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My mom and I both had three tattoos. One of hers was from before my time, and she got two more while I was a kid. I got my first one at eighteen; a matching one with my two cousins who are practically like my sisters. It was all three of our firsts. My second one at twenty was not perfectly matching but very samesies with my lifelong bestie. My third was just for me, and it represents a promise to myself.
My mom and I always knew we wanted matching tattoos eventually, it just took us both four to get there. But we’re finally here, with the matching tats we’ve wanted for years. We just kept not getting them, and another year would pass. I asked her to look at artists, find some she likes, and I’d do the same and we’d pick our favorite. It never happened, and eventually I said, “mom, I booked us a consultation.” I was dragging her to get a tattoo because I knew if I didn’t, she’d never slow down on her own long enough to get one.
I follow a lot of tattoo artists on Instagram, but most are states or even whole countries away. However, there’s one in Dayton I’ve been following for about two years. After seeing his floral work time and time again and thinking how amazing it was, I finally just booked a consultation because I figured taking at least a step in that direction was a good idea. So, my mom and I headed to Truth and Triumph Tattoo in Kettering and met Kevin Rotramel.
My mom had sketched a design of a sunflower, and after talking with him about what we wanted and where we wanted it, he said he’d come up with a design that was close to the original my mom drew, but just more cleaned up and with more depth and detail. While we had always dreamed of color, we both knew yellow would look awful on our skin tones, and just went for greyscale, which our artist highly recommended anyway.
Before I show you how our tats turned out, I want to showcase some of Kevin’s work. I know I said his floral work is what made me decide to go to him, but check out this insane octopus:
Or this sick giraffe:
How about this super cool lantern?!
And this castle is incredible:
Okay, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, but seriously Kevin’s work is so cool.
My mom went first, and I was starting to get nervous, but also was so excited to finally be doing this!
Finally, it was my turn:
Honestly it barely hurt for the first like half, but in the latter half of the tat I was definitely starting to get sensitive. I always seem to be chill for about an hour, and then right at the hour mark I’m like, “ooh okay I want to be done now.” But I hung in there!
And here they are, our matching sunflowers:
I am so happy with these! I appreciate Kevin for putting mine up a little bit higher than my mom’s so it wasn’t just straight up in line with my other two. I do love how my mom’s looks as her only back one, though. It’s framed so nicely! They’re the perfect size and aren’t too wild, just something pretty and simple to remind us of each other.
I absolutely love how they came out, and I’m just thrilled to finally have a matching tattoo with my mom. I know it’s corny, but sunflowers have always been a symbol of our love for each other, because we are each other’s sunshine, and we make each other happy when skies are grey. I love my mom and our tattoos, and I only wish we had gotten them sooner.
-AMS
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Family ties aren’t always a prettily done bow, sometimes they’re fraught with fraying ends and tricky knots, all woven together in the branches of family trees. Love ’em or hate ’em, everyone’s got parents, and everyone’s relationships with them are vastly different. Nebula Award-winning author Samantha Mills explores these varied relationships in her newest collection of short stories, Rabbit Test and Other Stories.
SAMANTHA MILLS:
Assembling a short story collection is an exercise in self-reflection. Material written over the course of years is placed side-by-side for the first time. Themes emerge. Preoccupations become clear. Where one story can be read in isolation and stand on its own terms, a collection can’t help but blare its author’s recurring fixations.
If there is one big fixation recurring throughout Rabbit Test and Other Stories, it is parenthood—specifically, the many ways that parent-child relationships buttress, cast shadows over, and intersect with so many other aspects of our lives.
Nearly every story here includes parents (usually mothers) and/or children (usually daughters). Frequently, this relationship is ruptured. Someone is missing, or dead, or dragged away by forces beyond their control. In “Strange Waters,” a fisherwoman is lost in time, struggling to get home to her children. In “Spindles,” a young fairytale princess has been separated from her mother during an alien invasion, and is struggling to make it to their rendezvous point before being captured. The settings change, the anxiety remains. What if, what if?
Parent/child separation is not something I keep writing about on purpose, but it’s a worry I can’t shake. When my first baby was born and then immediately whisked away for a 3-day stay in the NICU, I felt fear like nothing I had ever experienced before. I looked at that tiny face and felt the weight of the generations stretching behind me, the future spiraling uncertainly ahead of me, and I thought: oh no. I’m going to be scared for the rest of my life.
Weirdly, this was what leveled up my writing, though I didn’t realize it right away. About six months after giving birth, after years of fits and starts, I finally figured out how to craft a proper short story. The immensity and clarity of those new mom emotions were what tipped me over the line from knowing how to write a pretty sentence to knowing what I wanted to say.
Having kids forced me to think more deeply about my own childhood, both what I wanted to carry forward from it and what I wanted to leave behind. I was looking forward and backward at the same time—and god, I was so sleep-deprived! It was in this fevered state that I began to think about society generationally in a way I hadn’t before, reflecting on the ways that traditions or traumas (or traumatic traditions) are passed down from one generation to the next.
