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Too Hot to Handle

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KELT 9-B seems an innocuous-enough name for an exoplanet. It was discovered in 2017 and is apparently an “ultra-hot Jupiter” – huge gas giants hotter than anything in our solar system.  In fact, some of the new data coming in suggests that it is three times larger than our Jupiter and approximately  7,800 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface.  So hot in fact, that hydrogen atoms are shredded by the heat during the daytime and can only re-form until they appear on the dark side of the planet; KELT 9-B is tidally locked to its star, so the hot side always faces its sun.

It’s amazing to me that we can figure this stuff out since we can’t just look it up on the internet. All the data on KELT 9-B has come from two robotic telescopes in the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope project, one telescope in South Africa and the other in southern Arizona.  And of course, it makes me wonder how a planet like KELT 9-B comes into existence.  And can it survive its own heat?

How do you cool down when you’re angry?

70 thoughts on “Too Hot to Handle”

        1. That, or it might be the habitat they use at particular seasons. Sandhill cranes or mostly grey. When they nest and raise young, they inhabit swampy places that turn their plumage a tawny red like these egrets. That helps them blend in and reduces the risks to their young.

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  5. I get mad, then I get over it. I don’t hold grudges.
    If I do get mad- (“when” I get mad-) I need to vent somehow. Loud music, swearing, just yelling verbal nonsense will help too.
    That’s when I’m home or working alone.
    When the students are around I need to just walk away.
    I may talk louder, but I try not to swear in front of them.
    There is one student this year, a really great young person and we have just clicked together. They give me grief, I give them grief and they often say to me “Today we will have a yelling match’ and we have a normal conversation, just at high volumes and with intensity. We both enjoy it. It’s weird. But fun.

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  6. Well, I have a temper that doesn’t emerge often but when it does, I am told I am a little scary. I tend to get verbal in expressing my unhappiness. Two weeks ago, employees at all the 8 Regional human service centers including the one I work at were told that due to “failure in communication” by some higher up in the department, demographic data and monthly service outcome forms for everyone who received services at our agencies since last March 1 had not been collected . A multimillion dollar federal block grant was at risk unless we could phone everyone who had received services since March 1 and get the data. We had 800 people at our agency to contact. I imagine there were several thousand that had to be contacted at the centers in the larger cities. Oh, and we had to do it in 72 hours. I was a little steamed and expressed my opinion rather publicly at a staff meeting. Then I went up to my office and threw a couple of pens across the room. Then I started making phone calls.

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    1. This is just a notion, Renee, but I think the fact you work with troubled kids gives you good reasons to get POed. My life has nothing like that in it, so if someone frustrates or abuses me, it’s no big deal. If someone offends you or prevents you from performing well, kids could suffer. That would make me MAD.

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      1. I am afraid I looked like Yosemite Sam in the staff meeting, especially when I said that the higher ups, who I named, should have been strangled at birth.

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  7. I am happy to report that by the end of the first day, our business office staff had somehow gone into the computer system and found the needed demographic data that was in a variety of locations, and reentered it in the correct data bank location for 90% of the clients. They phoned the rest and got almost all the data needed. There were 26 sheets of alphabetized names that needed calling at our agency, and my colleagues and I each took a sheet or two and phoned everyone on our lists whether we knew them or not. It was surprising how willing everyone who we contacted was to tell us how they were doing, including if their psychotropic medications were helpful, what were their living arrangements and how many times they had been arrested in the last 30 days.

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  8. When I was with Wasband, I learned how to fight, meaning argue out loud, mostly. He’d had enough therapy that he learned how to “fight fair”, and so I learned that, say, throwing a wine glass on the floor (minimal damage) was better than throwing a phone book at him.

    These days I don’t get mad much, but if so, I run the gamut between leaving in a huff and slamming a door, to just taking deep breaths. The other night in a rare moment, though, I kicked over a table in front of me, after noting that it held nothing spillable.

