%3Amax_bytes(150000)%3Astrip_icc()%2FTAL-perseid-meteor-shower-BSTMETEORSHWR0725-a8e1390ea4ff4cad8930e8311f0b637c.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
One of the Best Meteor Showers of the Year Is About to Begin—and It Can Be Seen Across the U.S.
One of the best shooting star displays of the year is coming to a sky near you. The annual Perseid meteor shower is visible across most of the U.S. from mid-July to late August. This year, the meteor shower is expected to peak on the night of Aug. 12 and before dawn on Aug. 13.
According to Space.com, to catch the shower's peak, you should start observing the night skies around 11 p.m. local time on Aug. 12 when the rates of shooting stars increase. The peak display will continue until dawn on Aug. 13. During this viewing window, you can expect to see an average of up to 100 meteors per hour.
The Perseids meteor shower occurs when Earth passes through debris (bits of ice and rock) left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle, a comet that is also the largest known object to repeatedly pass by Earth. The comet debris moves at around 133,200 mph in space and is typically the size of a grain of sand. The fragments become visible when they enter the atmosphere and burn up in a bright burst of light, streaking through the sky. Although the debris enters the Earth's atmosphere, it rarely hits the ground.
The Perseid meteor shower is most easily seen from the Northern Hemisphere, but is also visible in the mid-southern latitudes. Although it can technically be viewed from anywhere in the U.S., the meteor shower is much easier to see in dark-sky destinations where there is less light pollution. It is also helpful to find somewhere where the sky is wide and open since buildings and mountains can obscure the view.
No telescopes or binoculars are needed to see the Persied meteor shower, but Space.com recommends giving your eyes 30 minutes to adjust to the dark. It also helps to know where the meteors will come from.
According to NASA, the meteor shower radiates from the Perseus constellation, which follows the easier-to-find Cassiopeia constellation across the night sky. If you can find Perseus, you'll know where the meteors will streak across the sky during the celestial event's peak.
The Perseid meteor shower occurs annually in August, however in 2028, the shower is expected to evolve into a storm that will be even more spectacular than the standard, annual event.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Asteroid the size of 145 Elmos to fly past Earth on Tuesday, July 15
Asteroid 2025 MA90 is set to fly past the Earth on Tuesday, July 15. With an estimated diameter of 88.8 meters, that comes out to around 145 Elmos, thanks to measurements taken by Drew Brees. An asteroid the size of around 145 Elmos is set to pass the Earth on Tuesday, July 15, according to NASA's asteroid tracker. According to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the asteroid in question has been designated as 2025 MA90, meaning it was discovered and officially recorded this year. But thankfully this large asteroid won't be coming too close to the Earth, which is fortunate, as scientists working in the field of planetary defense have recently determined that asteroid deflection has more complications than they previously thought. NASA CNEOS's estimates place asteroid 2025 MA90's diameter as being anywhere between 66 meters to 150 meters. Using the Eyes on Asteroids tool, we get a more conservative estimate of 88.8 meters. To put that in a more familiar metric, let's use a classic pop culture icon that has helped define the early childhoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world: Elmo. Yes, the familiar red monster, the most famous Muppet of Sesame Street. We're measuring an asteroid with him. So how big is Elmo, exactly? There is no shortage of merchandise of the character, all of varying sizes, but how tall is the character in the Sesame Street canon? No official size has been given by the creators of Sesame Street. However, diving deep into the history of the character, we at The Jerusalem Post were able to find a special 2011 guest appearance by Drew Brees, quarterback for the NFL team the New Orleans Saints. In this "Word of the Day" segment, where the characters and viewers learn about a new word, Brees demonstrates the word "measure" and proceeds to measure Elmo's height, which clocks in at 24 inches, or 60.96 centimeters. With that in mind, asteroid 2025 MA90 is around the size of 145 Elmos, going by his Drew Brees-measured height. As Brees notes in the Sesame Street video, you can use anything to measure, which he promptly proved by measuring Elmo in terms of potatoes and tubes of toothpaste. According to Brees, Elmo is four potatoes tall, and three tubes of toothpaste tall. With that in mind, asteroid 2025 MA90's diameter would be the size of 435 tubes of toothpaste, or 580 potatoes - at least the ones used on Sesame Street in 2011. Of course, were we to use Brees himself, the result would be different, as he stands at six feet tall, or 1.8288 meters, meaning the asteroid's diameter would be around 48.5 Drew Brees. At 88.8 meters, asteroid 2025 MA90 has the potential to do some pretty substantial damage. The last asteroid impact to cause major damage to the Earth was in 2013, when an asteroid impacted over Chelyabinsk, Russia. The resulting airburst - when an asteroid explodes after impacting the atmosphere - resulted in a large and powerful shockwave that was felt regionally. Over 7,000 buildings in multiple cities were damaged, and over 1,000 people were