The Royal balcony - Showing the evolution of a dynasty

Think of the Royal Family... Chances are you'll picture 'that' balcony

Buckingham Palace's East Front balcony is synonymous with the UK Royal Family. A small crowd of royals huddled together and waving - it's an iconic image. Starting with the Coronation of King George VI back in May 1937, let's look at some classic photos of Royals on the balcony from down the years...

Celebrating the end of World War 2

The balcony has functioned as something of a focal point for public displays of unity from the monarchy down the years. Here we see King George VI, Princess Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), the to-be Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret celebrating VE Day at the end of the Second World War.

A balcony appearance is often to celebrate a Royal wedding

While the Royals will step out onto the East Front balcony for all manor of reasons, the main excuse for a mass wave comes when a member of the Royal Family gets wed. Here we see Princess Margaret and her husband Anthony Armstrong Jones on the balcony after their wedding on 6th May, 1960.

The balcony is also used to present the world with first glimpses of new royals

In this photograph, from June 1964, Queen Elizabeth II shows off her new son Prince Edward as she celebrates her official birthday. The event is marked annually with what's called the 'Trooping of the Colour' ceremony.

The balcony makes a fine place to show off a nice wedding dress

It's 1973 and Princess Anne, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth, has just married Captain Mark Phillips of the Queens Dragoon Guards at Westminster Abbey. First port of call after the ceremony? A visit to the balcony, of course...

Happy 80th, Ma'am!

It's 1980 here and the Queen Mother is on the balcony at Buckingham Palace alongside Princess Margaret (left) and the Queen (right) to wave hello and thank people for wishing her a happy 80th birthday. After their appearance they would all attend a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral.

A slightly less hyped Royal wedding

Five years after Charles and Di tied the knot, another Royal marriage ensured press coverage for the famed balcony. Sarah Ferguson marrying Prince Andrew to create the Duke and Duchess of York created slightly less of a stir, though.

8/11 SLIDES © Mirrorpix

The balcony became a beacon of sadness in 1997

As crowds gathered at Buckingham Palace to mourn the tragic death of Princess Diana, the Royal balcony became something of a de facto homing beacon for those that came to pay their respect. Such is the magnetism of the thing through years of hosting Royal appearances.

Did the Queen Mother receive a letter from her own daughter...?

It's August 2000 in this image and the Royals are out in force to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Queen Mother. We can also see the Queen Mother herself, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Edward, Prince Philip, Sophie Rhys-Jones, Prince William, Prince Charles, Prince Harry and Princess Michael of Kent.

A newly-married 'Royal couple'

Charles and Diana's wedding was big, but it ended in (whisper it...) divorce. Much more positivity and love seems to surround the marriage of their son William to his bride, the effervescent Kate Middleton.

The Queen at 90

Standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to admire the special fly past intended to mark Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday are Prince William and Kate, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Prince Charles and Camilla, The Queen herself, of course, and her husband, Prince Philip.

La guerra freda

Al pavelló Laugardalshöll sempre hi ha moviment. Un dia s’hi juga a handbol, l’endemà s’hi fa gimnàstica i a la nit hi ha un partit de bàsquet. El 1965 el govern islandès va inaugurar aquest pavelló de Reykjavík, amb capacitat per a 5.000 persones, per respondre a la creixent demanda de la societat islandesa, que volia fer esport. I com que la meitat de l’any el clima no permet fer-ne a l’aire lliure, calien instal·lacions com aquest pavelló, que avui dia no pot amagar que és fill dels anys 60, i té un estil en què no saps amb seguretat si t’agrada o no. Quan es va inaugurar, a Islàndia tothom donava per fet que de feina no els en faltaria, als seus responsables. Però no imaginaven que el pavelló seria recordat pels escacs. 