That tension—being caught between generations and deciding what, if anything, to do differently—surfaces in several of these stories. In “Rabbit Test,” the main character is prevented from getting an abortion by her parents; later, she has an opportunity to give her own daughter the choice she didn’t have. In “The Limits of Magic,” a repressive patriarchal state is passed down in the nursery by women who never saw a way out for themselves, and a new mother can’t bear to follow in their footsteps. In “A Shadow Is a Memory of a Ghost,” a pair of nemesis witches have to face the fact that, in trying to avoid the harms of their father, they’ve hurt their own children in entirely new ways.
There are good parents, here, too (the aforementioned fisherwoman; the fairytale queen; a tightknit family surviving in a mining colony company town in space), but even they make mistakes, because who doesn’t? What keeps drawing me back to this topic is the sheer variety of possible perspectives. I could write a thousand more stories and still not feel I’ve adequately conveyed the many facets of this experience. We do not all become parents, but we’ve all been children. We all spent our formative years utterly dependent on the adults in our lives—some up to the task, some not. It’s a bond that can be a comfort and joy for the rest of one’s life, or a fragile, fraught connection, or a disaster to be worked out in therapy for years to come, and whether we like it or not, this affects how we see ourselves and how we move through the world.
Now, don’t get me started on siblings.
Rabbit Test: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
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Here’s something you didn’t know about the Strait of Hormuz: It is named after Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian sky god. And here’s another: In about 20 years, Iran will likely be unable to throttle the global economy by closing this maritime chokepoint, as it did in response to the latest U.S.-Israeli war on its Islamic regime.
Why? Because we’ll be two decades further down the road to decarbonization. Oil will still flow out of the Strait, but it will matter significantly less to the world economy and the cost of driving in the U.S.
As of early 2026, there are around 5.8 million EVs on U.S. roads, or just under 2% of all passenger vehicles. Projections for 2050 vary widely, from a low of 11% to a high of 75%.
The chasm between those figures is due to two opposing forces pulling at the market. The case against accelerated electrification is bolstered by the recent slump in EV sales, which is driven, in part, by the dismantling of pro-EV measures, such as federal EV tax credits and EPA tailpipe emissions standards. But favoring accelerated electrification is the gas price spike due to the war in Iran, which has rekindled consumer interest in going electric.
Decarbonization will help insulate the world economy against sudden oil price shocks like those caused by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
Whether the number of EVs on the road grows quickly or slowly, it is safe to assume the vehicles will make up a significantly larger part of America’s car fleet 20 years from now than they do today — and that the people who drive them will be much better insulated against sudden oil price shocks.
The world economy as a whole should be better insulated, too, although predictions here also vary widely.
In November 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has been predicting for years that global oil demand would peak in 2030, introduced a Current Policies Scenario. It projects that, if current government policies remain in place (rather than changing as governments promise they will), global oil demand will continue to increase for the time being, postponing “peak oil” until mid-century.
It should be noted, however, that this change-nothing scenario was introduced following pressure from the Trump administration, which had been critical of the IEA’s pro-energy transition focus. The IEA’s Stated Policies Scenario still sees oil demand flattening around 2030 and then declining to 45% less than it is today by 2050. In the increasingly less achievable Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, oil and gas demand would drop by 75%.
All of those scenarios were written before the current war in Iran. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz (and the U.S. counterblockade) has added economic urgency to the energy transition that’s already underway worldwide. With petroleum getting more expensive and the price of energy from renewables dropping toward so-called grid parity, economic self-interest is replacing concern for the climate as the main driver of decarbonization.
The Strait of Hormuz is currently the linchpin of the hydrocarbon-fueled economy. But as the world pivots toward more sustainable sources of energy, a new geopolitical order will emerge. Will it be any more safe and stable?
Rare earth elements and other critical minerals are to the clean energy age what steel was to the Industrial Revolution.
For Gulf locals, a new order may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, as the discovery of oil and gas has brought not just prosperity to the region, but also pollution, corruption, and conflict.
The post-oil economy will have to be powered by something, though, so the Eye of Sauron will turn its gaze elsewhere — and because the infrastructure underpinning renewable energy relies on critical minerals and rare earth elements (REEs), places with access to them will fall within its sights.
The terms critical minerals and REEs are frequently used interchangeably, but they are distinct and that distinction will become increasingly relevant.
To picture the significance of these minerals, think about what steel meant for the industrial age. It didn’t power the factories, but it was the material used to build them. Critical minerals (including REEs) are the steel of the clean energy age. Without them, we can’t efficiently generate, transmit, or store clean energy. That’s why there’s a race to find, mine, and process the minerals — and that race is reshaping the world’s energy security landscape.
Hydrocarbon reserves are concentrated largely in the Middle East, plus a handful of other countries, including Venezuela, Russia, Canada, and the U.S.
Critical minerals, including REEs, are spread out rather differently. Major potential sources include Russia, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, southern and eastern Africa, Australia, India, and Vietnam. But China holds nearly half of the global total of REE reserves: 44 out of roughly 92 million metric tons, according to the USGS.
