population.

 

The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (321,272 ha; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) burned.

 

The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (898,317 ha; 3,468.420 sq mi) in area, larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (35,220 ha; 136.00 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.

 

The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Teton Range and the Madison Range to the southwest and west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).

 

Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).

 

Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.

 

Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

 

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile (1 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cubic miles (2,450 km³) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and created the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cubic miles (280 km³) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.

 

Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts to world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.

Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring.

 

A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with >80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.

 

Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years, but the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.

 

The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge of earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome— areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement— had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. However, these changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.

 

Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including a 7.5‑magnitude quake that struck just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but damage was minimal.

 

For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over a four-day span under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6.34am; reports indicated no damage. This was the biggest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.

 

Over 1,700 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, Lodgepole Pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and Whitebark Pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.

 

There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between the months of May and September. The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.

 

In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.

 

Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact to the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases.

 

Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by using up nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time consuming and expensive.

  

Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion.

Bison graze near a hot spring

 

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. In fact, about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported case of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock has been filed. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that bison are the "likely source" of the spread of the disease in cattle in Wyoming and North Dakota. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management sending hundreds to slaughter. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and on Elk Island in Alberta.

Elk Mother Nursing Her Calf

 

To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly harass bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–97, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.

A reintroduced northwestern wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Starting in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park

 

By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.

 

An estimated 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully. Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population. Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.

 

Population figures for elk are in excess of 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

 

In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. The wolverine is another rare park mammal, and accurate population figures for this species are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.

 

Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes in the Snake River drainage from U.S. Government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law. Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and Prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the Boreal Chorus Frog.

 

311 species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded, however only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.

 

As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark which protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines —the most common tree species in the park— generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.

 

About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people— in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained fire fighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, though it is closed to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September— the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. Current policy is to suppress all human caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose on the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.

 

In an effort to minimize the chances of out of control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires which are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions which allow fire fighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, fire fighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. Fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. Fire Management Plans were implemented, detailing that natural fires should be allowed to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.

 

1988 started with a wet spring season although by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. A total of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participated in the suppression efforts, at a cost of 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilian lives were lost, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.

 

Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals— surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.

 

from Wikipedia

  

The rust is a better party icon than any dimwit elephrump! I scratched my head when I saw this shot in my stash. It seems that everything on this chunk of iron is catty wampus, but I bet this iron is hell on a golf course putting green. I don't think it is a putter. I have only seen outhouses transported to golf courses in the past! I think those are all used up. It is a plow that was probably single horse drawn by a draw bar aimed some direction, undetectable from the shot. I wonder if it would ever have been used at a dairy farm. I wonder what this might have been its use? I had my long lens and was in tight.

 

I was at McIntosh Ag Museum again for my windmill agriculture shot and saw this but the title for this image only came after I opened the file and looked it over. This machinery is for the ages, the Iron or Dark ages! It will probably never be replaced by Chinese plastic. I looks like the rust on it is only starting to win over the orange paint; rust fought the paint and the rust won. That might have been the goal of orange paint? I really need to get really close in on this and do a texture detail of the rust. I have a lot of close up gear I seldom use. It had to be iron heavy in order to be able to "bite" into the soil. It looked like a single row plow. Single row implements took some time to finish working a field, one row at a time. Manual labor for sure. Ahh, wheat to damage human guts. I bet McIntosh never had one of those massive multi-wheel diesel tractors that cheated pollution standards.

 

Here in the St.Vrain Valley, there is a possibility we may be able to attain fall by October even though we have skied in September in the past. Ah well, the past is the past and the summer and August were the hottest world wide on record and here in Kochistan. I don't see any snow on the high peaks though I guess the temps could be really pleasant up there now.

  

Yellowstone National Park (Arapaho: Henihco'oo or Héetíhco'oo) is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

 

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the Continental United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in the park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river "Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (Rock Yellow River). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is not clear.

 

The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

 

The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote a number of detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Ferdinand V. Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".

 

By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds and the current system of park roads.

 

During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.

A large arch made of irregular-shaped natural stone over a road

 

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.

 

In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended management of Yellowstone's elk population.

 

The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (321,272 ha; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) burned.

 

The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (898,317 ha; 3,468.420 sq mi) in area, larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (35,220 ha; 136.00 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.

 

The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Teton Range and the Madison Range to the southwest and west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).

 

Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).

 

Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.

 

Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

 

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile (1 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cubic miles (2,450 km³) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and created the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cubic miles (280 km³) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.

 

Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts to world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.

Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring.

 

A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with >80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.

 

Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years, but the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.

