Thursday, July 16, 2020


Johnnie Walker is launching a new bottle that's made out of paper
Diageo


Johnnie Walker announced a new paper-based whiskey bottle that will launch in spring 2021.

The bottle is made without any plastic, which is harmful to the environment.

The new paper-based bottles will be a limited launch through a partnership with Pilot Lite.


Johnnie Walker is introducing a 100% plastic-free bottle made of paper starting next year.

The paper-based bottles will launch in the spring, according to a Johnnie Walker spokesperson, and will only be available in one size and variant of the whiskey.

This comes as Diageo, the makers of Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, and Guinness, announced on Monday that it was launching a new partnership with Pilot Lite, a venture management company, to launch Pulpex Limited, a new sustainable-packaging company.

"We're proud to have created this world first," Diageo's chief sustainability officer, Ewan Andrew, said in a press release. "We are constantly striving to push the boundaries within sustainable packaging and this bottle has the potential to be truly ground-breaking."

The new bottle will be made from sustainably sourced pulp to meet food-safe standards and will be fully recyclable. Per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an American scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce, scientists predict that nearly 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year.

95% of Diageo's packaging is in glass, according to a company spokesperson, and the limited-run bottle will be used to explore potential options in the future to supplement glass and occasionally replace its usage.

"We're thrilled to be working with global brand leaders in this consortium," Pilot Lite's director, Sandy Westwater, said. "By working together, we can use the collective power of the brands to help minimise the environmental footprint of packaging by changing manufacturing and consumer behaviours."

Introduced in the 1800s, the Johnnie Walker brand was introduced by Scottish grocer John Walker and is the most widely distributed brand of blended Scotch whisky across the globe, with Diageo seeing a 9% increase in North American sales of the brand in fiscal year 2019.

The Trump administration is backing down from its war with Dr. Fauci after it became obvious it was backfiring


Dr. Anthony Fauci with President Donald Trump at a coronavirus briefing on March 24, 2020. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The White House is backing away from its bid to discredit Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert. 

President Donald Trump on Tuesday rebuked trade adviser Peter Navarro for a scathing op-ed where Navarro said Fauci was "wrong about everything."

It signaled a change in tone after several days of attacks on Fauci's credibility, which began with anonymous White House officials circulating to the media a list of reasons to mistrust him.

The push to discredit Fauci — one of the most trusted figures in the US on the coronavirus — sparked a backlash from top Republicans. 

Fauci himself responded, telling The Atlantic: "I think they realize now... it's only reflecting negatively on them."

The Trump administration is backing away from its attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading US disease expert whose stark warnings about the coronavirus pandemic repeatedly clashed with President Donald Trump.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro had criticised Fauci in a scathing op-ed on Wednesday, the most public move against Fauci by a government official.

"Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on," he wrote in an op-ed in USA Today.

It was one of a series of attacks on Fauci, which began when anonymous White House officials distributed a list of alleged errors by Fauci to media organisations on Sunday.


But in remarks to reporters later on Wednesday, President Donald Trump defended Fauci and said that Navarro was not speaking for his administration.

"Well he made a statement representing himself. He shouldn't be doing that. No, I have a very good relationship with Anthony," Trump said.
U.S. President Donald Trump exits after speaking and not taking any questions during a press briefing with the White House Coronavirus Task Force team in the press briefing room of the White House March 9, 2020. Dr Anthony Fauci is pictured in the center right, and Peter Navarro on the centre left. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Only last week Trump had himself questioned Fauci's credibility, remarking in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity: "Dr Fauci is a nice man, but he's made a lot of mistakes."

A White House official told NBC News that Navarro had acted against instructions, ignoring a directive from chief of staff Mark Meadows to halt attacks on Fauci.

Meadows told reporters travelling on Air Force One Wednesday, according to NBC, that the op-ed was "a violation of well-established protocols that was not supported overtly or covertly by anyone in the West Wing."

Later that day Navarro was abruptly pulled from a scheduled appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room," host Wolf Blitzer told viewers.