If we follow the theory that resource-rich regions invariably attract superpower attention, then the parts of the world where these building blocks for the new energy paradigm can be found may have to start preparing for foreign bases in their backyards and foreign boots on their territory.
One country, Greenland, has already drawn some unwelcome attention from a superpower. In January, U.S. President Donald Trump explicitly admitted that “mineral rights” were one of the U.S.’s motivations for seeking control over the Danish territory.
Maps of hydrocarbon reserves and REE deposits have one thing in common: clear centers of gravity. For hydrocarbons, it’s the Middle East. For REEs, it’s China. But geological luck only partially explains China’s dominance in REEs and critical minerals.
In 1992, during his famous Southern Tour of the country, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping remarked that while “the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths.” That saying is now literally carved in stone in an industrial park in Inner Mongolia, which is home to one of China’s largest REE operations. It’s ahistorical to claim that Deng had an exact roadmap in mind for China’s rare-earth ascendancy, but his quote works as a retrospective prophecy. It’s also proof of China’s ability to play the long game — that’s the other reason it dominates in REEs, critical minerals, and the renewable energy sector as a whole.
China now accounts for about 60% of global REE production — and Beijing is willing to go to great lengths to maintain its supply chain dominance.
It wasn’t always thus. Until the mid-1990s, the U.S. led global REE production. But then China swept in and used state subsidies, lower environmental standards, and a long-term industrial strategy to outcompete Western companies. By the 2010s, China had achieved near-total control of the global REE market. In 2015, Molycorp, the former flagship of American REE production, filed for bankruptcy.
China now accounts for about 60% of global REE production. Not content with its domestic deposits, the nation is acquiring REE and critical mineral projects around the world. In 2025, a Chinese company acquired an REE project in Tanzania at a nearly 200% premium over the market price — a sign of how far Beijing is willing to go to maintain its supply chain dominance.
But what makes its dominance so durable is not the mining of REEs, but the processing and refining of the minerals. China has about 90% of global REE processing capacity, a figure that rises to 99% for heavy rare earth elements, a subset of rarer and more valuable REEs.
That expertise is not easy to replicate. It’s taken Chinese companies decades to master the complex chemistry needed to separate and extract REEs from their compounds. That is why ore mined by Western companies often still ends up locked into Chinese processing agreements: There is effectively no viable, non-Chinese alternative.
While the map of global maritime chokepoints is fixed by geography, the importance of individual passages changes over time. The Strait of Hormuz, as mentioned, will almost certainly matter less in the future. The Suez Canal and the Bab el Mandeb Strait, on either side of the Red Sea, will likely stay vital as conduits for manufactured goods travelling from China to Europe, including EVs, solar panels, and other elements of the new energy order.
China is also eyeing the use of polar shipping routes to reach Europe and North America, which would allow it to bypass traditional chokepoints. However, they’d introduce a new one: the Bering Strait — and that would give Russia and the U.S. leverage over Chinese trade.
The infrastructure layer of the global clean energy transition is largely controlled by China, and its refineries are the chokepoints of the new global energy landscape.
But here is the crucial distinction between the ages of oil and critical minerals: Geography is no longer the primary factor in strategic power. With oil, control of strategic passages such as the Strait of Hormuz means control of the energy supply. With critical minerals, geography still matters, but the decisive factor is industrial.
Today, many countries can refine oil. But almost none can process REEs and other critical minerals at scale outside of China. This is the real endpoint of Deng’s 1992 vision: Chinese REE refineries are the chokepoints of the new global energy landscape.
And China has already demonstrated that it is not afraid to weaponize its dominance. In 2010, it banned REE exports to Japan over a fishing trawler incident. In 2023, it imposed a global ban on the export of REE separation and processing technologies — the ban was explicitly designed to prevent the development of refining capacity elsewhere.
For the renewables industry, this is a sobering reality: The infrastructure layer of the global clean energy transition is largely controlled by China — and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. To go green is, in effect, to go Chinese.
How does the global energy transition affect the U.S.? In terms of raw materials, the U.S. is, literally, resource-full. According to the USGS, the country is home to an estimated 3.6 million metric tons of REE reserves — a figure that likely understates the full picture.
In 2024, the Mountain Pass facility in California produced an estimated 45,000 metric tons of REE mineral concentrates, making the U.S. the world’s second-largest producer. The recently opened Brook Mine in Wyoming — believed to sit on the largest unconventional REE deposit in the country, with an estimated value of $37 billion — adds further depth to the American resource picture. And more mines are in development.
The U.S. has the mines of the future, but not the refineries needed to close the production loop.
But the uncomfortable reality is that mining is only the first step. For most of the past decade, the U.S. has been sending the ore it mines to China for processing. That creates strategic exposure: A single F-35 fighter jet contains over 900 pounds of REEs; a Virginia-class submarine contains around 9,200 pounds. REEs are also critical for technologies not directly related to clean energy, such as MRI and PET scanners. Should China choose to choke off REE exports, it would create crises in half a dozen vital industries, from defense to healthcare.