 

The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge of earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome— areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement— had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. However, these changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.

 

Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including a 7.5‑magnitude quake that struck just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but damage was minimal.

 

For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over a four-day span under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6.34am; reports indicated no damage. This was the biggest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.

 

Over 1,700 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, Lodgepole Pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and Whitebark Pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.

 

There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between the months of May and September. The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.

 

In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.

 

Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact to the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases.

 

Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by using up nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time consuming and expensive.

  

Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion.

Bison graze near a hot spring

 

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. In fact, about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported case of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock has been filed. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that bison are the "likely source" of the spread of the disease in cattle in Wyoming and North Dakota. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management sending hundreds to slaughter. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and on Elk Island in Alberta.

Elk Mother Nursing Her Calf

 

To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly harass bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–97, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.

A reintroduced northwestern wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Starting in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park

 

By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.

 

An estimated 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully. Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population. Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.

 

Population figures for elk are in excess of 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

 

In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. The wolverine is another rare park mammal, and accurate population figures for this species are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.

 

Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes in the Snake River drainage from U.S. Government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law. Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and Prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the Boreal Chorus Frog.

 

311 species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded, however only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.

 

As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark which protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines —the most common tree species in the park— generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.

 

About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people— in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained fire fighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, though it is closed to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September— the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. Current policy is to suppress all human caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose on the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.

 

In an effort to minimize the chances of out of control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires which are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions which allow fire fighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, fire fighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. Fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. Fire Management Plans were implemented, detailing that natural fires should be allowed to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.

 

1988 started with a wet spring season although by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. A total of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participated in the suppression efforts, at a cost of 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilian lives were lost, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.

 

Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals— surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.

 

from Wikipedia

  

The trademark ship of bounty hunter Kilvane Frost. Outfitted with plasma cannons, seeker missiles, fission missiles, and deployable EMP charges and V.II Sabotage droids. Two hyper-computing droids run the ship's technological systems, including two high-powered scrambling devices that render the ship undetectable on radar and immune to targeting systems. Four thruster-type engines give the Manta unrivaled speed and maneuverability for a ship of its size.

 

Comments and criticism welcome! :D

Ronin

PACIFIC OCEAN (June 28, 2024) – An AS-332 Super Puma, assigned to the Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship USNS Cesar Chavez (T-AKE 14), delivers supplies to the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Louisiana (SSBN 743) during a vertical replenishment at sea June 28, 2024. The presence of the SSBN in the Pacific demonstrates the flexibility, survivability, readiness, and capability of the U.S. Navy submarine forces and complements the many exercises, training, operations, and other military cooperation activities conducted by Strategic Forces to ensure they are available and ready to operate around the globe at any time. Homeported in Bangor, Washington, and currently assigned to Submarine Squadron 17, Louisiana is an undetectable launch platform for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, providing the United States with its most survivable leg of the nuclear triad. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Andrew McPeek)

This is our version, via our artificial intelligence model, of the image provided by JWST about the Pandora's Cluster/Abell 2744 on 15 February 2023.

 

According to astronomers, at least 50,000 near-infrared light sources can be seen in this new image from the JWST, obtained using the NIRCam instrument. We, through this image, see into the past, reaching billions of years into the past. Considering that the various sources are at different distances, it is a mixture of pictures from the past, with different ages. The light has travelled at varying distances to reach the telescope's detectors, representing the vastness of space in a single image.

 

One star is in the foreground, belonging to our galaxy, as are the other smaller stars in this image, all recognisable by the effect of diffraction peaks due to the Webb. The bright white sources surrounded by a hazy glow are instead the galaxies of the Pandora/Abell 2744 cluster, an agglomeration of already massive galaxies that come together to form a megacluster. The concentration of mass is so great that the fabric of spacetime is deformed by gravity, creating an effect that makes the region of particular interest to astronomers: it is a kind of natural supermagnetic lens properly called 'gravitational lens'. This lens allows us to see light sources far beyond the cluster that would otherwise be undetectable, even to Webb.

 

The distance to this cluster of galaxies is about 3.5 billion light years.

 

The file is available at 2.131 billion pixels for download at a resolution of 52932x40266 pixels.

 

Map of wavelengths/colours:

Blue: F115W+F150W;

Green: F200W+F277W;

Red: F356W+F444W.

 

Constellation: Sculptor.

Object Description: Galaxy Cluster and Gravitational Lens.

Distance: 3.5 billion light-years to cluster.

Release Date: February 15, 2023 15:00 (UTC).

 

Credits: science NASA, ESA, CSA, Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh);

image processing Alyssa Pagan (STScI). Magnification and reconstruction via AI by PipploIMP.