"Peter Navarro was booked to join me this hour here in The Situation Room, but earlier this morning all of a sudden the White House told us he was no longer available," said the host.

Fauci for his part had expressed bemusement at finding himself the target of attacks by the White House. Fauci has advised six administrations on disease prevention and control as director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease.


"I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that," Fauci told The Atlantic. "I think they realize now that that was not a prudent thing to do, because it's only reflecting negatively on them."

The attacks of Fauci had prompted senior Republicans to break ranks with the White House to defend him.

"I think it's absolutely outrageous. It's one of the biggest mistakes, I think, that the administration has made throughout this entire coronavirus response, because Dr. Fauci is, in my opinion, the most respected guy in the administration, and the voice of truth and reason throughout this pandemic," Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan told an ABC News podcast on Wednesday.

The White House's decision to turn on Fauci had apparently been prompted by the expert's refusal to tone down his warnings about the danger the coronavirus still posed in the US. Fauci was also frank in his assessments of the failure of the US to contain the pandemic.

The White House had for weeks denied Fauci permission to be interviewed by US TV networks, with the expert instead speaking to podcasts and foreign media outlets.

CBS host Margaret Brennan said earlier in July she had been attempting, without success, to book Fauci to be interviewed on "Face the Nation" for three months.

Dubai’s DEWA to employ Boston Dynamics’ robodog ‘Spot’ for internal operations

Robodog Spot herding sheep. (Rocos)
Matthew Amlôt, Al Arabiya English Monday 13 July 2020

The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) announced Monday that it would begin testing uses for the four-legged Spot robot from Boston Dynamics for internal operations.

DEWA intends to use Spot to for a host of tasks. In a statement, the utility provider mentioned Spot could help detect faults, test connection points of high-voltage cables, detect leaks in water pipes, conduct security and monitoring controls, make sure construction projects are being carried out properly, manage some of its facilities, such as warehouses, and help people of determination.

“Adopting the Spot robot in DEWA’s internal operations is part of our strategy to use the latest AI and robotic technologies,” Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, the managing director and CEO of DEWA said in the statement.
“This contributes to achieving the UAE Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which aims to strengthen the UAE's position as a global hub for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and increase its contribution to a knowledge-based national economy that depends on innovation and future technological application,” he added.

Spot is a yellow robot dog that has been developed by US-based robot maker Boston Dynamics. The robodog has been featured in numerous Boston Dynamics videos, and is built to traverse difficult terrain that robots would not normally be able to cover. The robot can be equipped with a variety of sensors such as heat, gas, and light.


Earlier this year in May, Spot was deployed to New Zealand to begin herding sheep in the countryside.

The development of robots like Spot could help humans do jobs that they otherwise might not be able to do, particularly while the coronavirus pandemic still has many working from home.

Rocos, a robot software developer who worked alongside Boston Dynamics to train Spot to herd sheep, said in May that robots could help humans and businesses in the future.

“The age of autonomous robots is upon us. We’re working with organizations embracing this technology to achieve next-level business performance. Our customers are augmenting their human workforces to automate physical processes that are often dull, dirty, or dangerous,” said Rocos CEO David Inggs.
Saudi Arabia’s historic ruling for woman living independently without permission

General view of Riyadh city, after the Saudi government eased a curfew, following the outbreak of the coronavirus, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 7, 2020. (Reuters)
Joanne Serrieh, Al Arabiya English Wednesday 15 July 2020


A court in Saudi Arabia has ruled in favor of a woman who was on trial for living and traveling on her own to the Kingdom’s capital, Riyadh, without her father’s permission.

Public prosecutors had been pursuing the woman for being absent from her family’s home and traveling to Riyadh without permission, court documents published by Abdulrahman al-Lahim, a lawyer in the case , showed.

“A historic ruling was issued today, affirming that independence of a sane, adult woman in a separate house is not a crime worthy of punishment,” al-Lahim said in a tweet. “I am very happy with this this ruling that ends tragic stories for women.”

The court ruled that the independence of the defendant in a separate home is not considered a punishable criminal act as the “woman is a sane adult who has the right to decide where she wants to live,” according to the document.