The U.S. is rightfully concerned. Since 2020, the Department of Defense (DOD) has allocated more than $439 million to domestic REE processing and magnet manufacturing projects. In 2025, it concluded a multibillion-dollar partnership to scale magnet production from 1,000 to 10,000 metric tons per year over the next decade. That would still be less than 10% of what China was producing in 2018, but it would be a step towards catching up.
Ultimately, Chinese dominance will be hard to displace in the near term. While the U.S. and Iran play tug-of-war with the Strait of Hormuz, Chinese megacorporations are fast replacing Middle Eastern petrostates as the kingmakers of the new global energy economy.
In that new world, the U.S. will have a seat at the table. The question is whether it will be a comfortable one. It has the mines of the future, but not the refineries needed to close the production loop. Unless and until that changes, the U.S. — and the rest of the world — will remain vulnerable to an energy chokehold that could make Hormuz look manageable in retrospect.
Strange Maps #1290
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
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This article The Strait of Hormuz is today’s energy chokepoint. China is tomorrow’s. is featured on Big Think.
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Although this picture is actually of the Pershing Square Metro Line escalator, nowhere near Hollywood in terms of actual Los Angeles geography — look, we’re going for the metaphor here, okay. What I’m saying is that I am still out here, on my third day of meetings, all of which seem to be going pretty well. It’s nice to keep busy.
Nevertheless I’ll finally be on my way home tonight after a week away, and I’m looking forward to seeing family and pets and being a massive introvert in my comfy office chair for several days. Los Angeles is wonderful. Home is even better.
— JS
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Just because something is created with a younger audience in mind, doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed by all. After all, whomst among us doesn’t love the idea of magic cats? Author Christian Bieck is here today to show us the result of his NaNoWriMo creation, A Basquet of Cats.
CHRISTIAN BIECK:
At some point early in their writing journey, every writer learns that a good way to start a story is by having an interesting what-if. So one day a few years ago I asked my family, “What if cats had magic?”
“That’s not a what-if,” our son said. He’s a walking encyclopedia, and generally knows what he’s talking about. “Cats do have magic. They can turn invisible.”
“Mrt?” Rex, our ginger tabby, said from behind me.
I turned to him; he was sitting on the back rest of the sofa. “Where did you suddenly come from?” I asked.
“And they have short-range teleportation abilities,” my wife said.
“And some mind magic,” our son said.
Rex said nothing, but his smug look clearly told me I should have known that.
“I did know that,” I said to him. “So what do I do now?”
I’m going at this Big Idea essay all wrong, aren’t I? Let’s try again:
It all started with a family game of Microscope.
For the less nerdy among this blog’s readers, Microscope is a cooperative world-building/setting-creation game. Players create a fictional timeline, and then events and people within that timeline to any depth desired. Afterwards, you can jump in and roleplay a scene.
We set the game in an alternate Earth medieval France. And the “people” to cats—cats that have even more magic than our real-world ones. Our main character was the friend, companion, familiar, however you call it, of a human mage, the Archmage of France and Spain. (Mages obviously also existed at the time.) Other mages were visiting his tower with their own cat companions, and something happened to them: the first event. Now the cats had to find out what had happened. Murder mystery with cats!
We spent a pleasurable afternoon fleshing out the story, as it was, ending up with a stack of index cards, but without an answer to the question what happened to the mages. Didn’t matter, it was fun. That was in December 2019.
Fast forward to late October 2021. An online article reminded me of the annual writing event called National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, and on the spur of the moment, I decided to take up the challenge and restart my fiction writing after a ten year break. My first NaNo attempt in 2009 had been successful in that I did finish a novel, but less so in terms of quality of output. So around 2011, I had decided to put fiction writing on hiatus and focus on improving my craft through the non-fiction writing I was doing in my day job.
So, what to write for Nano 2021? What if I used that Microscope game as a basis for my novel? What if, on top of their normal, natural magic, there were special cats with special skills? With mind-based magic, a magic that was quite different from that of human mages. And a mind-to-mind connection to said humans. And what if something happens to the main character’s mage, and the protagonist and his friends have to set it right?
I couldn’t find the index cards from the game anymore, but I didn’t really need them. I had my main characters and the inciting incident in my head; the beats in 3 disaster structure were quickly sketched out, and the story of A Basquet of Cats practically wrote itself. With the active help of Rex, and our female gray tabby Neko, who helpfully provided dialogue. (Have you ever had that thing where you look at the companion animals living with you, and comic-style speech bubbles pop up over their head, telling you exactly what they would be saying in that moment? No? I am sure John knows exactly what I mean . . .)
Okay, maybe “wrote itself” is a bit of an exaggeration, because even for a fantasy novel you need a (to naive me) surprising amount of research if your setting is alternate history Earth. What time exactly? (13th century, when Aquitaine was English.) How does the magic work? (No spoilers, just that Basque is the human language of magic, and “Abracadabra” in Basque is “Horrela izango da!”) How close to real cats are my cats? (Close. But they are cats, and that has consequences for the way they see the world. And how they behave. And communicate. And, and, and.) Do other animals feature? (Yes! But the PoVs are all cats!)
