RSID: <<2021-06-17T23:31Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>


Welcome to program 209 of Shortwave Radiogram.

I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Arlington, Virginia USA.

Here is the lineup for today's program, in MFSK modes as noted:

  1:38 MFSK32: Program preview (now)
  2:42 Planets that orbit over the poles of their suns
  8:03 MFSK64: Night trains make a comeback in Europe*
14:29 This week's images*
28:28 MFSK32: Closing announcements

* with image(s)


Please send reception reports to radiogram@verizon.net

And visit http://swradiogram.net

Twitter: @SWRadiogram

 

From Science News:

Most planets on tilted orbits pass over the poles of their suns

The surprising discovery may reveal how misaligned worlds
arise

By Ken Croswell
June 14, 2021

Earth is on an orderly path around the sun, orbiting in nearly
the same plane as our star's equator. In 2008, however,
astronomers began finding worlds in other solar systems that sail
far above and below their star's equatorial plane.

Now a surprising discovery about these wrong-way worlds may
eventually reveal their origin: Most of them follow polar orbits.
If Earth had such an orbit, every year we'd pass over the sun's
north pole, dive through its equatorial plane, then pass below
the sun's south pole before coming back up again.

Astronomers Simon Albrecht and Marcus Marcussen at Aarhus
University in Denmark and colleagues analyzed 57 planets in other
solar systems for which the researchers could determine the true
tilt between a planet's orbit and its star's equatorial plane.
Two-thirds of the planets have normal orbits, tilted no more than
40 degrees, the team found. The other 19 planets are misaligned.

But the orbits of those misaligned planets don't make just any
old angle with their star's equator. Instead, they pile up around
90 degrees. In fact, all but one of the misaligned planets are on
polar orbits, having tilts from 80 to 125 degrees, the
astronomers report online May 20 at arXiv.org.

"It's very, very strange," says Amaury Triaud, an astronomer at
the University of Birmingham in England who has found a number of
misaligned planets but was not involved with the new study. "It's
a beautifully executed idea, and the result is most intriguing,"
he says. "It's so new and so weird."

The result may lend insight into the biggest mystery about these
planets: how they arose. Such worlds were a shock to astronomers,
because planets form inside pancake-shaped disks of gas and dust
orbiting in their stars' equatorial planes. Thus, planets should
lie near the plane of their sun's equator, too. In our solar
system, for example, Earth's orbit tilts only 7 degrees from the
solar equatorial plane, and even Pluto — which many astronomers
no longer call a planet — has an orbit tilted only 12 degrees
from that plane (and 17 degrees from the Earth's orbital plane).

"At the moment, we are not sure what is the underlying mechanism"
or mechanisms for creating misaligned planets, Albrecht admits.
Whatever it is, though, it should account for the newly
discovered plethora of perpendicular planets, he says.

A possible clue, Albrecht says, comes from the single exception
to the rule: the one misaligned planet in the sample that is not
on a polar orbit. This planet also happens to be the most massive
in the sample, packing the mass of between five and eight
Jupiters. Albrecht says that may be just a coincidence — or it
may reveal something about how the other planets became
misaligned.

In the future, the astronomers hope to understand how these
wayward worlds acquired their odd orbits. All known misaligned
planets orbit close to their stars, but are these worlds more
likely than normal, close-in planets to have giant planets near
them? The scientists don't yet know, but if they find such a
correlation, those companions may have somehow flung these
bizarre worlds onto their peculiar planetary paths.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planet-tilt-orbit-star-pole-astronomy-space


Shortwave Radiogram now changes to MFSK64 ...
 

RSID: <<2021-06-17T23:37Z MFSK-64 @ 9265000+1500>>

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net
 

From Deutsche Welle:

Night trains make a comeback across Europe

      More and more people want to respect the climate when traveling.
      Now, European overnight trains are making an unexpected comeback
      as a more sustainable long-distance option.

Christina Küfner
14 June 2021

Berlin's main railway station, Hauptbahnhof, just before 6:30 pm:
a long train with midnight-blue carriages stands at Platform 11.
Several people roll their suitcases past a carriage on which
"Nightjet" is written in large letters under the windows. In a
few minutes the train will depart for Vienna. The trip takes more
than 12 hours, but the passengers won't notice much of that.
They'll glide slowly from one world into another – while they
sleep. And when they wake up in the morning, they'll already be
at their destination.

Only since the last weeks of May has that been possible again,
because the coronavirus pandemic meant that, for months,
overnight trains couldn't run in Europe. Yolotzin Cruz Cedillo, a
musician from Mexico, is glad the service is again on offer. For
rehearsals she commutes between Berlin and Vienna, and until
she's vaccinated, she prefers to avoid the close quarters of an
airplane. "I feel safer in my own compartment in a sleeping car,"
she says. And she finds it good to be more environmentally
friendly when traveling.

Climate awareness has revived demand

Paula, a 20-year-old university student, who is standing a few
meters away and regularly takes the Nightjet to her hometown of
Vienna, agrees. She admits she finds flying slightly more
convenient because of the short duration of the trip. But for her
the ecological aspect is crucial: "It's very important to me to
travel sustainably. That's why I take the night train." It's an
argument other travelers here also cite when asked why they are
opting for an overnight train.