injured, mostly by broken glass. In the grand scheme of asteroid impacts, this was fairly benign, but as an isolated incident, it could be seen as having caused considerable damage. And that asteroid was only around 20 meters in diameter. At 88.8 meters, asteroid 2025 MA90 would be far more destructive. But what if NASA's largest estimate, 150 meters, was correct? At that size, it would pass the threshold to be considered a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA). According to research from the Davidson Institute of Science, the educational arm of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, an asteroid 140 meters in diameter or more would release an amount of energy at least a thousand times greater than that released by the first atomic bomb if it impacted Earth. But luckily, asteroid 2025 MA90 isn't going to come too close to the Earth, instead passing by over six million kilometers away. And this is especially fortunate, considering humanity is not yet ready to combat an asteroid impact. An asteroid impact is among the most destructive natural disasters that could occur. As such, scientists have been hard at work in the field of planetary defense to try and protect the planet from these giant space rocks. Because yes, it isn't only Elmo that hates certain rocks - if you know, you know. The most promising effort in this field was the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which slammed into a far away asteroid to see if it could impact its orbit. While at first this mission seemed to have been a success, a recent study published in the peer-reviewed academic periodical the Planetary Science Journal found that the actual result was more complicated. Rather than just deflecting the asteroid, the DART impact ejected several boulders out of the main body. These ejections added more force to the impact, almost as much as the DART impact itself. This means that the actual success of asteroid deflection is harder to predict, so humanity still has a way to go before making themselves safe from asteroids.
Forbes
35 minutes ago
- Forbes
The Dreck Equation: A Drake Equation For Mapping The Hidden Universe Of Federal Regulation
Joe Biden's 2024 regulatory big bang—106,109 Federal Register pages—shattered cosmic records. But the 3,000 notice-and-comment rules chronicled there every year and archived in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) comprise a fragment of the regulatory universe. The notice-and comment rulemaking so many emphasize as 'regulation' is light years from encompassing the full sweep of federal intervention in the economy, business and households. Andromeda Galaxy, M31, with the Lunt 80mm f/7 doublet apo refractor for stack of 5 x 15 minute ... More exposures at ISO 800 with Canon 5D MkII and Borg 0.85x flattener/reducer. Companion galxies, M31 and M110 also shown. Taken from home. Field is roughly 4 x 2.5. (Photo by: Alan Dyer /VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) To the observable final rules total one must add 'rule equivalents' stemming from other corners of the legislative and administrative state galaxy. These include: I have a fondness for astronomy and for astronomical analogies regarding the unknowable, and federal interventions beyond fiscal outlays, debt and conventional regulation fit the bill. The Drake Equation, created in 1961 by astronomer Frake Drake, is a way researchers guesstimate how many alien civilizations might be chatting out there in the Milky Way. Drake's approach was multiplying the likelihoods of key junctures in the progression of extra-solar planets potentially harboring life capable of communications. Carl Sagan on the classic television series Cosmos explained Frank Drake's equation to estimate 'N'—the number of talkative alien civilizations—by multiplying the following terms: Probabilities decrease the further to the right, but multiplying terms gives one a rough guess of who's out there yakking it up. Tiny changes in assumptions yield a universe teeming with life, or a humanity cold and alone. Sagan sketched out an optimistic take of millions of civilizations in the Milky Way—and a pessimistic yet still thrilling guess of 10. TALLAHASSEE, FL - 1984: Astrophysicist Carl Sagan poses before a Florida State University ... More Distinguished Lecture Series speech at the Turnbull Conference Center in circa 1984 in Tallahassee, Florida. The original background of the image has been replaced by a NASA photo of the Cosmos. (Photo by Mickey Adair/ Michael Ochs Archives/ Getty Images) Dreck Invasion: A Drake Equation For Detecting Alien Rule Equivalents in the Administrative Universe Official measurements of regulation and burdens of intervention are rare and sketchy – more astrology than astrophysics in the best of circumstances. Even rules themselves were not counted until 1976, when they stood at a whopping 7,401. Whether in terms of effect, scope, or (most significantly) dollar costs, we simply do not possess particularly useful additive units of regulation the way we can reckon dollars of federal spending. Counting numbers of rules, as we do here like everyone else, is crude since rules' effects are all different. But rule counts are what we have. So with that in mind and with apologies to Messrs. Drake and Sagan, we present a 'Dreck Equation' for framing a more universal portrayal of rules alongside the heretofore invisible 'rule equivalents' capable of eclipsing the countable rules observable by the naked eye. While today's 440-plus agencies issue over 3,000 ordinary rules (thankfully not the 7,000 of yesteryear), the vastness and complexity