La partida del segle

Encara avui molts curiosos s’acosten al Laugardalshöll per fer fotografies i observant la sala més gran del pavelló. Després marxen cap als altres racons de la capital islandesa on va viure Bobby Fischer. El 1972 Reykjavík va ser l’escenari escollit per la que es va definir com “la partida del segle”, la final del Campionat Mundial d’escacs. Fischer, que era un jugador genial i una persona complicada, era la gran esperança dels Estats Units per derrotar els soviètics, que portaven 25 anys guanyant el Campionat del Món. En plena Guerra Freda, quan qualsevol racó del planeta era un escenari d’aquest conflicte entre dues maneres de veure el món, els esports no escapaven de la rivalitat. I, igual que el mateix 1972 els soviètics van celebrar que havien derrotat els nord-americans a la final del torneig de bàsquet dels Jocs Olímpics, en escacs va arribar el triomf de Fischer, que, malgrat que va perdre la primera partida, va reaccionar fins a derrotar el vigent campió, el soviètic Borís Spasski. 

Un hotel a l’aeroport

Aquelles partides jugades s’han mitificat tant que molts aficionats han memoritzat els moviments d’una final fixada al millor de 24 partides. Al final, Fischer va guanyar set partides, Spasski tres i onze van acabar en taules. La final es recorda per les jugades genials de Fischer, però també per les seves dèries, que van endarrerir el començament de la competició amb reclamacions com que les peces fossin de la marca anglesa Jaques of London. Després de perdre la primera partida, Fischer no va presentar-se a la segona, que va perdre, ja que va exigir que es retiressin totes les càmeres de televisió. Avui dia, en el pavelló només hi ha una placa que recorda la final i el llibre de visites del torneig, amb la signatura dels dos campions. En canvi, a l’Icelandair Hotel Reykjavík Natura, just al costat de l’aeroport, hi ha objectes de la final exposats. El 1972 hi van dormir els jugadors... i uns quants espies. Molta gent demana la suite 470, la que va utilitzar Fischer tant durant la final com el 2005, quan va tornar a Islàndia.
Després de guanyar el títol mundial, Fischer es va anar tancat en un món interior fosc, des d’on atacava el govern dels Estats Units, els jueus i la televisió. El 1992 va acceptar repetir una partida contra Spasski a Iugoslàvia quan aquest estat patia un embargament de l’ONU per la Guerra dels Balcans. El govern nord-americà, doncs, el va començar a perseguir i finalment va ser detingut el 2004 al Japó per portar un passaport fals. Però Islàndia va acceptar una petició d’asil de Fischer i aquest geni dels escacs va acabar els seus dies amb la nacionalitat islandesa, país on va morir el 2008.

Una casa de fusta

Coses de la vida, quan tornes del pavelló cap al centre de Reykjavík passes per la casa Höfdi, un preciós edifici de fusta que havia sigut l’antic consolat francès, famós perquè va ser clau per anar acabant amb la Guerra Freda: el 1986 s’hi van reunir Ronald Reagan i Mikhaïl Gorbatxov. Tot i que aquelles converses no van acabar amb cap acord, van ser claus per anar creant ponts entre Moscou i Washington, dues capitals que es troben a mig camí de Reykjavík, on els islandesos, els anys 70 i 80, veien com els avions dels dos bàndols els passaven per sobre els caps en un món dividit.

The Sun Will One Day Cause Earth's Oceans to Boil

The searing hot ball of gas at the heart of our planetary neighborhood is home to almost all the mass of the solar system—99.8 percent, in fact. Its surface burns at more than 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and it constantly spews out a barrage of solar wind.

But the churning furnace won’t burn like this forever. Eventually it will expand into a red giant, frying the inner solar system. Too light to explode as a supernova, it will probably end its life as a hot, dense white dwarf—the relic of a stellar core.

Before its dramatic end several billion years from now, the sun will heat up Earth beyond habitability as it releases more and more energy. One to two billion years from now, as astrophysicist and author Ethan Siegel points out on Forbes, Earth’s seas will boil away as the sun gets hotter and hotter.

Earth sits in the “goldilocks zone” of our sun—not too close and not too far away for liquid water to exist, a fundamental ingredient for life as we know it. But, as Siegel wrote, the sun is slowly getting lighter. It's by far the most massive object in the solar system, but it's shedding mass all the time. The sun’s gravitational pull forged our solar neighborhood, attracting more and more matter to the glowing hulk.

But eventually, he explained, radiation from the sun and from other stars scuppered the growth of our planetary neighborhood. “The matter that would continue to fall in gets blown away, eventually giving rise to our modern Solar System,” Siegel wrote.