In an interview with Al Arabiya, al-Lahim said that he considers this a historic ruling because it represents a significant change is underway within the Kingdom’s judicial system.

“This shows the creation of a new generation of judges who coexist and live in the reality that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is living in, in alignment with the vision of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” the lawyer told Al Arabiya. “A ruling that deals with reality, the reality of society and the reality of the entire world.”

Al-Lahim also said the ruling is in line with global women rights and human rights.

The woman involved later revealed her identity on Twitter in a response to comments made by al-Lahim.
“After long suffering that has lasted since 2017, I managed today, along with the court hero Mr. Abdulrahman al-Lahim, to take back my freedom of movement, guaranteed by the Saudi constitution, which states that every citizen has freedom of movement and stability,” Meriam al-Eteebe, the defendant, said in a tweet.
She also said that her experience was “not easy but worth it.”
AVAILABLE AT THE WHITE HOUSE GIFT SHOP 
Trump posts photo of himself grinning alongside Goya products in the Oval Office, as critics accuse Ivanka Trump of violating ethics rules for promoting the company's beans

Instagram/@realdonaldtrump

President Trump posted a photo Wednesday of himself and several Goya products in the Oval Office.

Trump posted the photo as his daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump faced backlash for posting a separate photo of herself posing with a can of Goya beans.

Goya CEO Robert Unanue recently praised Trump, saying the US was "truly blessed" to have him as a leader.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday posted a photo of himself promoting Goya products from the Oval Office.

In the photo, Trump is shown seated behind his desk and giving two thumbs-up. Displayed before him on the desk are Goya kidney beans, seasoning, white beans, coconut milk, and chocolate wafers.

Trump posted the photo about 2 p.m. on Wednesday, as his daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump faced backlash for posting a separate photo of herself posing with a can of Goya beans.

"If it's Goya, it has to be good," reads a caption alongside Ivanka Trump's photo, which was posted to her social-media accounts late Tuesday. The post included a translation: "Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno."

Critics accused Ivanka Trump of violating federal ethics laws that prohibit federal employees from using their positions "to endorse any product, service or enterprise."

The White House endorsements of Goya come after the chief executive of the company, Robert Unanue, praised Trump, saying the US was "truly blessed" to have him as a leader. Unanue's remarks inspired calls for a boycott against Goya, as well as a countercalls for Trump supporters to buy more of the beans.


People are roasting Ivanka Trump for promoting Goya Black beans in a photo posted to social media

Ivanka Trump is promoting Goya beans. Twitter/Ivanka Trump

Ivanka Trump posted a photo of herself promoting Goya black beans, after the Goya CEO praised her father, President Donald Trump.

Critics quickly pounced on the post, saying it is a federal ethics violation for her to promote a product or company.

A White House spokeswoman told the Washington Post on Wednesday that Ivanka Trump has "every right to express her personal opinion."

Ivanka Trump is facing backlash online for posting a photo of herself promoting Goya beans.


The photo shows Trump dressed in all white and smiling. In one hand, she holds a can of Goya black beans, while her other hand hovers just below the beans in a pose similar to how a gameshow host might unveil a prize to a swooning audience.

"If it's Goya, it has to be good," says the caption, which was posted alongside the photo to Trump's Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. "Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno."
—Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 15, 2020

The photo triggered an immediate backlash online.

Critics accused Trump, who is President Donald Trump's daughter and White House adviser, of violating federal ethics laws that prohibit federal employees from using their positions "to endorse any product, service or enterprise."

She was also accused by some of using the beans to pander to Latino voters.

Ivanka Trump's Goya endorsement comes after the chief executive of the bean company, Robert Unanue, praised the president, saying the US was "truly blessed" to have him as a leader. Unanue's remarks inspired calls for a boycott against Goya, as well as a counter-calls for Trump supporters to buy more of the beans.

A White House spokeswoman told the Washington Post on Wednesday that Ivanka Trump has "every right to express her personal opinion."