 

Our Facebook page: bit.ly/PipploFB

Our YouTube channel: bit.ly/PipploYT

Ricky : “See these bins behind me? Five days a week our library gets a delivery and someone on staff has to wear PPE and transfer all the items from the library system bins into our quarantine bins. All patron returns from the book drop go into quarantine bins too. We have to let them sit untouched in the bins for at least 72 hours before we can check them in. Why is it 72 hours, Mom?"

Me : “There's been an ongoing study on how long the Covid virus is detectable on many library materials. It's called the REALM Project. On the outside of most materials, Covid is gone after 24 hours. BUT on the inside, like the pages of a book, it took 72 hours for Covid to be undetectable. You can't just wipe down the pages of a book.."

Ricky : “So you just quarantine everything for 72 hours, just to be safe?"

Me : “Yep. That seems to be the best way to do it. So if any of our patrons has a book they know they've returned recently and it's still on their account, give it a week or so before you call us. Your returned item is most likely in quarantine somewhere in the library system and should be checked in shortly, and most likely will be backdated to lessen the fine when it is. The library system has been super forgiving about fines. This pandemic has been hard on everyone."

The German Type 212 class, is a highly advanced design of non-nuclear submarine developed by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) for the German and Italian Navies. It features diesel propulsion and an additional air-independent propulsion (AIP) system using Siemens proton exchange membrane (PEM) compressed hydrogen fuel cells. The submarine can operate at high speed on diesel power or switch to the AIP system for silent slow cruising, staying submerged for up to three weeks without surfacing and with no exhaust heat. The system is also said to be vibration-free, extremely quiet and virtually undetectable.

 

Type 212 is the first fuel cell propulsion system equipped submarine series.

 

Builders: Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH (HDW) Kiel Germany.

 

Name U-34

Laid down December 2001

Launched July 2006

Commissioned 3 May 2007

 

On the Clyde for Joint Warrior 2016-1

Joint Warrior is a UK tri-Service multinational exercise that involves numerous warships, aircraft, marines and troops.

Today's story and sketch "by me" you get a look at another

Intergalactic Recreation Vehicle from the Flip Flop

Resorts maximum security RV manufacturing and sales division.

It is the stealth model Moon Rock 23, a favorite for those in the

galaxy who like living off the grid in a self contained gypsy style

rig that is completely undetectable on the moon or desert location

like here in the southern Mohave Desert. It is a favorite of folks who

have jumped bail, or those hiding from x wives, or the

"IRS", Intergalactic Revenue Service. Or like the couple

you see in this model 23 who have just arrived here in

Quartzsite, they are Devon and Wadena Tibble from Lippo

(the blue moon), they are hiding from Wadena's mother,

who had lived with the Tibble's the last 67 years, but

while on vacation they accidentally left her at a worm hole rest

area two years ago, that is frequented by intergalactic freighter

pilots, one of which they hoped would take a liking to Mom,

who is really a great cook and would be

handy whipping up moon pies for a pilot and

his crew on those long journeys to the outer galaxy.

But Moms story is for another time, until then

taa ta the Rod Blog.

   

PACIFIC OCEAN (June 28, 2024) – An AS-332 Super Puma, assigned to the Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship USNS Cesar Chavez (T-AKE 14), delivers supplies to the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Louisiana (SSBN 743) during a vertical replenishment at sea June 28, 2024. The presence of the SSBN in the Pacific demonstrates the flexibility, survivability, readiness, and capability of the U.S. Navy submarine forces and complements the many exercises, training, operations, and other military cooperation activities conducted by Strategic Forces to ensure they are available and ready to operate around the globe at any time. Homeported in Bangor, Washington, and currently assigned to Submarine Squadron 17, Louisiana is an undetectable launch platform for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, providing the United States with its most survivable leg of the nuclear triad. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Andrew McPeek)

The Shadow Fox is an unusual Mech design, in that combat isn't it's main focus, but rather, stealth. With Assault, and even Hero class Mechs becoming more and more common on the battlefield, Mech designers thought up a revolutionary new concept. Instead of just creating larger and more heavily armed Mechs, which would eventually end up in units so large, they would render everything else useless, they sought to create a whole new class of Mech, with one purpose, to be a giant killer.

  

The purpose of the Shadow Fox, is to stay out of combat at all costs, but rather to sneak up on it's target, deliver a killing blow, and then retreat undetected into the shadows, and it does this in a very special way. Fitted with some of the most advanced technology in existence, the Shadow Fox can cost up to five times as much, as Mechs five times it's size. Housing a top secret "cloaking" system, which uses micro cameras to reflect the units environment onto small reflective panels, meaning the Shadow Fox can literally blend into it's surroundings. The system works best when the unit is completely stationary, and becomes less effective when moving. This in turn means the Shadow Fox has to lay in wait for it's prey to arrive to achieve the best results, staying perfectly still, until it's time to strike.