of more abnormal forms such as dark matter, federal contracting conditions, subsidies, pass-through grants-in-aid to states and localities and more generate unappreciated rule equivalence. A preliminary, simplified, crude, average 'Dreck Load' (DL)—rules plus effective rule equivalents that everyone obeys in a given year —may be expressed in like this: The Dreck Equation would actually need to be a matrix capturing agencies individually as well as recognizing variations in the burdens of their individual dreck components; not a mere average. This discussion aims only at countdown and launch. Term 1: Rulemaking Vector in the Dreck Equation The term 'R' is simply the 3,000 or so rules published in the Federal Register each solar system year (sometimes fewer under Trump administration). For modeling, analysts might use an average over 10 years, or the prior average of the party in power to loosely capture a Trump deregulatory or Biden regulatory culture, respectively. Researchers could isolate rules from select agencies, narrow exploratory emphasis to significant rules, or some other interest. One could also expand 'R' terms to investigate the likes of number of new core priorities or policy imperatives a particular administration might intend to address with rulemaking (for example, infrastructure or immigration policy). Other approaches might emphasize number of new proposed rules, the chance the proposal is finalized, fractions of rules repealed, fraction of rules deregulatory, and so forth. These are all important, but for our first crude pass we'll just stick with 'R,' knowing that rules vary infinitely in their effects and aren't inherently additive. If notice and comment rules fully captured regulation and intervention in the economy, there would be no Dreck Equation. Despite being the most commented-upon and analyzed when it comes to costs and burdens, ordinary shiny-object notice and comment rules may comprise the least of federal intervention. Where the Drake equation depicts the bottlenecks that narrow probabilities of life for an entire galaxy, Dreck is adding back the extant uncounted alien rules, those whose burden's origin is otherwise than the agency's rulemaking process. Dreck is intended to highlight that rules are not alone in the regulatory universe, and urge that policymakers recognize and be held to account for the laundering of regulation by non-rule means to influence outcomes or inflict obligations, whether intentional or not. These will include the big bang of guidance documents and policy statements, the procurement and contracting hypergiant, and astronomical spending and subsidies—for starters. Term 2: The Regulatory Dark Matter Vector in the Dreck Equation (DM × β) Unlike rules (R) in term one, there's no centralized or mandatory reporting structure for guidance documents, policy statements, bulletins, circulars, memoranda, manuals, letters, advisory opinions, administrative interpretations and other assorted variants of regulatory dark matter. Therefore, the numerical quantity of 'DM' is unknown, as of course is how it all translates into rule equivalents. Guidance can proliferate since it skips the formal notice-and-comment process, perhaps deliberately so. It's just easier. The Regulatory Group asserts that "In most agencies, the volume of guidance material usually far exceeds the volume of legally enforceable regulations,' but one finds no official reckoning, making guidance worthy of the 'dark matter' moniker. For our Dreck purposes, the estimated or expected number of guidance documents (DM) can be multiplied by the probability (β) that guidance on the whole acts like a 'rule' (such as 0.3 for 30 percent chance affected parties treat the missive as a must-follow) to 'tally' rule equivalents. For simple reference, a weighting of 0.1 would imply that 10 guidance documents are equivalent to one rule. We're talking gross numbers here but naturally a better treatment would consist of guidance by agency and type utilizing appropriate probabilities (the 'matrix' referred to above, to be invented by future galaxy-brains). While estimates for the amount of guidance in existence or birthed yearly may not be as speculative as extrasolar planetary life, the magnitude remains bathed in the radiation of indifference. To begin exploration of this space, regu-nauts should know that even in the wake of Joe Biden's recission of Trump's executive order 13891 ('Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents') requiring agency online portals, one can still access a subset of over 108,000 documents, up from a few thousand a decade ago. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration, can issue thousands of guidance documents yearly. The likes of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) environmental compliance guidance and Department of Labor (DOL) advisories are also prolific. The list goes on. The weighting beta (β) for the entire inventory of guidance in terms of impact, scope or enforceability is even more unknowable than the numerical inventory itself, but that's why Dreck is here, to speculate and urge policymakers to cope with this neglected frontier. In terms of weighting guidance, at one extreme, purely advisory or informational guidance—which is supposed to describe the totality—would be close to zero. But some guidance can be high-gravitational, de facto binding with rule-like effects. Such guidance could be weighted closer to one (β of, say, 0.8–0.9). Examples might include Department of Education "Dear Colleague" letters, or EPA guidance tied to permitting giving the impression