The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Busy weekend; lunchtime reading

This past weekend included the Chicago Gay Pride Parade and helping a friend prepare for hosing a brunch beforehand. Blogging fell a bit on the priority list.

Meanwhile, here are some of the things I'm reading today:

Back to debugging service bus queues...

Comments (1) -

  • David Harper

    6/26/2018 1:15:27 PM +00:00 |

    Apropos the tilt of the Earth's axis, as the NY Times article mentions briefly at the end, we should be thankful that our planet has a large companion satellite.  The Moon stabilises the tilt angle of the Earth, preventing it from varying by more than a couple of degrees.  This was illustrated dramatically in a research paper in "Astronomy & Astrophysics" by the French astronomer Jacques Laskar back in 1993.  He ran a numerical simulation in which he "removed" the stabilising effect of the Moon.  The Earth's tilt angle then underwent large (> 15 degrees) oscillations on timescales of a few hundred thousand years.

Comments are closed