And then there was the question: for what audience was I writing Basquet? A story with animal protagonists feels like a kids’ book, so that was my starting point. I ended up writing a story that I would have wanted to read as a teenager, and be happy to re-read at any point later in life: an adventure story, a story of friendship, of responsibility, and of learning to value the good things in life and in relationships. My publisher calls it “For young adults and animal lovers of all ages”, and he’s exactly right.
I dream that Rex and Neko would also read and be pleased with the story.
(Full disclosure: I made up that dialogue at the beginning. But it could totally have happened that way; after all, real-life cats do have magic. Don’t they?)
A Basquet of Cats: Amazon US|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Author socials: Website|Bluesky|Linktree
Read an excerpt.
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This is fabulous news: The entire Old Man’s War series, from OMW to The Shattering Peace, has been nominated for the Best Series Hugo this year. What a lovely accolade. Here is the entire category:
And here is the full list of finalists for this year. In my category as well as in others are writers and editors and artists and others who I like and admire. This is an excellent year for the Hugos, and I’m delighted to be part of it.
Also, yes, I will be attending Worldcon this year. In addition to anything else, I am DJing a dance!
— JS
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scalziwhatever_feedThe Astra Awards are an award given out by the Hollywood Creative Alliance, and in previous years have been primarily for film and television, but this year they have branched out into books as well, across seventeen categories including Best Science Fiction Novel. And what do you know, in this inaugural year for the book awards, When the Moon Hits Your Eye was the winner. I am, of course absolutely delighted.
The awards were livestreamed, which I have posted above, and you can see my acceptance speech starting at 28:56 (if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the full list of finalists and winners is available here). In my speech I specifically thank my editors Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Mal Frazier, as well as my agent Ethan Ellenberg and my manager Joel Gotler, but also generally everyone who worked on the book up and down the production chain. There would be no book without their work.
In any event, how cool is this? It’s made my day. Winning awards is fun.
— JS
crooked_timber_feedI said a while back that nobody’s going to Mars any time soon. Which is true. But that doesn’t mean Mars isn’t interesting! Mars is very interesting.
So today’s paper is about Mars. Okay, it’s about a moon of Mars.
TLDR: one of Mars’ moons may periodically tear itself apart, turn into a system of rings around the planet, and then put itself back together.
You may recall that Mars has two small moons, Deimos and Phobos. Emphasis on small; they’re about 12 km and 20 km across, respectively. They’re so small that their weak gravity doesn’t pull them into spheres. They’re both irregular lumps, vaguely potato-shaped.
Now we have to take a step back and talk a little bit about the physics of moons.
You’ve probably heard of geosynchronous orbits. There’s a particular distance from the Earth — it’s about 40,000 kilometers — where a satellite will take exactly 24 hours to complete one orbit. Mars rotates much like Earth, so there are geosynchronous (1) orbits around Mars too.
So an interesting fact about moons: if a moon orbits above geosynchronous orbit, it will tend to very slowly spiral outwards, raising its orbit and moving further away from its planet. (2) (“Very slowly” here means over billions of years.) Our own Moon is doing this, drifting away a few centimeters per year. Contrariwise, if a moon orbits /below/ geosynchronous orbit, it will tend to spiral /inward/, gradually getting closer to its planet.
Furthermore: the speed with which a moon’s orbit changes depends on the distance from the planet. So if a moon is drifting outwards, that drift will gradually become slower as it gets further away. It will never stop entirely, but it will slow down so much that the moon’s orbit will be stable over astronomical time — billions or tens of billions of years.
But if a moon is drifting inwards? Then as its orbit gets lower, the inward drift will accelerate, lowering the orbit even faster. It’s a positive feedback loop. Which is not going to end well for the moon.
“Hm,” you may ask yourself, “so if close-in moons tend to spiral inwards towards the planet, faster and faster… there probably aren’t a lot of close-in moons?” And that’s exactly right! There are (at the moment) 467 known moons in the Solar System. Only six of them are below their planet’s geosynchronous orbit.
So what happens as a moon spirals inward? Does it crash into the planet?
As it turns out, no. When a moon gets too close to its planet, tidal forces begin to tear the moon apart. The point where this happens is called the “Roche Limit“, and it’s not a fixed distance — it depends on a bunch of things like the size of the planet, size of the moon, density of the moon, and what the moon is made of. But wherever it is, if a moon hits the Roche limit, well…
[don’t stand]
[don’t stand so]
[don’t stand so]
[close to me]
The moon gets torn to shreds, and the shreds form rings. This is (we think) how planets get rings around them. Current thinking is that Saturn’s rings, for instance, probably originated with a now-extinct moon with the excellent name of Chrysalis.
[and Saturn throws in that crazy hexagon at its north pole, just to flex]
Okay, so back to Phobos. Phobos is orbiting about 2.7 Martian radii from the center of Mars. The Roche limit for a solid object is about 1.6 radii. It’s expected that Phobos will hit that limit in about 40 million years, give or take. It will then be pulled apart and destroyed. And Mars will get a lovely set of rings!