of being binding and enforceable due to the threat of audits or fines, such as EPA "Waters of the United States" (WOTUS) guidance interpreting the Clean Water Act. In tax policy, the Internal Revenue Service relies heavily on notices attempting to interpret tax laws and clarify compliance for business and individual taxpayers who tend to treat them as binding despite nominal non-regulatory status. In immigration policy, Deferred Action for Childhood arrivals was implemented through a mere Department of Homeland Security memorandum that Trump ultimately could not reverse. Other guidance might be regarded as more moderately gravitational (β of 0.4–0.7, let's say), such as labor and employment announcements on workplace policies, wage standards and anti-discrimination enforcement. The DOL's administrator interpretations on independent contractor status and franchising policy had significant implications for gig workers and small businesses that are still being ironed out. Healthcare policy guidance addressing issues like drug approvals, reimbursement policies, or pandemic emergency measures might fit here. On the other hand, healthcare guidance can be enforceable and approach a rule-equivalent β of 1.0 if tied to funding mechanisms like Medicare or Medicaid. Financial regulators also liberally issue guidance on risk and, consumer protections and in endeavors such as payday loans. Term 3: The Contracting/Procurement Vector in the Dreck Equation (C × β1) When an agency uses a contractor to fulfill a project or provide a service, the terms of that contract may include regulatory compliance requirements such as environmental or labor adherences. These can be enforced through the contract itself, committed to by the recipient(s) in response to the conditions attending a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) or other avenues. The contractor assumes responsibility for adhering to 'regulations,' but the agency's public notice and comment rulemaking is not involved. The $42 billion 'BEAD' (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program administered by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration is a striking example. Thise vector is really a category of dark matter, but the presence of the massive federal contracting and acquisition regime (that boasts occasionally of being the 'world's largest purchaser of goods and services') lends itself to isolating it conceptually. The GAO notes that the federal government committed to $755 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2024. One important DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) legacy has been the raising of awareness of the number of contracts and their costs. Along with their number, the β1 weighting can help portray the proportion of the overall contract load that includes or induces rule-like terms (such as a probability overall of 0.2 for a 20 percent chance). Every agency and every contract will be different, of course. Term 4: The Subsidies/Grants Vector in the Dreck Equation ($ × β2) Recent legislation – such as the CARES Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Act and the CHIPS and Science Act – entails spending that is highly regulatory and interventionist (not to mention in disregard of enumerated powers) even before downstream agencies begin writing rules. The U.S. Grants website points to '38,302 funding programs and $1,000,090.45B allocated funding to date," and the presence of over 78,000 'funding and grant opportunities.' Meanwhile, in a newly updated report, the Congressional Research Service affirms that 'In FY2024, the federal government provided an estimated $1.1 trillion to state and local governments in federal grants, funding a wide range of public policy initiatives such as health care, transportation, income security, education, job training, social services, community development, and environmental protection.' That's over a trillion dollars in one year alone, and each of those categories sports their own sets of often regulatory conditions to receive funding. While there is no direct way of translating the number of grants or the dollars into a countable numerical rule equivalents, the chance (β2) that dispensations on the whole have rule-like conditions (such as 0.1 for a conservative 10 percent chance) can be applied to the number (or dollar amounts of) of grants, subsidies and funding awards ($) for exploration. The point is to at least stop disregarding potential rule-making vectors. Outer Space Explorations: Other Vectors Of The Regulatory Big Bang The foregoing is intended to set policymakers on the path to recognizing a sweep of regulation/intervention and displacement of free competitive enterprise far more substantial than that captured in notice and comment regulation, and to do something about it. There is much more to add to this simple Dreck Equation, however. Tariffs, government loans, antitrust regulation, green treaty sign-ons, prescriptive R&D, government takeovers of swaths of retirement and health care, and public-private partnerships (PPPs) are – like all the foregoing – rarely recognized as regulation but deserving of their on rule-equivalency β transformer regime. In PPPs, for example, privatizations (such as of infrastructure grids and government-owned lands,) that should have long since been achieved under a system of free enterprise and limited government are abandoned and replaced by the fusing of public and private sector entities to fulfill government pursuits. That makes future light-touch regulation even more difficult and unlikely. The emergence of smart cities is