  

Another unusual feature of this Mech design is the way the torso is laid out, having all of the important electrical devices housed inside a radar reflective shell, meaning that even when physically visible, it's chances of being picked up on any kind of radar or sensor unit is slim. This allows the Shadow Fox to creep up on it's target, usually from behind, without detection. All of this combined means that the Shadow Fox doesn't have to shut down to avoid detection like a normal Mech, but rather sit in a low power mode, and at the flick of a button, switch back to full power, all the while remaining undetectable.

  

However, being able to sneak up to your target is all well and good, unless you have the ability to deliver a killing blow, it's not particularly useful. The Shadow Fox's real power comes from a warhead so top secret, no one but the designers, field commanders, and the pilots know of their existence, anything else is purely battlefield rumour. After sneaking up on it's target, the Shadow Fox then picks out a specific area on a Mech, usually the legs, and then launches a magnetic charge, which are located above the cockpit. These have two launch modes, the standard explosive charge, and a compressed air system, for when noise needs to be keep to a minimum, but the latter system can only be used when the target is less than 40 meters away. Once attached, the Shadow Fox makes a careful retreat, and detonates the charge. A small Mech like this isn't going to be able to carry a charge powerful enough to take down an Assault Mech, even on the legs, so it uses an atomic charge, specially scaled down so that it only atomizes an area of about 5m², simply meaning that the area of the Mech the charge was attached to, is no more, and if this was indeed located on the leg, that Mech is now effectively destroyed. Carrying ten of these deadly warheads, a skilled Shadow Fox pilot can take down an entire squadron single handedly, given the opportunity.

  

The Shadow Fox also has a few other tricks up it's sleeve for when it's detected, it has two smoke plume dischargers located on the side of the torso, these funnel out a black cloud of smoke, which is filled with tiny pieces of reflective metal, rendering hostile targetting systems useless. Also located on the side of the torso are two smoke dischargers, these are standard canister sized smoke grenades, best used for creating confusion on the battlefield. Located on the roof is an EMP system, and being completely EMP resistant itself, the Shadow Fox can sneak it's way into a group of enemies, detonate the EMP, and shower multiple targets with warheads, before retreating to safety. A roof mounted 12.7mm anti-missile system is used as a last resort when retreating, to fend off enemy fire once detected. Equipped with dual jump jets on the hips allows the Shadow Fox to reach places enemies simply wouldn't even think to look for a Mech, this gives a huge advantage when scouting for an ambush location, and allows for greater opportunities to hide after detection.

  

Only weighing in at 22 tonnes, this unit is classed as a Scout Mech, as light Mech weight classes begin at 25 tonnes. This gives the Shadow Fox excellent speed and agility, with a top speed of 86mph. This does come at a price in terms of protection, being only lightly armoured, if engaged by anything bigger than a light Mech or light tank, it could be game over.

  

Even though this unit is designed specifically to avoid combat, it is still armed with an impressive array of weapons. Housing two 20mm heavy machine guns in the center torso, which are extremely useful when enemy infantry pose such a threat to this fragile unit. Along with the ten warheads, the Shadow Fox also carries two missile pods, one on each arm, which carry short range ballistics, but have a high rate of fire. The main armament is two Autocannons located on the arms, with a short to medium range, these weapons are excellent against light Mechs, and vehicles. The high rate of fire makes it difficult for the enemy to effectively return fire, and also allows the Shadow Fox to retreat while laying down it's own cover fire.

  

So far only five units have been fielded, and so far, five remain. This unit really does epitomize the saying: Think smarter, not harder.

As flightless birds, ostriches are unable to build nests in trees, so they lay their eggs in holes dug in the ground. To make sure that the eggs are evenly heated, they occasionally stick their heads into the nest to rotate the eggs. Ostrich eggs are incubated by the females by day and by the males by night. This uses the coloration of the two sexes to escape detection of the nest, as the drab female blends in with the sand, while the dark-colored male is nearly undetectable in the night.