Which, okay, but… the Solar System is about 4.5 billion years old. Phobos is scheduled for destruction in 40 million years. That’s less than one percent of the lifetime of the Solar System. Isn’t it a bit of a coincidence that we should be seeing Phobos right now, just as it’s starting its death spiral?
(It’s true that we’re seeing a couple of other moons doing this at Jupiter and Neptune. But those are giant planets that have ridiculous numbers of moons — Jupiter has over 100. And their gravitational fields are so large and strong that they regularly capture new moons from wandering asteroids and such. So a moon in a decaying orbit around Jupiter is not exactly a surprise.)
But okay, so Mars will have rings one day. Here’s a thing about rings: they don’t last. Over geological time, they tend to widen, spreading inwards and outwards. (3)
Eventually, the innermost ring particles hit the planet’s atmosphere and either burn up or crash. Meanwhile the outermost ring particles drift outwards until the ring is attenuated into nothing. This process can be delayed or complicated by the presence of other moons — Saturn famously has a bunch of “shepherd moons” constraining its rings — but the point here is, rings don’t last forever.
[well, they don’t]
So a while back someone had a crazy idea: what if, after Phobos breaks up into a ring, some of the ring particles disperse outwards and drift far enough from the Roche limit to re-coalesce? Their mutual gravity would be very weak, sure. But over millions of years, maybe they could gradually recombine into a new moon! One outside the Roche limit!
The new moon would be smaller, of course — at least half of Phobos’ mass would be lost. But while Phobos is pretty small for a moon, it’s still about ten trillion tons. Cut Phobos in half and you’ve still got a moon.
Alas, the math didn’t quite work. Phobos’ Roche limit was too low. Most of its mass would fall onto Mars. Not enough ring material would climb high enough to form a new moon.
And there the matter rested for a bit, until this latest paper. Which asks the question: well, what if Phobos isn’t a solid object? What if it’s a rubble pile?
See, in the last little while we’ve been sending probes to asteroids. And while asteroids all look pretty solid from a distance, when you get closer? Turns out a lot of them aren’t solid at all. They’re just big floating piles of rocks sand and gravel, very loosely held together by weak gravity.
[everybody looks a bit rougher in close-up]
You remember the DART mission a little while back? It’s when NASA blasted the hell out of a small asteroid, because it was cool. I mean, sorry, because for planetary defense and also science.
[we tried negotiating with the so-called “moderate” asteroids]
Well, that impact didn’t just hit the small asteroid. It literally blew half of it off into space. Because that little asteroid was actually a rubble pile. So the DART impact was a bit more… impactful, than expected.
[pretty much this, yeah]
Which brings us back to today’s paper! Because if asteroids can be rubble piles, why not small, asteroid-sized moons as well?
And it turns out that if Phobos is a rubble pile, everything changes. Because then the Roche Limit will be higher — further out from Mars. Because it’s much easier to tear apart a rubble pile than a solid object, yes? And if that’s the case, then Phobos will die sooner than we think, and the ring system that it produces will start higher, and will spread out further away from Mars.
And if that’s the case, then… suddenly the math works. Enough ring material will be high enough to re-combine into a smaller moon well outside the Roche limit. But that moon will still be sub-geosynchronous, so it will start spiraling inwards again. And so, over tens to hundreds of millions of years, the cycle will repeat.
It won’t be able to repeat forever, because Phoenix Phobos will be smaller every time. Eventually there won’t be enough ring material to produce a moon. But it could potentially continue for several more cycles.
And extending it backwards into the past… yeah. Maybe Phobos used to be a lot bigger! But maybe it’s been through several cycles already. Spiral inwards, hit the Roche Limit, break up into rings… rings spread out, inner part falls onto Mars, outer part recombines into a new, smaller version of Phobos… this could have been going on for a while now. And you’ll notice that this solves the “why are we seeing Phobos just as it’s dying” question. It’s not actually dying! Sometimes Mars has two moons; sometimes it has one moon, and a pretty ring system.
If the dinosaurs had owned telescopes, they could have seen rings around Mars. Whatever intelligence inhabits Earth in 50 million AD (4) may see rings around Mars. Us? We just happen to be catching Mars and Phobos at this particular point in their cycle.
But wait! As a bonus… remember Deimos? The other, more distant moon? Well, if the rubble pile model is correct, then some ring material might eventually be captured by Deimos. So while Phobos would get smaller with every cycle, Deimos would get a little bit bigger. And also, Deimos should be covered in a thick layer of Phobos material.
Okay! Cool theory.
Is it true?
Well, we don’t know. But we might know pretty soon.
JAXA, the Japanese space agency, is planning to send a probe to Phobos. It’s scheduled to launch in the next Mars launch window, which is in November-December 2026. That would bring it to Mars orbit by September 2027, give or take. JAXA has only a fraction of NASA’s budget, but they have a pretty good track record of successfully sending probes to do cool science in space. Their Phobos probe will orbit Phobos, scan it with a bunch of instruments, and drop a rover onto the moon’s surface. Then it will swing in close and take a bite out of Phobos’ surface for a sample return to Earth. And then for an encore, on its way out the door, it will do a close flyby of Deimos as well.
