Saturday 03-19-16

A thrill is not exactly how I would describe it

One comet to swerve closer to Earth than any other comet in centuries

An emerald-green comet will brush the Earth Monday, followed one day later by a kissing cousin that will swerve closer to the planet than any other comet in nearly 250 years.
The first and bigger of the two comets will be visible Monday to the naked eye in the southern hemisphere, as long as city lights are far away. Stargazers in the United States will probably need only binoculars to see the bigger comet in late March. Scientists, however, are bringing out the big guns. The Hubble Space Telescope, the powerful ground-based Gemini telescopes and others will be trained on the celestial visitors, which will provide an extraordinary close-up of objects usually glimpsed only at a distance.
“This is one for the record books,” says Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland, who’s never heard of two comets approaching close to Earth a day apart. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for professionals to learn more about comets, and if you have a chance to try to find them … it’s a fantastic chance to see part of history as it happens.”
The first member of the pair, known as comet 252P/LINEAR, is a bright green color from the carbon gas it’s puffing out, says the University of Maryland’s Matthew Knight. 252P will slide past Earth at a distance of roughly 3 million miles. That’s well beyond the moon but near enough to put 252P in the top 10 of closest-approaching comets.
252P wasn’t expected to get terribly bright, but it has been “surpassing all expectations,” says amateur comet-hunter Michael Mattiazzo of Australia. It may even be visible to the unaided eye in southern hemisphere suburbs where light pollution is low.
Astronomers discovered the trailing member of the pair, P/2016 BA14, a few months ago. It was shrugged off as yet another asteroid, or space rock. Then astronomers peering through a telescope saw it had a tail – and was therefore a comet. That means BA14 and its larger companion “are among the closest comets to pass by Earth in recorded history,” says Knight, who took the first snapshot revealing BA14 is a comet. The only comet known to have skimmed past us at a smaller distance was Lexell’s Comet in 1770.
Scientists aren’t yet sure of the nature of the relationship between 252P and its hanger-on. Perhaps BA14 broke off 252P decades ago. Both comets could be pieces from an even bigger comet, or they could be unrelated. If the upcoming studies show they’re family, they’ll provide an almost unprecedented scientific bonanza.
“Comets split relatively often,” Knight says, “but we rarely get a chance to study them soon after it happens, and when we do usually only the bigger fragment survives. …We have two fragments in this case.”
“A lot of things in the sky remain immobile,” says Bob King, an amateur astronomer and Sky & Telescope blogger. But anyone looking at 252P through a telescope when it’s very near will see it move, he says. “You feel a little, ‘Whoa, the solar system is closer than I thought.’… It really is a thrill.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/03/18/comets-brush-earth/81974318/

Politics as usual

How ‘ghost corporations’ are funding the 2016 election


Two days before Christmas, a trust called DE First Holdings was quietly formed in Delaware, where corporations are required to reveal little about their workings. A day later, the entity dropped $1 million into a super PAC with ties to Jersey City, N.J., Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat considering a gubernatorial bid.

The trust, whose owner remains unknown, is part of a growing cadre of mystery outfits financing big-money super PACs. Many were formed just days or weeks before making six- or ­seven-figure contributions — an arrangement that election law experts say violates a long-standing federal ban on straw donors.

But the individuals behind the “ghost corporations” appear to face little risk of reprisal from a deeply polarized Federal Election Commission, which recently deadlocked on whether to even investigate such cases.

Advocates for stronger campaign-finance enforcement fear there will be even more pop-up limited liability corporations (LLCs) funneling money into independent groups, making it difficult to discern the identities of wealthy players seeking to influence this year’s presidential and congressional contests.

The 2016 campaign has already seen the highest rate of corporate donations since the Supreme Court unleashed such spending with its 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision.

One out of every eight dollars collected by super PACs this election cycle have come from corporate coffers, including millions flowing from opaque and hard-to-trace entities, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign finance filings.
So far, 680 companies have given at least $10,000 to a super PAC this cycle, together contributing nearly $68 million through Jan. 31, The Post found. Their donations made up 12 percent of the $549 million raised by such groups, which can accept unlimited donations.
That means corporations are on track to far exceed the $86 million they gave to super PACs in the entire 2012 presidential cycle, when such donations totaled 10 percent of the money raised by such groups, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

(read the rest at)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-ghost-corporations-are-funding-the-2016-election/2016/03/18/2446e526-ed14-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html