NGC 2146 is a disrupted barred spiral galaxy in the constellation of Camelopardalis. It was discovered in 1876 by German astronomer Friedrich Winnecke, who was known for his work on comets, asteroids, and double stars. The galaxy is classified as SB(s)ab pec, indicating a barred spiral galaxy with tightly wound arms, and no ring around the central bulge. The "pec" descriptor refers to the "peculiar" appearance of the spiral arms, one of which is markedly stretched and inclined to the galactic plane by nearly 45*. Very high star formation rate (SFR) and densities within both spiral arms resembling large stellar trails suggest the galaxy recently merged with one or two substantial dwarf satellites, and is presently reforming into a larger object. Some sources suggest that NGC 2146 may have interacted with a nearby small galaxy, NGC 2146a, however that seems unlikely because the small galaxy's spiral structure appears quite well preserved. Aside from its disrupted aspect and starburst activity, NGC 2146 is also distinctive due to its conspicuous dust lanes extending across the background glow of the galactic core. Spectroscopy of the central region reveals widening of spectral lines. This indicates a high velocity dispersion of the stars in the nucleus due to the presence of a central supermassive black hole (SMBH). Absence of an active galactic nucleus means thet the central SMBH is not presently accreting matter.

 

Assuming its measured redshift of 0.00298 is caused exclusively by the expansion of space (Hubble Flow), NGC 2146 would lie at a distance of 41.3 Mly. However, the median value of 16 redshift-independent distance measurements is 17.40 Mpc, or 56.72 Mly. The two distance estimates differ because the measured redshift actually results from the combined motion due to Hubble Flow and the object's "peculiar velocity" through space. When available in a statistically valid number of measurements, redshift-independent estimates are generally regarded as more accurate for nearby galaxies, closer than approximately 140 Mly. From the apparent magnitude and angular size, accepting the distance of 56.72 Mly, we can derive the galaxy's actual diameter of 97,000 ly and absolute magnitude of -20.64. NGC 2146 is some 20-30% smaller, and about 15% less bright than the Milky Way.

 

Chandra CXC HIPS X-ray sky survey (SIMBAD) shows numerous X-ray sources within the NGC 2146 core, in the spiral arms, and in its halo. While it is possible that some of the sources may be local to the Milky Way, clustering of the sources around NGC 2146 suggests that most are of extragalactic origin.

 

The most common mechanism for X-ray emission in astronomical objects involves very hot ionized gases at temperatures of millions to hundreds of millions Kelvin (K). Stellar coronas, especially in young blue giants, emit X-rays, though they are regarded as relatively weak sources. Stronger emissions come from "X-ray binaries", "cataclysmic variable stars", supernova remnants, and hot gas clouds around stellar nurseries. Still stronger localized X-ray emissions are "ultra-luminous X-ray sources" or ULX. These are produced by actively accreting intermediate mass black holes (IMBH), usually identified in galactic disks, and by central supermassive black holes (SMBH) which define "active galactic nuclei" (AGN). By far the most powerful, but very diffuse, sources of X-rays are galaxy clusters.

 

While it is logical to expect numerous X-ray emissions in an actively merging starburst galaxy with accelerated stellar evolution, NGC 2146 has no identified ultra-luminous X-ray sources and no active galactic nucleus. This does not imply the galaxy contains no intermediate or supermassive black holes, but merely that they are not actively accreting.

 

On closer inspection, the attached image records a number of small, faint background galaxies, but only two of these have identifiers associated with measurable data. Based on a subjective estimate of their angular size and apparent brightness, the rest probably lie at approximate distances between 1 and 2 Bly. The image also records a single quasar (QSO) at a light travel distance (lookback time) of 9.2 Bly.

 

The distinctly blue galaxy Gaia DR3 1140883127890416128 may belong to a class of special objects: "Blue Compact Dwarf" galaxies (BCDs), which are field dwarf galaxies with inexplicably high star formation rates. BCDs are rare local versions of the "Faint Blue Galaxies" (FBGs), the most common galaxy type at redshifts between 0.1 and 2, but which are undetectable with small instruments. I estimate the apparent magnitude of this object around 20.5 and angular size at 0.15 arcmin. Unfortunately, no redshift information or color photometry is available in extragalactic databases, and the suspected nature of this galaxy can not be confirmed. For additional details on BCDs and FBGs please see section 32, Dwarf Galaxies, subsections 6 and 7 here:

www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/basic-extragal...

  

Image Details:

Remote Takahashi TOA 150x1105 mm

OSC 31x300 sec, 2x drizzle, 40% linear crop, 26x17'

Software:

DSS, XnView, StarNet++ v2, StarTools v1.8

Extragalactic Cosmological Calculator v2

www.cloudynights.com/gallery/image/123530-extragalactic-c...