[unironically, fingers crossed for this]
So — if all goes well — we’re going to learn much, much more about the moons of Mars. And we could have an answer to the “rubble pile or solid” question in the next couple of years.
And if the sample return succeeds… well, we’d have some stuff from another world, which is astonishing enough by itself. But not just any stuff. It would probably look like a handful of sand and gravel. But it might be sand and gravel that has spent the last couple of billion years cycling between being part of a moon, then part of a ring system around Mars, and then part of a moon again.
And that’s all.
(1) don’t be that guy
(2) because reasons
(3) because reasons
(4) probably raccoons.
scalziwhatever_feed
When we explore our minds, our thoughts, and who we are as a person, we don’t always like what we find. Author Dan Rice takes a deep dive into the idea of accepting one’s true self, even if some facets are uglier than others. Grab a mirror for some self-reflection and follow along in the Big Idea for his newest novel, The Bane of Dragons.
DAN RICE:
Sometimes you have to go down the rabbit hole.
The challenge I faced when writing The Bane of Dragons was to send Allison on an adventure with a climax that ended her story and the series with a bang instead of a fizzle. Luckily, Allison had rabbit holes to go down, one that she had explored many times before and another she had only ever gazed upon.
The rabbit hole Allison spends much time spelunking is her inner self. In those dark tunnels she wrestled with, negotiated with, and sometimes was defeated by her literal internal monster that always pined for escape and to supplant her. This device provides ample ongoing conflict throughout the series after the monster wakes up in the first book, Dragons Walk Among Us. Allison’s titanic clashes with her inner monster, which she comes to understand is another facet of herself, mirrors the struggles young adults face as they pass from adolescence to adulthood, albeit in dramatic and often bloody fashion.
The other rabbit hole Allison must explore is the slipstream, described as a superhighway through the multiverse. Since encountering this pathway to alternate dimensions in the first book, she has dreamed of traveling it, and, while both sleeping and awake, has been commanded by a stentorian voice to enter the slipstream. It is something she both yearns for and fears. In The Bane of Dragons, it’s a yearning she must give in to and a fear she must face. The only way to protect everyone she loves is to travel the slipstream and discover exactly what’s waiting for her on the other side.
What Allison and her motley companions discover are strange worlds and monstrous aliens. They are captured by angry, terrestrial octopi, whom they attempt to negotiate with, with nebulous results. Instead of taking the fight to the monsters threatening Earth, Allison is handed over as a prisoner to her nemesis, General Bane. But not all is what it seems on the surface, and even the deadly General Bane, with whom Allison shares a kinship by way of her inner monster, is a prisoner of sorts, pining for freedom.
To free Bane and hopefully protect everyone she loves, Allison must finally come to ultimate terms with her inner monster. In the end, that means looking into the mirror and accepting herself, both the human and the monster with its fangs and claws and transgressive desires. Only by becoming one with her monster can she communicate to Bane and others like him how to break the bonds that hold them.
Just like in real life, young adult characters sometimes need to go down the rabbit holes, both those that spark curiosity and those that cause dread. It’s the only way to learn, mature, and find self-acceptance.
—-
The Bane of Dragons: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Books-A-Million
andrew_rilstone_feed
el_reg_odds_feedWho, Me? Welcome to yet another Monday, and therefore to this week's edition of Who, Me? For those unfamiliar, it's The Register's reader-contributed column that shares your stories of workplace messes, and how you tried to clean them up without dirtying your career prospects.…
anil_dash_feedIt's been a decade since we lost Prince, and I wanted to take a moment to offer a look back at some of the pieces I've written over the years, and share some of the work I've done, and hopefully it will give you a chance to explore some aspect of his artistry or legacy that you haven't yet had a chance to discover!
Perhaps a good place to start: It's time to discover Prince — a set of starting points to look at Prince's musical catalog, with selected albums (with more than 40 albums to pick from, it can be overwhelming to know where to start!) and some playlists that I created specifically to help new fans find out exactly why we love his music so much.
Another comprehensive overview: Every video Prince ever made. I walked through all of the music videos Prince made over the four decades of his career, offering some info and context that might help you find which ones are most compelling (or weird!) and worth your time.
I've also gotten to guest on a number of podcasts and in other media over the years to discuss various aspects of Prince's career. Perhaps none was more exciting for me than talking about Prince's history of technological innovation for the official Prince podcast. Then, no less than the New York Times described me as a "Prince scholar" when it covered the discovery of the earliest known footage of Prince as a child. There are a bunch of other podcast appearances (see below) but these felt like the pinnacle of legitimacy for my career as a Prince fan.
Here on my site, there are some pieces I wrote to try to explain a few of Prince's masterworks. I wanted to give a sort of x-ray view into the larger cultural and even political context behind his choices when Prince created his best-known artistic expressions:
Then, there are some fun artifacts and experiences about Prince that I found to be worth sharing, and other folks have found them to be pretty fun, too. One of my most favorite stories is The Purple Raincheck, about the time that Prince invited me to his house, but I couldn't go. And yet somehow, in true Prince fashion, I ended up with an even better story in the end anyway. If you've ever wanted to know what it's like to roll up to Prince's Oscars party, this is the one for you.
