Winter solstice is just a few days away, so I thought it would be a good week to share some of the fascinating recent news from astronomy.

A study was published in Science, summarized in a few news sites. Here is the least advertising-heavy version that I could find. It talks about how diverse life on a planet may be slow or unlikely to form, unless rich hydrocarbons are delivered to it from the outer edges of a solar system. Near the forming star, for example, the temperature is too hot for these gases to condense along with the planet, so they get blown by the solar wind and condense farther out. The hypothesized body Theia is what crashed into Earth (forming our moon afterward) and also delivered hydrocarbons and water. It's an interesting idea, and it makes Earth a little more special in the galaxy. That also makes it a factor in the Drake equation about the chances of finding intelligent life. I'm not sure how this theory squares with Venus, which is theorized to originally have had lots of water on it too.

Voyager 1 is almost 1 light-day away from Earth. This very anthropocentric "turning of the odometer" milestone will occur next year in November 2026. This article in Popular Science talks about it. I follow Voyager 2 on Mastodon, where there are automated reminders about the distance of both probes.

I don't know if Logan (aka loganbeary aka Dodecadude) is still alive. He left both Dreamwidth and Livejournal around the same time, but I thought his cancer treatment was going okay. He might appreciate this story in Scientific American about the magnetic sun. Scientists have a theory for predicting the solar cycle that is so effective that they're now forming a company to sell predictions based on the model. They don't know yet why the theory works, just that it's an effective model.

According to McIntosh, the Hale cycle and the sunspot cycle are both ruled by magnetic bands that wrap around the sun like rings. Near the maximum of the traditional solar cycle, two new bands appear at high latitudes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres; they have opposite polarities. As the cycle continues, they gradually migrate toward the equator, and new bands again appear at high latitudes—picture the arrangement as kind of like a conveyor belt. A terminator happens when the older magnetic bands finally collide at the equator. That meet-cute isn’t actually cute: it annihilates both old bands because their opposition zeroes them out. McIntosh’s model suggests the annihilation is the definitive end of a solar cycle.

There's plenty more astronomy news. It's an exciting time to be alive! Someday, I might even go study this stuff formally. I hear the Powerball lottery jackpot is up to 1 billion dollars. That's nothing to sniff at.

There's so much terrible stuff to discuss for Moody Monday, how about I try a different direction this week?

This YouTube video has almost too much joking around, but there is important biological and psychological information throughout. They discuss the many names involved in this topic: male g-spot, p-spot, prostate. Keep in mind that this video is very much not safe for work, not safe for the bus, not safe for most crowded environments. Listen at your own risk. I'll leave the link here with the title.

"How to rub your prostate?" (YouTube, 34 minutes)

I'm not sure how practically they answer the central question posed by the video title. It's a fascinating discussion, though, regardless of what preconceptions or history you bring to it yourself.

Normally, my team working on 40-50 tickets per hour is a respectable pace. About 2.5 years ago, during the semester start of the worst semester of workload at my job, we crossed 100 tickets per hour a few times. That experience was awful.

Today, I saw 85 tickets per hour once, and 70+ tickets per hour at 2 other times. That, plus we had about 1/3 of our full-time staff out for vacation or sick leave, so the workload was higher for those of us who remained. It was a very busy day.

I had other topics planned for Moody Monday discussion, but I don't have the mental bandwidth for it now. If I had any booze in the house, I'd be drinking it. I may still dress warm and walk to the store to buy some. Despite marijuana being legal in Minnesota for 3 years already, there's still no widespread deployment yet. Too bad, since if I had any edibles in the house, I'd be eating that too. This article talks about the slow rollout here, and it even mentions firefighters as another group of workers needing edibles to make their brains stop rehearsing the stressors of the day.