"Only the media and the cancel culture movement would criticize Ivanka for showing her personal support for a company that has been unfairly mocked, boycotted and ridiculed for supporting this administration — one that has consistently fought for and delivered for the Hispanic community," White House spokeswoman Carolina Hurley said in a statement to the Post.

Here's what some people are saying on Twitter in response to the photo.
—CoCo Bonita-“Don’t mess with me” (@cobonita) July 15, 2020
—D Villella ❄️ (@dvillella) July 15, 2020
—Nurse Nina (@NurseNinaPA) July 15, 2020
—Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 15, 2020
—Noah Bookbinder (@NoahBookbinder) July 15, 2020
—David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) July 15, 2020
—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 15, 2020
—Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 15, 2020
—Jessica Tillipman (@JTillipman) July 15, 2020
Jordan ‘dissolves’ Muslim Brotherhood group in court ruling: Reports

#JORDANISPALESTINE2
JORDANIAN SOLDIERS

A Jordanian court has ruled to “dissolve” the Muslim Brotherhood in the country, according to media reports.

The Jordanian Court of Cassation voted on Wednesday that dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood because it had not corrected its legal status in line with Jordanian law, reported regional media outlets.

The decision reportedly came after the organization filed a lawsuit against a breakaway group, the Muslim Brotherhood Society (MBS), and the government’s Department of Lands and Survey.

The now-dissolved organization requested that a transfer of real estate and land to the MBS, which was given legal status in 2015, be nullified.

However, the court rejected the law suit and said the Brotherhood was dissolved.

This is big news with potential strategic consequences: Jordan’s Court of Cassation dissolves Muslim Brotherhood https://t.co/QQUZuGKBcU— NAMEA Geopol (@NAMEAGroup) July 16, 2020

According to the Counter Extremism Project, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan split in 2015, between the “reformist” MBS and the older Muslim Brotherhood Group.

Since then, the two factions have vied for influence in the country.

The decision to dissolve the older branch comes ahead of parliamentary elections in the country, with Independent Arabia suggesting it could affect who runs for parliament.

The parliamentary party the Islamic Action Front is linked to the older Muslim Brotherhood group and won 10 of the 130 seats in 2016. Members of the MBS ran under the National Congress Party ticket in 2016 but did not win any seats, according to the Counter Extremism Report.

Sheikh Hamza Mansur, head of the organisation's ruling council, said the group would appeal against Wednesday's ruling, acording to AFP.

"The Muslim Brotherhood ... is a model of moderation and an important element in strengthening national unity, so dissolving it is not in the national interest," he told AFP.
Twitter Hack: Why Wasn’t Donald Trump Targeted?



Donald Trump's Twitter account wasn't directly affected by the Twitter hack GETTY IMAGES

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple, Joe Biden, Barack Obama... the list of the Twitter glitterati who had their accounts hijacked last night is long. But there’s one notable name that doesn’t appear on the list, arguably the most famous Twitter user of them all: Donald Trump.

While many of the biggest Twitter accounts were vandalized with messages urging people to participate in what appears to be a bitcoin scam, the @realDonaldTrump account and its 83.5 million followers were not targeted. Neither was the official account of the president @POTUS and its 30.8m audience.

The question looms large: why did the scammers not target the most high-profile account of them all?


Enhanced security

The first theory is that Trump’s accounts have some form of enhanced security measures that aren’t available to other verified account holders.

The president would undoubtedly be the service’s prime target for hackers, so it is possible that Twitter has afforded Mr Trump and his staff some form of extra verification that made it more difficult to breach his account.

Twitter has this morning admitted that the breach was a result of a “social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools”.

“We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” Twitter said in a series of tweets published on its support account.

What might those enhanced security measures be? Twitter may, for example, only permit tweets to be made to Trump’s accounts from authorized devices, meaning that even the elevated staff accounts that the hackers breached weren’t able to tweet on the president’s behalf.

Politically motivated

Given that Donald Trump’s predecessor and forthcoming opponent in the presidential election were targeted, but not Trump himself, there’s also the question of whether the attack was politically motivated.