Now, the sun is actually losing mass. The fiery ball fuses hydrogen into helium—a lighter element. The energy from this fusion travels to the surface, while the light helium drifts to the heart of the sun. Helium can’t fuse in this blistering furnace, and without this reaction, radiation drops and "the helium-rich inner part starts to contract under its own gravity,” Siegel explained. This contraction forces energy outwards, slowly increasing the energy output of our aging sun.

Meanwhile, the glowing orb is continually releasing a barrage of particles known as solar wind. It spurts out even more particles in the fits and bursts of solar mass ejections. According to Siegel, the sun sheds a mass roughly equivalent to that of one Earth in 150 million years of solar wind.

But fusion is the real kicker. Over its lifetime, he wrote, the sun has shed some 95 Earth masses as a result of fusion. That dwarfs roughly 30 lost to solar wind so far. The swelling store of helium at the sun’s core will heat up our own planet as it grows.

Eventually, temperatures will become so hot that liquid water will disappear. The seas will evaporate and life as we know it will be impossible. But don’t worry. That’s a couple of billion years away.

How the Nazis Got to New York: Immigration Fraud

Mr. Palij, now 95, was taken from his home in Jackson Heights, Queens, on Monday to be deported to Germany.

The 95-year-old Nazi who was deported this week after living quietly in Queens for decades was not the only member of his squad to come to New York City.

Jakiw Palij, a former member of the Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, arrived in Germany on Tuesday, 14 years after the federal government stripped him of citizenship.

But the story of how Mr. Palij arrived in the United States, acquired citizenship and built a life in Queens is not one of a lone Nazi thwarting immigration laws, but of a trio of Third Reich soldiers working together to find haven in America, one vouching for the other two on visa applications.

Heinrich Himmler, center left, shook hands with new guard recruits at the Trawniki concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland where Jakiw Palij worked as a guard.

Mr. Palij worked at a death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland where the SS executed an estimated 6,000 Jews in a single day — Nov. 3, 1943 — making it the “largest killing operation against Jews in the entire war,” according to Christopher Browning’s book “Ordinary Men.”

On June 27, 1949, Mr. Palij walked into the American consular office in Schweinfurt, Germany, and applied for a visa under the Displaced Persons Act, which was meant for people left homeless by the war, said Peter Black, the former chief historian for a Department of Justice unit devoted to deporting former Nazis. Mr. Palij claimed that he had worked as a laborer on his father’s farm in Piadyki, which was then part of Poland, and as a factory worker in Germany during the war.

With him was Jaroslaw Bilaniuk, who was from Mr. Palij’s village. Mr. Bilaniuk’s application claimed he worked as a self-employed woodworker in Piadyki and then as a farm laborer in Germany until the end of the war.

Mr. Palij’s citizenship was revoked in 2003 after the Justice Department realized he had lied on his application.

They had help from yet another member of their unit, Mykola Wasylyk, who had already gotten a visa and made it to the United States. Mr. Wasylyk signed both applications as a witness, vouching for the men’s truthfulness.

The applications were full of lies.

Records unearthed by Department of Justice investigators in Prague indicated that both Mr. Palij and Mr. Bilaniuk had volunteered to serve in the SS in February of 1943. Their SS identification numbers were a single digit apart — 3504 and 3505 — suggesting they enlisted together with volunteers from the Galicia region of what is now Ukraine.

Mr. Palij was inducted and put through basic instruction at the Trawniki Training Camp in Poland, where the Nazis trained recruits for Operation Reinhard, the code name for the planned extermination of Poland’s population of two million Jews, according to court documents.

“We could see from the names and military identification numbers that these were men who were at the camp when the Germans abandoned the camp in 1944,” Mr. Black said.

From 1941 through 1945, roughly 1.7 million Jewish adults and children were murdered in Poland.

Before arriving in the United States, the three men worked as guards in their unit, which was part of the Streibel Battalion, according to court records. All three guarded forced laborers who made uniforms and brushes, Mr. Black said. Their unit also conducted bloody reprisal campaigns against Polish partisans in the region around the town of Lublin, but Mr. Black said the Justice Department could not confirm whether the men took part in such operations.