Demand has actually increased substantially, says Bernhard
Rieder, spokesman for Austrian Railways (ÖBB), which runs the
Nightjet and offers the most night train connections EU-wide,
such as those from Munich to Rome and Hamburg to Zurich. "Since
2017-2018 there's really been a boom in night trains." Other
railway companies that had already given up on the segment
suddenly became interested in cooperating on night trains with
the ÖBB, he says, leading to new night train connections
including from Vienna to Berlin, and very recently, to Amsterdam.

Night trains were long considered passé

The comeback of night trains was unexpected: until just a few
years ago, they were considered ready to be phased out in Europe.
The competition from cheap flights was too strong, and many
routes scarcely viable. That was why Deutsche Bahn (DB) scrapped
its "City Night Line," which provided service on a number of
popular routes including Cologne to Prague and Munich to Rome,
for instance. A spokeswoman for DB said that in 2015, the last
year it was running, it made a loss of €31 million ($38 million)
on those routes. A year later it was defunct.

The ÖBB then took over the German night fleet in 2016 and
modernized it gradually, a move spokesman Bernhard Rieder cites
as another reason for its success. It is also why he does not
care to hear people talking about nostalgic charm in connection
with night trains or referring to them as an antiquated form of
travel, because they are only getting more comfortable. In the 33
trains the company has ordered, which will be in operation
starting in December 2022, every sleeping compartment will be
equipped with its own shower stall and private toilet facilities.

European overnight train services are growing

Some sleeping compartments already have them. Travelers can book
a trip from €189, or €139 without shower and private toilet,
depending on ticket availability. Those who want to travel more
cheaply can spend the night in a couchette or in a comfort-class
seating carriage from €59 and €29, respectively. The range of
passengers who travel overnight is accordingly broad. Rieder say
all sorts of people take advantage of the service, from
price-conscious passengers to youth groups and families, to
international business travelers.

In addition, new connections will soon be opened. Starting in
December 2021, the route from Vienna and Munich to Paris, and
from Zurich to Amsterdam. In the coming years more are set to
follow, because the intention is to enlarge cross-border night
train service on Europe's rails. That's what the heads of
Austria's ÖBB, Germany's Deutsche Bahn, France's SNCF and
Switzerland's SBB agreed this past December on the sidelines of
the European transport ministers' conference.

A means of transport with a future?

So do night trains have a secure future? Trend researchers think
the chances are good – but they do point out that the conditions
for them have to be further improved, for example, by expanding
rail networks and making tickets affordable. In France the
competitive conditions for night trains seem to be improving
slightly, as Paris wants to ban short-haul domestic flights. In
Germany the Green party, which is likely to be part of the next
federal government, is promoting the same goal. Both the Greens
and the Social Democrats, currently one of two ruling parties in
Germany's federal government, want to curtail cheap flights.
Airlines pay no fuel tax in Europe and in Germany they are exempt
from value-added tax on international tickets – so they enjoy tax
advantages over the railway. As long as that financial setup does
not change, the competition from the aviation industry will
continue to exist.

But not all travelers are so ashamed of flying that they would
swap a cheap flight for an expensive sleeping compartment.
31-year-old nurse Ivana Viskovic would have flown to Vienna if
the changing travel restrictions caused by COVID-19 had not made
a complete mess of her travel plans. That's why she, too, is now
standing on Platform 11 in Berlin's Hauptbahnhof. "I'm taking the
night train for the first time," she says before boarding. Is
this a model for the future? "If I sleep well tonight, then it
might be."

https://www.dw.com/en/night-trains-make-a-comeback-across-europe/a-57878517
 

Image: Arrival in Amsterdam – after more than four years without
it, the Netherlands have again connected to the European night
train network.

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This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net

 

This week's images ...

Two examples from a collection of 120 Bakelite and Catalin
radios from the 1930s and 1940s. https://bit.ly/2S2m3eq ...

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The June 10 partial solar eclipse behind the Mackinac Bridge in
northern Michigan. https://bit.ly/3wz5E0j ...

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Blooms in a lupine field near Søllested, on Lolland island,
Denmark, June 8. https://bit.ly/3zAw57u ...

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Fireworks over the New York City, as New York state celebrates
reaching a 70 percent COVID vaccination threshold, June 15.
https://reut.rs/3gJ4HLQ ...

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An omega sun rising at Surf City, North Carolina, June 16.
https://bit.ly/2S2Az5W ...

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Lightning hits the Washington Monument, June 14.
https://bit.ly/35BWvrD ...

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"Missing from media reports of Brood X periodic cicada emergence
are statements summarizing the phenomenon as a sign of forest
health, 17 years of tree root nourishment being re-distributed on
the surface to the benefit of a wide range of organisms." And now
they are mostly gone. https://bit.ly/3vtuNYV ...

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Our painting of the week is "Monarch Butterfly No. 3" by Kathy
Morton Stanion. https://etsy.me/2U959eR ...

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Shortwave Radiogram returns to MFSK32 ...






RSID: <<2021-06-17T23:58Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>


This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK32 ...

 

Shortwave Radiogram is transmitted by:

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and

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Please send reception reports to radiogram@verizon.net

And visit http://swradiogram.net

Twitter: @SWRadiogram or twitter.com/swradiogram

I'm Kim Elliott. Please join us for the next Shortwave
Radiogram.