That, currently, seems unlikely. Prominent Republicans were targeted during the attack, such as one-time Republican presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg. There was also no political messaging in any of the faked tweets.

A direct attack on the president would also raise the stakes in what is already an incredibly high-profile attack. A statement released by the FBI suggests it’s already looking into the attacks. “We are aware of today's security incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals," the FBI said in a statement last night. It would be under much greater pressure to investigate, and investigate hard, if the president’s account had been compromised in the run-up to an election.

That’s not to say investigations aren’t going to be pursued. Indeed, Republican politicians are already pressing for a probe. A Vice report claims Republican senator Josh Hawley has already written to Twitter, asking the company to “reach out immediately to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and take any necessary measures to secure the site before this breach expands".

Sign of things to come?

The ease with which the hackers managed to breach so many high-profile accounts is the biggest cause for concern. Given the enormous audience the hackers were able to reach - albeit temporarily - it raises obvious questions over Twitter’s security and whether it could be used for something more sinister than a ham-fisted bitcoin scam.

Although Twitter will now undoubtedly go through a fresh security review, it’s been punished for a similar kind of attack previously. A decade ago, the company settled a case with the FTC in which it was found that “an intruder compromised an employee’s personal email account, and was able to infer the employee’s Twitter administrative password, based on two similar passwords, which had been stored in the account”. This was used to “access non-public user information and non-public tweets for any Twitter user. In addition, the intruder could, and did, reset at least one user’s password.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has already promised to publish the findings of an internal investigation into the attack.


This time Twitter will really have to learn its lessons.

Barry Collins Contributor
Consumer Tech
I am a consumer tech expert writing about Windows, PCs, laptops, Mac, broadband and more.
Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.
I have been a technology writer and editor for more than 20 years. I was assistant editor of The Sunday Times’ technology section, editor of PC Pro magazine


Some of the world's biggest Twitter accounts are hacked. Here's what we do and don't know about what's going on right now.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey REUTERS/Anushree Fadnav

Elon Musk wants to give you free bitcoin — at least, that's what his Twitter account says.

Don't trust him.

The Tesla account is one of numerous high-profile accounts on the social network that have been compromised as part of a remarkable, far-reaching hack, in an attempt to scam people using digital currency bitcoin.

As of writing on Wednesday, there's still a whole lot of unknowns. But here's what we do and don't know so far.

Who's been hacked?

Tons of people. And some companies.

Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Apple's official account, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Uber, Wiz Khalifa, Floyd Mayweather, Cash App, MrBeast, XXXTentacion, parody account TheTweetOfGod ... the list goes on and on.

The only common thread between the accounts appears to be that they're all, well, very famous. The hacker(s) appears to be targeting high-profile accounts that will spread the scam as far as possible.
How did they get hacked?

Late Wednesday evening, Twitter said it had uncovered "what we believe to be a coordinated engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools." Those with access to those tools, "ostensibly Twitter employees," can reset email addresses associated with accounts, as TechCrunch reported.
What do the hacked messages look like?

Like this:

No, Obama is not going to give you free bitcoin. BI

What's Twitter saying about all this?

In a fairly unenlightening statement via tweet, Twitter's Security team confirmed there were shenanigans happening and that it was looking into it. "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly," they wrote.

CEO Jack Dorsey chimed in on the incident in a tweet later on Wednesday evening, calling it a "tough day for us at Twitter."

"We all feel terrible this happened. We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened," Dorsey said.

Later on Wednesday, however, the company asserted that, once it became aware of the attack, it "locked down the affected accounts and removed Tweets posted by the attackers." As a precaution, it also limited access for a larger group of accounts — verified users ("blue checks") were unable to post for some time.

Despite the company's actions, hacked posts remained on the site long after many of its users realized things were awry.

"Our investigation continues and we hope to have more to share there soon," a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider.

What's Twitter doing to stop it?

Many verified users, including this reporter, said that they were unable to tweet, but could retweet others' posts. Twitter's Security team eventually followed its original tweet with updates confirming that users might not be able to tweet or reset their passwords while it looked into things.