  

The stealthy Night Raider prowls the Brikverse to hunt down and disable lost convoys and vulnerable orbital stations. Its shrouded engines and angular design make it nearly undetectable to conventional sensor systems, allowing it to unleash a deadly surprise attack with its multiple cannons and armor-piercing missiles. The Rubrum Crucesignatis has a standing bounty on all Night Raiders, but its uncanny aptitude at hit-and-fade tactics have made it difficult to catch.

 

The Empire of Luchardsko is a cool-looking, if lore-light, faction created by Falk for Brikwars. One of my favorites.

The Spirilium Stealth fighter was a vehicle originally owned and piloted by the Sith Lord Nodus Anguem. The strange craft is a curious organic structure imbued with the dark side of the force. It takes one of great constitution and will to control such a craft and places great mental and emotional demand on the pilot. The craft is extremely agile and nigh on undetectable, even by the galaxy's most advanced ships.

What we know for sure is that this is a very usual meteorite, made of creamy crystals, it’s an extraterrestrial pegmatite.

 

It is 98% enstatite... meaning it is almost monomineralic! Most pyroxenes on Earth have a mix of Fe and Mg in them so are darkly colored, but this one has essentially zero Fe in it, so comes as close to the Mg-rich enstatite composition as any pyroxene found in nature. Check out those smooth edges. Those are cleavages in this mineral which are separated by almost 90 degrees, a pegmatite texture.

 

A recent paper proposes that aubrites (a class of similar meteorites like this one), are samples of ancient Mercury, parts of its mantle that were blasted off in a massive collision, removing a third of its mass. Some of the material ended up in the asteroid belt, pushed by the intense solar winds or that epoch, forming the E-type asteroids. And like many other asteroids, various gravitational resonances with Jupiter eventually flung this material to Earth, a time capsule from the formative years of our solar system.

 

OK, so what supports this hypothesis? First, isotope analysis shows the aubrites left their parent body 4.563 billion years ago (20 million years before Earth formed). Our solar system is 4.567 billion years old.

 

We also know it was a crazy violent time back then. Entire planets were flung out of our solar system to drift away in cold, dead space. A planet the size of Mars smashed into Earth and ejected enough material to form our moon. Mercury came out of this rock fight looking very strange; it is very dense with a meager mantle compared to its heavy iron core. The aubrites might shed light on the formative years.

 

“They seem to match scientific models of conditions on the planet Mercury in earlier days of the solar system. We have often said that aubrites are very good analogues for Mercury.” — Dr. Camille Cartier, a planetary scientist at the University of Lorraine in France in the NYT. “Data from NASA’s Messenger spacecraft that orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015 supports similarities between Mercury’s composition and aubrites. ‘I think aubrites are the shallowest portions of the mantle of a large proto-Mercury,’ Dr. Cartier said. ‘This could resolve the origin of Mercury.’”

 

The BepiColombo mission is on its way to Mercury now and will try to test the hypothesis by measuring the planet’s nickel at the surface. If confirmatory, a meteoriticist colleague on FB summarized: “aubrites may suddenly be promoted from an oddity into some of the most remarkable meteorites ever collected — pieces of the solar system’s innermost world.”

 

Now, of the aubrites, this 2.4kg aubrite pegmatite is quite unique. It was found this year in Mali, and will be called Wad Alhath. It does not look like any other meteorite I have seen. It is almost entirely enstatite — a mineral common to the early stages of crystalline silicate formation in space. It’s one of the few silicate minerals observed outside the Solar System, particularly around evolved stars and planetary nebulae such as NGC 6302. Pegmatite is the crystal form, an orthorhombic and centrosymmtric cluster of crystals.

 

This aubrite has the highest concentration of enstatite (98%) and lowest iron (undetectable) of any aubrite. It makes for a beautiful enigma.

 

Here are some more technical details on the Mercury hypothesis from the scientific paper:

 

“Large proto-Mercury models match AuPB’s [Aubrite Parent Body, the place it came from] inferred characteristics: Aubrites share similar exotic mineralogies with Mercury’s lavas and are therefore regarded as potential analogues to Mercury’s crust.

 

A long-standing idea holds that proto-Mercury once possessed a larger silicate mantle that was removed by an early giant impact(s). N-body numerical simulations of solar system formation systematically predict bigger Mercury analogues, with 0.2 to 0.6 Earth masses. All these models are consistent with P recorded by Ni and Co Dmetal/silicate in the AuPB. Ni and Co abundances in aubrites support an AuPB with a mass of 0.3 to 0.8 Earth mass”

 