    One of the hard things about life under 45 is that, almost every day there’s some new thing to fume about, and nowhere to put that anger.

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  10. One of the oddest moments in my online dating years was an encounter with a woman who had a thing about anger. When I told her I’d never really gotten angry, she concluded that I was a “ticking time bomb” who could blow at any moment.

    Hmmm. At 77, I haven’t blown my top yet. But who knows? Tick, tick, tick!

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  11. I once, in the midst of divorce meltdown, picked up a ceramic coffee mug that was full of pens and pencils and flung it against the wall. I’ve never done anything like that before or since. And unfortunately it didn’t break, so while all the pens and pencils fell out that was the only aftermath. Very unsatisfying.

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  12. Rise and Blow Your Top Baboons,

    Renee and I are similar in this respect. People are shocked when they see me in full temper mode because it does not happen often. In December at work we had a site visit from some professionals. One of the two involved was unprofessional and arrogant. For example, she dinged us for not having a time keeper during a meeting, but she was late arriving and she ran late, delaying the process, all day.

    Then at the end of the day she wanted to engage me in a little counseling session. I did not blow, but I was visibly angry. I sure did set a firm limit, softly but firmly saying, “I don’t want to share that with you. I don’t know you. I have never met you before and I don’t know what you will do with this information.” She picked up her things and ran out the door.

    This individual responded by sending us a correction letter that was full of errors and unverified information. I still get mad about this process if I think about it too much. And that is not useful. If we respond with the facts and prove our case, we will get the certification we want. So the anger was useful in setting an appropriate limit, but if I let it go on and on, it will just get in the way.

    When I had my business, I was sleep deprived because our billing agency was not functioning properly ( it had been sold and no one knew that) which kept me up at night. I had no money and payroll was due. I yelled at someone. Man did that every do some damage. The person I yelled at is still someone I value and we are friends.

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  13. It is incomprehensible to me to not get angry. I would consider myself emotionally stunted if my range of emotions didn’t include anger. I think of anger as a negative emotion (not necessarily bad) that ranges from mild irritation, through frustration, to rage.

    Generally, I’m slow to anger, and it has often been building for a long time before I express it. That’s when a small infraction can become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Usually I’m aware that breaking point is approaching and have time to act on it before the eruption occurs. Deep breathing and talking to myself usually helps calm me down, but sometimes i just have to yell. I’m not into throwing things as I’m not fond of cleaning up broken stuff.

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  14. I’ve made this comment in some other post:
    In television dramas, you can tell when someone is angry because they sweep the contents of a desktop onto the floor. Just once, I’d also like to see the aftermath, where they are crawling around on the floor picking up pens, pencils and desk calendar, etc., muttering about what an immature doofus they are.

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    1. What would really be great would be if a couple is walking through the woods or down a city street and arguing and suddenly they come upon a fully loaded desk…

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        1. There’s a memorable scene in The Godfather like that, but the clip is so violent that I don’t want to post it. But I know from personal experience that scene’s like that actually take place.

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        2. I would love it if the movies would then feature a scene in which the violent mafioso character would be on his hands and knees picking up the glass, then mopping up the rest. But you know darn well the wife or the maid did that.

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        3. The scene that I’m thinking of, Renee, is one in which the pregnant wife has just discovered through a phone call that her husband is cheating on her. She confronts him, and he brushes her off. After realizing that he is readying himself to go out for dinner with his mistress, and not eat the dinner he has asked her to prepare, she loses it. She runs to the kitchen and starts breaking dishes. From there she goes to the dining room where the table is set for the dinner she has just cooked for the two of them, complete with a carafe of wine. She sweeps everything off the table, including the wine which she throws at him. At that point he takes his belt off and orders her to clean it up. When she refuses, he beats her with the belt, following her when she flees into an adjoining room and later the bathroom. It’s a harrowing scene, really difficult to watch.