particularly vulnerable to such regulatory capture. Ultimately, Washington may simply elect to govern a sector outright, such as in space projects, leaving no privatization alternative intact for our descendants. This points up one of the flaws in cost-benefit analysis in conventional regulation; if certain parties want government to fully control a sector, recognizing incremental regulation as costly simply does not figure into the worldview (a New York mayoral candidate's call for government-owned grocery stores illustrates an example of this phenomenon). The Dreck Equation is an appeal to policymakers to recognize that unwarranted regulation of every sort, not just notice and comment but realms beyond can sacrifice startups, employment and wealth creation. Looming on the event horizon is the potential for regulatory 'dark energy' enabled by the Internet of Things, exemplified by remote automobile disabling technology birthed in the IIJA. Businesses and homes are just as vulnerable. The Dreck Equation as Policy Warp Drive Naturally, the β weighting actor shifts upward when administrations are inclined to treat guidance as binding (such as Biden's numerous DEI initiatives). Conversely, these higher-β rule-like features can be wrestled downward toward 0.0 or 0.1 by motivated policymakers. Judicial scrutiny such as recent SCOTUS decisions limiting agency authority can have similar liberating effect. Congress's most important steps entail abolishing agencies, banning private aid, an emergency law banning sub-regulatory guidance, ending antitrust regulation, disavowing and restricting PPPs and other forms of business model control, terminating grants-in-aid and leaving funds in the states where they originated, and more. Incremental steps to lessen β include legislation like the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD Act), the Guidance Clarity Act, and a genus-and-species classification system for guidance (like the U.S. Code for laws and the CFR for rules). Executive orders, such as a strengthened re-issue of Trump's 13891 purging, reducing use of, and disclosing guidance are important. Executive actions reinterpreting rules like WOTUS or emissions standards are options, avoiding lengthy rulemaking battles and legal challenges with the same fervor usually found on the other side. Deregulatory guidance prioritizing flexibility or waivers for businesses, streamlined approvals or eased compliance burdens all reduce their respective sectoral βs, and ultimately the universal one captured in the simple, general Dreck Load. But the congressional actions are most important for permanent change. This author's annual Ten Thousand Commandments report, despite typical characterizations, is intended to depict not regulatory costs, but what we don't know about regulatory costs. Similarly, the Dreck Equation does not capture all intervention but is intended to inspire policymakers and interested observers to recognize rulemaking equivalents and end their abuse, and for galaxy brains out there to take Dreck Load transparency to the next dimension and help them in that quest.
TechCrunch
39 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
Rainmaker partners with Atmo to squeeze more rain from clouds
Cloud seeding startup Rainmaker is partnering with Atmo, an AI-powered meteorology startup, the companies exclusively told TechCrunch. The two operate on complementary ends of the weather system: Atmo studies atmospheric patterns to forecast weather events, while Rainmaker digests such data in an attempt to squeeze more precipitation out of weather systems. Under the partnership, Atmo will use its deep learning models to help Rainmaker identify clouds that have potential for seeding. The forecasting startup will also offer Rainmaker's cloud seeding services, deployed via small drones, to its customers. For its part, Rainmaker will contribute data from its proprietary radar system to determine how much rain the clouds produced. Rainmaker has been in the news of late, targeted by conspiracy theorists who claim that the startup's cloud seeding operations in Texas played a role in recent floods in the state. But according to several scientists TechCrunch spoke with, that's simply not possible. 'Somebody is looking for somebody to blame,' Bob Rauber, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois, told TechCrunch last week. Techcrunch event Save up to $475 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $450 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW Though cloud seeding can nudge clouds to drop more precipitation, it's a small amount compared with the size of a storm. One well-documented case in Idaho released an additional 186 million gallons of precipitation, which pales in comparison with the 'trillions of gallons of water' a large storm will process, Rauber said. Cloud seeding is widely used throughout the Western United States, mostly to augment snowpack and boost the amount of water that ends up in reservoirs in the summer. While it's also used in places like West Texas to coax more rain from summer storms, the results have been modest. The West Texas Weather Modification Association, which Rainmaker has worked with previously, says that cloud seeding in the region has boosted precipitation by about 15%, or about two inches, per year. The likely reason for that is because the types of clouds floating over West Texas don't respond in the same way as clouds in mountainous regions like the Western U.S., Rauber said. Rainstorms are even less responsive, he added, since they're already primed to drop plenty of precipitation.