When Mr. Palij and Mr. Bilaniuk arrived in the United States in summer of 1949, they ended up settling a dozen miles apart in Queens. Their colleague Mr. Wasylyk moved to the Ulster County village of Ellenville, where he ran a bungalow community that had mostly Jewish summer renters.

It was not until the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that United States law-enforcement authorities figured out who they were after finding the cache of Nazi records in Czechoslovakia.

13 August 2018, Germany, Berlin: Remains of the Berlin Wall, at the East Side Gallery, in the district Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain. 57 years ago, on 13 August 1961, the Berlin Wall was built.

The Department of Justice accused all three of serving in the SS in Trawniki, and filed charges to take away their American passports and order them deported. All told, the Justice Department successfully charged and denaturalized 16 former SS members who served at Trawniki.

Yet many of them remained in the country because no other nation was willing to take them. Mr. Wasylyk, who was stripped of his citizenship in 2001 and ordered deported in 2004, died in Florida in 2010. Mr. Bilaniuk, who lived in Douglaston, died in 2007 with the case against him still pending.

It appeared Mr. Palij might also finish his life in Queens: Germany, Poland and Ukraine had repeatedly refused to take him in. But the Trump administration spent months pressuring Germany to accept his return, White House officials said, and on Monday, federal agents wheeled him out of his house and put him on a chartered air-ambulance to Düsseldorf, Germany.

Walter Reich, the former director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, said that Mr. Palij’s deportation was an important moment in ensuring that the murders of millions of Jews would not fade from popular memory.

“The Holocaust’s memory is becoming more and more distant, and it’s really important that it not be allowed to just evaporate,” Mr. Reich said. “This is a man that participated in a massive crime.”

New Study Seeks to Pinpoint the Origins of Meteorites

While meteorites rarely make it to Earth, researchers are trying to identify the origins of those that did.Over four and a half billion years ago, our solar system consisted of a disk of debris, which slowly coalesced into the sun, planets, moons, and asteroids that comprise our solar system.

Asteroids sometimes travel along a path that put them on a collision course with Earth. More often than not, they burn up when entering our atmosphere, but occasionally they’re large enough that a portion, or meteoroid, makes it through Earth’s atmosphere. Whatever survives the intensity of Earth’s atmosphere and makes it to the surface is called a meteorite.

Bonded for eternity

When two pieces of a particular type of metal touch each other in space, they remain stuck forever. This process, known as cold welding, happens because the atoms of the metals lump together. Cold welding can help shape the future for spacecraft construction.

 Despite the infrequency and relatively benign impact of meteorites, planetary defense specialists believe we should be better at predicting when and where an impact might happen.

And that's where a new study comes in.

Meteorites

Mikael Granvik of Lulea University of Technology in Finland is lead author of a study aimed at better pinpointing the origins of asteroids.

"Laboratory studies of meteorites provide a wealth of information of small bits of the [asteroid belt] disk, but the knowledge is of limited use unless we understand the context, which is provided if we can link the meteorites to their source regions," Granvik said in an email to Seeker.

Meteorites

The new study, published in the journal Icarus, plotted the orbits for space rocks that survived Earth's atmosphere and made it to the surface. Scientists compared the orbits to a model that told them where in the solar system that meteorite likely came from.

The research identified a few different origin stories. For example, a carbonaceous meteorite found in Tagish Lake in British Columbia likely came from the inner part of the asteroid belt, instead of the outer part.

Meteorites

Gravnik warned that his initial sample of about 24 events is too small to draw definitive conclusions, but the data suggests that so far, H chondrites (meteorites with a high iron abundance) come from the middle parts of the asteroid belt, while L chondrites (meteorites with lower iron abundance) come from the inner part. "For the other types of meteorites, we don't have enough data to say anything remotely certain," he said.

He added the scientists hope to refine their model with several new fireball events that happened while the paper was being written. "I want to see whether adding them will affect the big picture," he said.

Meanwhile, asteroid studies continue both in space and on Earth. Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft arrived at its destination asteroid, Ryugu, in late June. It is expected to touchdown on the asteroid and collect samples to return to Earth.