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        5. I am glad angry women in my family are legitimized. My Aunt Elaine got really mad at her husband, my dad’s brother, because he was playing poker into the wee hours at the Magnolia bar in Magnolia, MN and she was home on the farm with their 4 boys. The door to the card playing room, which had a large window, was locked, so she smashed a chair through the window so she could let my uncle know it was time to come home. That was the last time he played poker so late.

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  15. One reason I’m slow to become angry is that I don’t trust my perceptions to be 100% accurate. When I disagree with someone, I always wonder if they might be right . . . or maybe both of us are right in a way . . . or maybe we’re just misunderstanding each other. I get things wrong too often to let me get hot when there is a conflict. My first response is always to work things out.

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  16. I am a Boomgaarden, and we are always right. You can imagine the fireworks when there are several of us together and we disagree! My paternal grandfather and his 13 siblings were noted for their tempers. I think I mentioned before two of my great aunts who got in a hair pulling argument in a ditch, and their two brothers who got into a gun fight.

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      1. Uncle Albert said that all anyone in southwest Minnesota and northwest Iowa cared about were “hogs and money”. He moved to Baudette to fish, hunt, and subsistence farm.

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      2. He was the one who fought under General Perishing and chased Pancho Villa around Arizona and into Mexico. He also fought in France. We shared a birthday and he always phoned me, long distance, to talk on Feb. 1.

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  17. My father had quite the temper and my sister and I walked on eggshells around him. As a result, I freeze if anyone gets angry about anything. Even a raised eyebrow or PO’d tone of voice will make me uncomfortable even if they are totally justified.
    Son #2 is on the autism spectrum and there was some stress around figuring out where he would go to school after preschool (I just couldn’t imagine him in a typical kindergarten) – oh, and he wasn’t really diagnosed by that time; life was just hard for him.
    Wasband (he was already wasband at the time) and I met with preschool staff and we decided to try for a special program but son #2 didn’t quite qualify. The preschool had a kindergarten extension option so we kept him there.
    The next year, we had similar worries about first grade. Wasband and I met with preschool/kindergarten staff again and he made a comment, “What was the deal with that program possibility last year?”
    I was angry because I had thrown myself into trying to figure out what to do and he had passively gone along and couldn’t remember what we had discussed.
    However (here is the point of this extended drivel), in my head, I said very clearly, “I can’t be angry with him because…”
    I had to squash it because anger was not an acceptable emotion for me.
    Like Steve, I probably have some unexploded ordnance buried deep inside.

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    2. Not “extended drivel,” Lisa. I think lots of people struggle with the notion that anger is an inappropriate response. It’s an emotion they fear, often because they have seen or been victimized by inappropriately expressed anger. “Anger management” is a thing because anger is a real emotion, it’s a legitimate emotion, and you can learn the skill of how to express it constructively.

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  18. If alone, I yell and curse at the top of my lungs. If not, I grumble under my breath a bit until I can get alone and yell and curse.

    But I’m pretty mellow and it takes a lot to really piss me off. If the anger sticks with me, I usually put on some calming music or exercise.

    Chris in O-town

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  19. I think many women have been raised to deflect or bury anger. But some of them can “blow” if someone threatens or hurts their kids. That can cause them to show their mama bear side, their mama grizzly bear side. And not just women, now that I reflect on it. One time I lost my temper it was because a teacher’s poorly managed project caused my daughter to come home weeping. That brought out the mama bear in me.

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  20. I learned from a college roommate to throw wet kleenexes at the wall where they stick until they dry. As I went through my divorce I also learned to throw bales of hay to release the energy of my anger. When I was given a homeopathic to settle my anger, my therapist told me not to take it, my anger was important and was a gift of energy to be used. It was useful advice. Now my anger comes out in strong words/swearing but not at anyone. My mother had a fierce temper that always scared me, so I try to release my anger when I’m alone.

    Interesting question/disussion. Thanks, VS.

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