At the other end of the nerdy spectrum, there's this piece about my favorite floppy disc of all time, a rarity I was able to track down which contained the obscure font that Prince's team sent out to publications when he had changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, so that they could properly render his trademark icon. Later, with the help of the brilliant minds at Adafruit, I was able to recover the data from the disc after almost three decades, through some vintage technology and a little bit of good luck.
For Minnesota Public Radio's The Current, we also dug into Prince's history as a computer nerd. On Switched on Pop, we dug into Why U Love 2 Listen 2 Prince, with an incredible audio breakdown showing how Prince influenced everybody — including a direct connection to the biggest album of all time.
We've been lucky to have a global community of Prince scholars that's formed over the years, which regularly hosts academic symposia, publishes papers and books, delivers remarkable talks on every aspect of Prince's work and the impact of his legacy, and in general uses his art as the starting point for some pretty extraordinary cultural exploration. One manifestation of that tendency to take his work seriously is the spreadsheet of Prince recordings, which is a fan-created work designed to provide a canonical reference for the thousands of compositions that Prince created over his career, unifying the conversations and discussions that people have. This is genuine nerd stuff!
And finally, one of the things I'm most proud of is this talk I delivered just a few weeks after Prince passed, in Minneapolis on what would have been his 58th birthday. It covers a really broad swath of Prince's influences and both his technical innovations and fierce battle for artistic independence. But it also dives into a lot of my background and my family's personal history, and connects it to a lot of themes of immigration and the systems that govern how this country moves. A decade on, I think some of these themes resonate more than ever, and if you're willing to set aside some time for it, I'd really love for more people to watch it, as I think it speaks to so many of the things I care most deeply about.
In all, after the initial grief and shock of his loss, I've been pleased to see Prince's legacy and impact grow. It's been wonderful to see so many people be surprised and delighted at all the different ways his work and innovative ideas remain relevant and resonant years and even decades after he created them. And I never get tired of people around the world sending me links or images of Prince or Prince-related items, saying "this reminded me of you!". Whether it's from old friends or people I've never met, it's something very special to be connected to others through the art and creativity of a fiercely independent spirit.
Above all else, Prince wanted to encourage people to create and be creative, to have mastery over their work and their lives, to be their true selves, and to be loving and compassionate towards others. Like everyone, he was flawed and complicated and weird and contradictory. But unlike anyone, he was able to create new worlds that millions of people got to live in inside their imaginations, and to fight impossible battles against all the odds and still somehow prevail.
That's still an inspiring example everyone can follow, no matter who your are, or how you create in the world. And best of all, Prince has created a perfect soundtrack to help you do it.
andrew_rilstone_feed
crooked_timber_feedBack in the 1980s, I was (among other things) a writer and singer of satirical folk songs. Going to the National Folk Festival in Canberra at Easter, I caught up with old friends and was reminded that I had produced a book of my songs. Returning home, I dug out a copy, and decided to scan it. You can download the result here (big file)
A lot of the songs were topical and are now very dated. But the theme of the title song is one that, sadly, never gets old (true also of the Irish original) Here it is.
As I was walking past the lodge, haroo, haroo
I saw a most peculiar dodge, haroo, haroo
Bob Hawke came by and I swear its true
He went in red and he came out blue
And the Liberals* didn’t know what to do
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !
Where are the eyes that flashed with fire, haroo, haroo
Where’s the fear you once inspired, haroo, haroo
The bosses love you like a son,
You’ve got the greenies on the run
Flogging yellowcake by the ton
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !
Where’s the workers leader now, haroo, haroo
Consensus is the sacred cow, haroo, haroo
Our wages cut and hours froze
Except for the doctors and such as those
I think that something’s on the nose
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !
Where’s the voice that roared so loud, haroo, haroo
Wheres the left-wing stand so proud, haroo, haroo
You smile so sweet and you talk so glib
You duck and dodge and you fudge and fib
And you sound just like a bloody Lib
Oh, Bobby, I hardly knew you !
*For largely forgotten historical reasons, the main Australian conservative party calls itself “Liberal”
scalziwhatever_feed
Shown here in the midst of prepping our taxes for our accountant, not this week but a couple of months ago, because she’s organized about that, and that is, in fact, one of the many, many things I love about her.
Krissy and I actually do a terrible job of being in the same place on her birthday. Last year she was in California visiting her family, and this year I am California for the LA Times Festival of Books, where I have a panel and at least two signings tomorrow. Last year I made up for my absence by getting her real estate. I think this year I am likely just to take her to dinner when I get back. You can’t do real estate every year.
Every year, however, I so incredibly grateful that this amazing person chooses to live her life with me, and I make it my business to let her know how much I love, value and respect her. She is the reason I get to live the life I do. That’s a pretty big deal.
If you wish to wish her happy birthday in the comments, that would be fabulous.
— JS
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