•E-type asteroids as the secondary aubrite parent body: “E-type asteroids are rubble pile asteroids with reflectance spectra and low densities consistent with an aubritic composition. They are located in the innermost belt, forming a large proportion of the Hungaria population, and encountered among the Apollo near-Earth asteroid group. Their orbits are consistent with the fall dates and the long cosmic ray exposure ages of aubrites, supporting the idea that they are the immediate source body of these meteorites. E-type asteroids represent a total mass of ~1.46*1018kg, which represents only a few ppm of the material that would be stripped out by a giant impact on a large proto-Mercury. The age of aubrites coincides with an early epoch during which the Sun’s wind, magnetic field strength and rotation rate each greatly exceeded their present-day value. We propose that following a giant impact, this early wind would have provided sufficient drag upon ejected debris to remove them from Mercury-crossing trajectories and generated a tailwind upon debris, propelling them to greater orbital radii”

 

• Implications for inner solar system early history: “In the scenario of a giant impact occurring onto a large proto-Mercury and sending some small debris up to the Hungaria region, it is likely that large amounts of ejected debris are gravitationally captured by the inner planets during their outward course. Up to 20% of escaped particles could collide with Venus, and about 5% with Earth. If proto-Mercury was 0.3 to 0.8 Earth masses and lost most of its mantle, that would potentially represent ~ 1% to 2.5% Earth mass of aubritic material accreting to the Earth.”

 

If so, we are not just "made of stars" but a bit of Mercury too.

The way I cleaned the ball probably would probably make a proper museum conservator keel over in shock. No Q-tips, distilled water or dental picks were used.

 

First, I removed the cap of algae with a toothbrush. Then I sprayed the newly-exposed surface with a household cleaner containing bleach, let it sit for a few hours and rinsed it with tap water.

 

After than I sprinkled an abrasive bleaching cleanser onto what would be the polar cap if the ball were a planet and spritzed household cleaner on it to activate the bleach. After about 15 minutes I lightly scrubbed that part of the ball clean with a tooth brush. I repeated that step until I had cleaned the whole hemisphere that was submerged.

 

Finally, I sprayed the entire ball with the chlorine cleanser, scrubbed it lightly, rinsed the entire thing and left it on the counter to dry.

 

As a result of this treatment we'll never know who touched the ball before it went into the water because any traces of human DNA that were on it are now gone.

 

When I examined the ball I saw that it had faux stitch marks in the pattern unique to baseballs. I then noticed that the surfaces within the stitch lines were covered stamped hearts and dots that form interlocking flower designs.

 

Only then did I see the faint circle centered in the space where the stitch lines are closest together. I could just make out a capital "J" at the center of the circle.

 

Shining my iPhone's flashlight on the circle revealed details that had hitherto been undetectable. There was clearly a "B" on the inside of the circle. There was another "B" on the opposite side. Then the full text became apparent. Around the inside perimeter of the circle was the sequence "JSBB" twice, separated by single asterisks.

 

With that I had the information I needed to do a search. Immediately I learned that one like in much better condition it is for sale on eBay. There it is described as

 

"Naigai Japan Japanese JSBB Official Game Baseball Rubber Ball Size: J"

 

Initially I did not know more than that because the only relevant search results were JSBB balls at American auction sites. However, thanks to Flickrite Nipponesque, I now know that the ball was made in Japan by Nagase Kenko Corporation (NKC). This ball is the Kenko J, which weighed 4.55 oz when new and is 8.5 inches in circumference.

 

An online source provides the following information about NKCb and its baseballs:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over 70 years ago, a Japanese merchant named Taikichi Nagase began manufacturing a rubber baseball that has become a Japanese tradition.

 

Combining a textured rubber surface with a hollow air center, “nankyu” baseballs are renowned in Japan for their safety and durability. More than 90 percent of Japanese children play with this safety baseball, and Nagase Kenko Corporation (NKC) is far and away the industry leader – holding a market share of more than 60%. In the eighty years it has been manufacturing this product, over 6 billion NKC balls have been sold – without a single serious injury.

 

Formally incorporated in 1936, NKC has now, under the leadership of President Jiro Nagase, developed into a global, multi-line sporting goods company. It has also become a worldwide leader in innovative research and the development of sports programs. In addition to its line of nankyu baseballs, NKC markets a wide range of sporting good products and services through its Team Sports and Tennis, Sports Flooring and Gymnastics Equipment and International Sales and Marketing divisions.

kenkobaseball.com/

The Kenko Air Safety Baseball™ compresses upon impact to absorb shocks and reduce injury. The surface features aerodynamicly-designed surface and a raised seam to simulate the characteristics, flight and bounce of a regulation baseball. Available in three sizes and weights to meet the needs of younger children and to facilitate their use in pitching machines, the Kenko baseball is the official licensed baseball of International Baseball Federation National Programs and many other youth programs around the world.

