In The News

[JPA Cate]

They're not paying enough to cover the physical therapy for the muscle wastage at the end of the period....and possibly psychotherapy, as well!



A.

[SailOar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU5UqDm2oTU

[Tellie]

Originally Posted by SailOar

There's just enough room between the dock and that pesky barge. I can make it!

[GordMay]

Meetings That Changed The World
This series covers six scientific meetings that had such a great impact, they can be said to have changed the world. Each piece is written by an expert who attended the conference in question. The authors recall what it was like to live through these momentous occasions, and reflect upon the events' broad and lasting legacies.
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/455137b

Paris 1951: The birth of CERN
François de Rose chaired the meeting that founded Europe's premier facility for experimental nuclear and particle research. Here he relives the five days of drama that changed the world of physics.
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/455174a

NOTE: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the linked article(s) belong solely to the author(s), and they alone are responsible for the methods, findings, and conclusions described therein.
The information contained in this post is provided on an “as is” basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or validity.
I do not, necessarily, endorse the content; nor do I have any ulterior motive in presenting them, merely a desire to illuminate some facet of interesting, relevant, and/or perhaps quirky science & technology.

[transmitterdan]

Why are we alone in the cosmos? A Russian physicist thinks the simple answer is that we exist because no other alien being has been in contact with us yet.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-physi...ver-see-aliens

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

Why are we alone in the cosmos? A Russian physicist thinks the simple answer is that we exist because no other alien being has been in contact with us yet.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-physi...ver-see-aliens

Interesting.
Have you noticed that, since mobile devices with cameras have become ubiquitous, reports of alien sightings are way down?
I call this the Samsung/Sharp* effect.

* The first cell phone with a built-in camera ( SCH-V200) was manufactured by Samsung, and released in South Korea in June of 2000. There’s an argument that the first real camera phone (J-SH04) was produced by Sharp and released in Japan by J-Phone (now SoftBank Mobile) in November of 2000.

Speaking of cell phones:
The Collapsing Crime Rates of the ’90s Might Have Been Driven by Cellphones
Did technology disrupt the drug game, too?
☞ https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...=pocket-newtab

[SailOar]

Offshore Wind Will Need Bigger Boats. Much Bigger Boats

How do you install a wind turbine almost the size of the Chrysler building in the open ocean? Just get a boat with deck space larger than a football field and a crane that can lift the weight of 1,100 Chevy Suburban SUVs.

Those specialist ships are scarce, numbering about a dozen in the world. And at a cost of more than $300 million, they each need to be capable of hoisting generators the size of shipping containers atop steel towers hundreds of feet tall....

The few ships designed to do this are almost exclusively in Europe, and some are booked up until next year. Owners can charge anything from $112,000 to $180,000 a day for their services. That compares with the below $25,000 rate for one very large crude carrier class supertanker.

[rolandcavanagh]

Hey Gord, please keep up these posts of obscure news, I find them quite interesting and frequently thought provoking. Thanks!

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Offshore Wind Will Need Bigger Boats. Much Bigger Boats

And the elephant in the room continues to be ignored...

[GordMay]

“Why astronomy played a pivotal role in setting D-Day date"
Picking the invasion date involved a complex set of criteria, including amount of moonlight and tides.
Fascinating!
➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-...sion-1.5161516

[GordMay]

“Humans unknowingly consume a lot of microplastics”
➥ https://www.uvic.ca/science/biology/...roplastics.php

“Human Consumption of Microplastics” ~ Kieran D. Cox et al.
A study from the University of Victoria has, for the first time, compiled research on microplastics, to try to estimate just how much people are consuming. The study found that a person's average microplastic consumption, based on those food items previously analyzed, would likely fall between 70,000 and 121,000 particles per year. While younger girls were at the lower end of the spectrum, adult men were at the high end. People who consume a lot of bottled water could see that number jump by up to 100,000 particles per year.
The team is now calling for more research, to understand just how much a lifetime of exposure to microplastics will affect human health.
➥ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517

See also: “Microplastics in shellfish- new study”
➥ Microplastics in shellfish- new study

[GordMay]

Dr. John dead at 77.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT4RainY-lY

[dfelsent]

I had the pleasure of meeting him backstage about 8 years ago, and then seeing his show at a small venue. Great musician. Amazing character.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by GordMay

....See also: “Microplastics in shellfish- new study”
➥ Microplastics in shellfish- new study

The Deep Ocean Harbors a Mountain of Microplastic Pollution

....Although the researchers found microplastic wherever they looked, the particles were unevenly distributed in the water. The surface—where they intuitively expected to find the greatest amount of plastic because it is less dense than water—actually contained the lowest concentrations, about on par with the seafloor. The deep-sea zone located 180 to 460 meters below the surface, known as the midwater, contained the highest amount of microplastic waste—about four times as much as on the surface. Van Houtan thinks this may be because when plastic breaks down into ever-tinier pieces, it becomes laden with biological material that causes it to sink in the water column. Ocean currents may also affect what depths microplastics concentrate at, and could be a reason there are fewer particles near the seafloor....

Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, the polymers they found indicated that most of the microplastic polluting their sampling sites originated not from fishing gear deployed throughout the bay, but from materials commonly found in single-use beverage and food containers. They also found more particles at the offshore sampling site, located more than 24 kilometers from the coast, than they did at the nearshore one. This suggests that most pollutants the team recovered likely originated from places further afield—an indication, Van Houtan says, “that there’s quite a bit of plastic circulating in the ocean.”....

[GordMay]

A fascinating explanation of the complex forces in play.

“Why Our Intuition About Sea-Level Rise Is Wrong”
A geologist (Jerry Mitrovica) explains that climate change is not just about a global average sea rise.
“... So what happens when an ice sheet melts is sea level falls in the vicinity of the melting ice sheet. That is counterintuitive. The question is, how far from the ice sheet do you have to go before the effects of diminished gravity and uplifting crust are small enough that you start to raise sea level? That’s also counterintuitive. It’s 2,000 kilometers away from the ice sheet. So if the Greenland ice sheet were to catastrophically collapse tomorrow, the sea level in Iceland, Newfoundland, Sweden, Norway—all within this 2,000 kilometer radius of the Greenland ice sheet—would fall. It might have a 30 to 50 meter drop at the shore of Greenland. But the farther you get away from Greenland, the greater the price you pay. If the Greenland ice sheet melts, sea level in most of the Southern Hemisphere will increase about 30 percent more than the global average. So this is no small effect ...”
Much more ➥ https://getpocket.com/explore/item/w...=pocket-newtab

See also:
“The Plastic Earth” ➥ https://harvardmagazine.com/2016/09/the-plastic-earth