Around 9:30 p.m. ET, they returned to say that the account restrictions should be lifted.

"Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible," it tweeted.

Later on Wednesday, the company said that "Internally, we've taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing."


What's the scam?

Generally, the compromised accounts are posting a tweet saying they're feeling generous (or some other similar motivation), and falsely claiming that if people send them bitcoin to their address, they'll resend them double back.
Should I send them bitcoin?

No.
Who's behind the hack?

We don't know yet. 

US death penalty: Supreme Court clears way for second federal execution in two days 

#ABOLISHTHEDEATHPENALTY

A protester holds a sign demonstrating against the death penalty in the US. (AP)
The Supreme Court early Thursday cleared the way for a second federal execution in as many days.
The vote to allow the execution to go forward was 5-4, with the court’s four liberal members dissenting.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “proceeding with Purkey’s execution now, despite the grave questions and factual findings regarding his mental competency, casts a shroud of constitutional doubt over the most irrevocable of injuries.” She was joined by fellow liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
Purkey was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 16-year-old girl before dismembering, burning and then dumping the teen’s body in a septic pond. He was also convicted in a state court in Kansas after using a claw hammer to kill an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio.
Purkey’s execution had been scheduled for Wednesday at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. On Tuesday, Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death at the facility after his eleventh-hour legal bids failed. It was the first federal execution after a 17-year hiatus.
Daniel Lewis Lee, who was executed on Wednesday. (Twitter)
Daniel Lewis Lee, who was executed on Wednesday. (Twitter)
Lawyers for the 68-year-old Purkey argued that he has dementia and is unfit to be executed. They said his condition has deteriorated so severely that he didn’t understand why he was being executed. They also said that if Purkey’s execution did not take place Wednesday, the government would need to set a new date. But government lawyers said there was no obstacle to going through with the execution Thursday if the Supreme Court lifted the injunctions.
The issue of Purkey’s mental health arose in the runup to his 2003 trial and when, after the verdict, jurors had to decide whether he should be put to death in the killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri. Prosecutors said he raped and stabbed her, dismembered her with a chainsaw, burned her and dumped her ashes 200 miles (320 kilometers) away in a septic pond in Kansas. Purkey was separately convicted and sentenced to life in the beating death of 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales, of Kansas City, Kansas, who suffered from polio.

Noam Chomsky On COVID-19 And His New Book: Internationalism Or Extinction


Why Does Comet NEOWISE Have Two Tails?

Ethan SiegelSenior Contributor
Starts With A Bang
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The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.


This outstanding composition shows the blue ion tail and the grey/white dust tail of comet NEOWISE ... [+] DAMIAN PEACH / IAN SHARP

For the first time in many years, there’s currently a comet visible to the naked eye in Earth’s night sky: comet NEOWISE. It’s visible to most of the world’s population, currently positioned just below and slightly to the east of the Big Dipper’s ladle. If you look at it with the naked eye, it might appear as a faint, diffuse cloud: identifiable as a comet if you know where to look for it, but without much detail visible.

Through binoculars, a telescope, or with long-exposure photographs, however, an incredible set of phenomena can suddenly be seen. The main nucleus of the comet can be seen shining brightly: all by itself it’s as bright as the top 100 stars in the sky. The main tail of the comet can be seen extending for upwards of 10° away from the nucleus, wide, diffuse, and curving. But alongside it, narrow, straight, and faint, a second, bluish tail can also be seen. These two tails accompany many comets, including comet NEOWISE, and can show us things we might never otherwise see for ourselves about our Solar System. Here’s why there are two of them.


When a comet approaches the Sun, two independent tails can often be seen, a dust tail made of ... [+] SERGEY PROKUDIN-GORSKY; ЮКАТАН / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
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Since even before the invention of the telescope, the “great comets” that have graced Earth’s skies have shown this two-tailed phenomenon. Famously documented in the late 1500s by Tycho Brahe, the main, bright tail always appears to curve, but a second tail, no matter where the comet is located in Earth’s skies, always appears to point perfectly, directly away from the Sun.