 

The Kenko Air Safety Baseball™ is the official youth baseball for the International Baseball Association (IBA), Confederacion Panamericana de Beisbol (COPABE), Mexican (FEMEBA) and Brazilian Youth Baseball, Africa Baseball and Softball Association (ABSA), Baseball Federation of Asia (BAF) and the Victorian Baseball Association of Australia.

 

The Kenko ball has also been adopted for use by youth baseball associations in Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Venezula as well as by Pony League, the T-ball association, a high school league in the Philippines, and by colleges in Taiwan.

 

Characteristics Of the Kenko Air Safety Baseball™

 

Performance and Quality

 

> same performance characteristics(flight and bounce) as a regulation hard ball

> in-house research and testing facility contributes to high performance and tradition of innovation

> rubber coating allows use in rain (they are even machine washable!) on wet surfaces and prevents marring of gym floors

over eight decades of in-house manufacturing experience

 

Safety

 

> minimizes young players fears, so that they can play more easily

> reduces pain and risk of injury, using air cushion to buffer impact

> ideal and optimal from a medical point of view

kenkobaseball.com/products-and-services/

 

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The Kento J baseball is available in the US market, though an advanced search turned up only one retailer, Markwort Sporting Goods, which is in St. Louis, Missouri.

 

For this reason, it's impossible to rule out the possibility that the ball entered the ocean on this side of the Pacific. However, the fact there's a single source and the ball is not available at giant stores such as Amazon and Walmart makes it more likely that this ball was lost in Asian waters or from a freighter on one of the trans-Pacific routes.

 

As someone who has never used a baseball for its intended purpose, I'm the last person to ask what use a fake baseball of this type would be. I think it's smaller than a softball. How it compares to the other type of leather baseball I cannot say.

 

Ocean Park, Washington.

Yellowstone National Park (Arapaho: Henihco'oo or Héetíhco'oo) is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

 

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the Continental United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in the park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river "Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (Rock Yellow River). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is not clear.

 

The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

 

The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote a number of detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Ferdinand V. Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".

 

By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds and the current system of park roads.

 

During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.

A large arch made of irregular-shaped natural stone over a road

 

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.

 

In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended management of Yellowstone's elk population.

 

The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (321,272 ha; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) burned.

 

The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (898,317 ha; 3,468.420 sq mi) in area, larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (35,220 ha; 136.00 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.

 

The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Teton Range and the Madison Range to the southwest and west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).

 

Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).

 

Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.

 

Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

 

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile (1 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cubic miles (2,450 km³) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and created the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cubic miles (280 km³) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.

 

Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts to world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.

Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring.

 

A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with >80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.

 

Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years, but the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.

 

The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge of earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome— areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement— had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. However, these changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.

 

Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including a 7.5‑magnitude quake that struck just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but damage was minimal.

 

For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over a four-day span under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6.34am; reports indicated no damage. This was the biggest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.

 

Over 1,700 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, Lodgepole Pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and Whitebark Pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.

 

There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between the months of May and September. The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.

 

In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.

 

Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact to the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases.

 

Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by using up nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time consuming and expensive.

  

Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion.

Bison graze near a hot spring

 

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. In fact, about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported case of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock has been filed. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that bison are the "likely source" of the spread of the disease in cattle in Wyoming and North Dakota. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management sending hundreds to slaughter. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and on Elk Island in Alberta.

Elk Mother Nursing Her Calf

 

To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly harass bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–97, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.

A reintroduced northwestern wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Starting in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park

 

By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.

 

An estimated 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully. Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population. Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.

 

Population figures for elk are in excess of 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

 

In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. The wolverine is another rare park mammal, and accurate population figures for this species are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.

 

Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes in the Snake River drainage from U.S. Government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law. Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and Prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the Boreal Chorus Frog.

 

311 species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded, however only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.

 

As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark which protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines —the most common tree species in the park— generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.

 

About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people— in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained fire fighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, though it is closed to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September— the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. Current policy is to suppress all human caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose on the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.

 

In an effort to minimize the chances of out of control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires which are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions which allow fire fighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, fire fighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. Fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. Fire Management Plans were implemented, detailing that natural fires should be allowed to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.

 

1988 started with a wet spring season although by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. A total of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participated in the suppression efforts, at a cost of 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilian lives were lost, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.

 

Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals— surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.

 

from Wikipedia

  

Reynaldo the weapons merchant caters to a steady stream of adventurers looking to spend their hard-won gold on the latest, most enchanted sword, armor, or helmet. (A stone flag in the store is a practically undetectable trapdoor, which will become significant later.)

 

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