In addition, the main tail always appears to be a grey/white color: it reflects sunlight fairly well at all wavelengths. Whatever color the material is that the comet itself is made from, the main tail is always that color as well: the same color as the parent body that gives rise to the tail. But the secondary tail is never the same color as the comet itself, and is instead blue, faint, and always makes a perfectly straight line, pointing away from the Sun in a ray-like configuration.


This 1997 photo of Earth's last "great comet," Hale-Bopp, clearly shows the curved dust tail and the ... [+] UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By the late 1600s, nearly a full century later, we had started to identify some of the comets as periodic: originating from the outer Solar System and maintaining a very eccentric elliptical orbit. Every so often, these comets pass through the inner Solar System — some of them returning after decades, centuries, or millennia — and experiencing all sorts of changes when they do.

When they’re very far from the Sun, these bodies remain completely frozen, as the Sun’s radiation is far too weak at such large distances to cause any notable effects. But as the comet gets closer and closer to the Sun, its radiation becomes more and more intense. Right around the time where a comet plunges through Jupiter’s orbit, the volatile ices on its surface begin to heat up and sublimate, expelling tiny fragments of the comet and creating two effects:


a coma, or halo, around the “nose” of the comet,
and a tail of dust, where these tiny fragments get ejected from the comet itself.




Like many comets, C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) displayed a bright green coma at its head, trailed by a ... [+] JOHN VERMETTE / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Even though a comet’s tail looks curved, we can only see it in two dimensions, not the full three. What winds up physically happening is that the tail always curves outside the ellipse that the comet’s path traces out, and we can understand why if we take a look at the physics. When a dust particle gets ejected from the comet itself, it can come from a variety of processes.

It can get ejected because a tiny fissure forms in the comet, pushing heated material out. It can get ejected because the molecules beneath it sublimate, causing it to become free from the electromagnetic forces binding the comet’s nucleus together. Or it can get ejected because the heat causes tiny cometary fragments to separate from the main body. Regardless of the cause, particles of dust get separated from the main body of the comet itself, and they create a dust tail: what we typically identify as the main tail of a comet.


The evolution of a comet as it approaches, passes through, and exits the inner Solar System. The gas ... [+] LABORATORY FOR ATMOSPHERIC AND SPACE SCIENCES/ NASA

Once a dust particle stops being bound to the main cometary nucleus itself, it starts to experience a combination of three forces:


the gravitational force on it from the Sun,
the gravitational force on it from the main body of the comet,
and the force from the Sun’s radiation — the light itself — on these dust particles.



At each point along a comet’s orbit, the dust appears to move away from the Sun, but the position of the comet changes over time; its path is curved. The dust you see towards the far end of the tail was emitted earlier in the comet’s orbit than the dust towards the comet’s nucleus, and the path only appears curved because of the fact that these relative forces change in importance with time, with the comet’s motion, and with their distance from the Sun.


Comet McNaught, as imaged in 2006 from Victoria, Australia. The dust tail is white and diffuse (and ... [+] SOERFM / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

But there’s an entirely different, independent tail that becomes prominent even sooner than the dust tail: the blue ion tail. There’s a critical threshold — dependent mostly on the distance of the comet from the Sun — where the amount of ultraviolet sunlight striking the comet becomes strong enough that it can start ionizing the weakest ice-based molecule that comets are made out of: carbon monoxide (CO).

When we state that comets are made out of violatile ices, we don't just mean water-based ice (H2O), but also dry ice (solid CO2), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and carbon monoxide (CO), which make up the "big five." Carbon monoxide is the easiest to ionize, and this ultraviolet radiation creates a positive carbon monoxide ion (CO+), which heralds the first sign of a cometary tail. If you look at very early pictures of comets, when they’re out at rather large distances from the Sun, this blue ion tail is the only one that can be seen.


When Comet ISON was the same distance from the Sun as Jupiter, about five times the Earth-Sun ... [+] NASA, ESA, J.-Y. LI (PLANETARY SCIENCE INSTITUTE), AND THE HUBBLE COMET ISON IMAGING SCIENCE TEAM

When you compare these two different tails with one another — the dust tail and the ion tail — the color is just one of many differences. One notable discrepancy between the two is how wide the tail is. The dust tail is extremely diffuse, taking up a very large amount of area on the sky and an even larger volume in space. On the other hand, the ion tail is always narrow, irrespective of how far away the comet is from the Sun.

Why is that?

When a comet emits dust grains, these grains come in a wide variety of sizes. As a result, even though the gravitational acceleration on each grain is the same, the amount of pressure they receive from the solar radiation varies wildly, with smaller grains disproportionately affected by sunlight compared to larger ones. With ions, on the other hand, they’re all simply single molecules or even free electrons with the same mass as one another. As a result, the forces on each ion particle is identical, so they all follow the same path.


Captured by Patrick Knaup in Germany, this image of comet NEOWISE illustrates its large, bright dust ... [+] PATRICK KNAUP

The largest cause of a “spread” in the ion tail is due to the fact that the comet’s coma, made of a mix of gas, dust, and ions, is diffuse, and the Sun itself is a sphere rather than a true point source. The sunlight that interacts with the coma sheds material off in a slightly conical shape, leading to a tail with a small but non-negligible opening angle. The dust tail, on the other hand, diffuses wildly, largely due to the grains being various sizes and moving at a variety of speeds.

But there’s even more to the story, once you realize that the ion tail, despite being created at a variety of points along the comet’s orbit, isn’t curved at all. Why would the ion tail be perfectly straight while the dust tail is curved? Even if all the dust grains were somehow the same exact size and mass as one another, the forces acting on the dust tail would still cause it to show a curve. Yet, somehow, the ion tail never curves: a phenomenon noted by Brahe more than 400 years ago.


While the grey/white dust tail never appears perfectly straight, the ion tail always does, as the ... [+] LIEM BAHNEMAN

The reason the ion tail is straight, in this instance, is precisely because these are charged particles. The Sun itself might be incredibly massive, but it also has electromagnetic properties that can — particularly for charged particles — dominate over its gravitational effects. In particular, the Sun isn’t just a ball of gas and plasma confined to a region of space some 700,000 kilometers in radius at our Solar System’s center.

Instead, it has a large, extended atmosphere that reaches all throughout the Solar System, populated by solar wind particles, coronal streamers, and a large-scale magnetic field. In a very real sense, the Earth itself resides within the Sun’s outer atmosphere, and so do the comets that pass through our Solar System.

The comet's ionized particles, in motion, form a plasma that creates a magnetosphere around the comet, which itself interacts with the solar wind: charged particles being emitted by the Sun. A combination of both cometary and solar ions following these magnetic field lines are responsible for the features seen in the blue ion tail: a spectacular case of agreement between simulations and observations.


This animation portrays a comet as it approaches the inner solar system. As the comet nears the Sun, ... [+] NASA/JPL-CALTECH

On July 23, 2020, comet NEOWISE will make its closest approach to planet Earth, where it will appear just beneath the ladle of the Big Dipper to all observers at northern and equatorial latitudes. Once the Sun dips far enough below the horizon for the sky to darken sufficiently, more skywatchers than ever should be able to see it. Even though we’ve already passed the comet’s peak brightness, it will remain highly visible through the end of the month, appearing particularly spectacular in binocular, telescopic, and long-exposure photographic views.

But one feature to look for is the presence of these two very different tails: the dust tail, which appears bright, grey/white, wide and curved, as well as the ion tail, appearing comparatively faint, blue, narrow and straight. The dust tail is made of tiny fragments of the comet itself, coming in a wide variety of grain sizes and masses, while the ion tail is only made of extremely low-mass particles, tracing out the combined magnetic field created by the Sun and comet together. It’s the best comet to grace our night sky in more than a decade, and the remainder of this month is your best chance to experience it for yourself.

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Ethan Siegel
I am a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. I have won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for my blog, Starts With A Bang, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. My two books, Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive, Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way and discovered the entire Universe, are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow me on Twitter @startswithabang.