Science & Technology News

[Singularity]

The journey of a 1,000 miles set off in the wrong direction will produce many unfortunate tales, many villains along the way.
So is the lesson here to determine who was the navigator responsible for determining the initial wrong bearing, or, is it to tell stories of villains encountered along the way? Or to blame the captain of the ship who isn't normally expected to be a navigator?
And if the captain, once confronted with a bad course fails to salvage things, still who is ultimately to blame?

It's quite problematic when failed navigators get to write history books.

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

From the summary: The study concludes that Donald Trump was likely the largest driver of the COVID-19 misinformation “infodemic.”

No surprise I guess. Still rather ironic given recent news.

Well perhaps, but being a current affairs tragic I'm inclined to the opinion that misquoting, over emphasis and exaggeration of Donald Trump is just as responsible.

[GordMay]

Mars shining bright this fall
➥ https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars...lose-approach/

Mars Opposition is set to fully align on October 13, but details started to be visible Saturday night (Oct. 4), and throughout the days leading up to Oct. 13.
Much more about the 2020-2021 apparition of Mars can be found here:
“THE 2020-2021 PERIHELIC APPARITION OF MARS” ~ by Jeffrey D. Beish
➥ 2020_Mars

The Allan I. Carswell Observatory has set up a live event, where they will broadcast real-time images through their one-metre telescope, to look at the planet through a virtual lens.
When: 8-10pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) , Oct 3, 6 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
➥ https://observatory.info.yorku.ca/
➥ https://www.youtube.com/user/YorkUObservatory/live

[GordMay]

14 million tonnes of microplastics on seafloor
Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) analysed the deep ocean 380km (236 miles) from the coast of South Australia, and found that the amount of very small plastic particles on the seafloor (14 million tonnes) was more than double the amount of plastic pollution on the surface of the sea globally.
➥ https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-re...cs-on-seafloor

“Microplastic Pollution in Deep-Sea Sediments From the Great Australian Bight” ~ by Justine Barrett et al
➥ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...20.576170/full

[GordMay]

The science community has figured out that the spread of Corona virus is based solely on two things.
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The science community has figured out that the spread of Corona virus is based solely on two things.
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.

[DeValency]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The science community has figured out that the spread of Corona virus is based solely on two things.
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.

That’s all? The above is a baseline we can do very little about. Proactive leadership, education and democracy can be very successful in changing the sit-and-do-nothing paradigm. How about?:
3. How people adhere to social distancing, mask wearing, basic sanitizing
4. What governments are doing to set and enforce #3
5. The acceptance and policy making ratio between Science & Technology facts and guidelines and political/marketing lies

So much fun being in the election season while thinking on the boat’s maintenance priorities

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by DeValency

That’s all? The above is a baseline we can do very little about.

Go back and re-read it until you get the joke.

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by DeValency

...How about?:
3. How people adhere to social distancing, mask wearing, basic sanitizing
4. What governments are doing to set and enforce #3
5. The acceptance and policy making ratio between Science & Technology facts and guidelines and political/marketing lies

Those are all part of #2.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The science community has figured out that the spread of Corona virus is based solely on two things.
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.

It may be slightly more complex.

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic

Cevik identifies “prolonged contact, poor ventilation, [a] highly infectious person, [and] crowding” as the key elements for a super-spreader event. Super-spreading can also occur indoors beyond the six-feet guideline, because SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing COVID-19, can travel through the air and accumulate, especially if ventilation is poor. Given that some people infect others before they show symptoms, or when they have very mild or even no symptoms, it’s not always possible to know if we are highly infectious ourselves. We don’t even know if there are more factors yet to be discovered that influence super-spreading. But we don’t need to know all the sufficient factors that go into a super-spreading event to avoid what seems to be a necessary condition most of the time: many people, especially in a poorly ventilated indoor setting, and especially not wearing masks.

[Lodesman]

Maybe Gord should have added some

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by GordMay

14 million tonnes of microplastics on seafloor
Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) analysed the deep ocean 380km (236 miles) from the coast of South Australia, and found that the amount of very small plastic particles on the seafloor (14 million tonnes) was more than double the amount of plastic pollution on the surface of the sea globally.
➥ https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-re...cs-on-seafloor

“Microplastic Pollution in Deep-Sea Sediments From the Great Australian Bight” ~ by Justine Barrett et al
➥ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...20.576170/full

Whilst we should try to keep the damned stuff out of the sea it might be a good sign that it will eventually break up and sink and become trapped in seabed sediments.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Whilst we should try to keep the damned stuff out of the sea it might be a good sign that it will eventually break up and sink and become trapped in seabed sediments.

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

You might have noted, that the authors concluded that:
“... plastic fragments floating in the ocean surface layers may, in fact, settle to the bottom, making the benthic sediments a sink for this material. However, our estimated 14.4 million tonnes of MPs in deep-sea sediment does not account for the estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic lost from the world’s coast annually (Jambeck et al., 2015). In spite of claims that the seabed floor is a major “sink” (Woodall et al., 2014; Koelmans et al., 2017; Chiba et al., 2018) our results suggest that while MPs were numerous (14 million tonnes), sediments account for but a minuscule proportion of the ocean’s “missing plastic” (Thompson et al., 2004).”

[GordMay]

Britain's Prince William has officially launched the Earthshot Prize, five one-million-pound ($1.7-million Cdn) prizes each year, for the next 10 years, under the categories of protecting and restoring nature, cleaner air, reviving oceans, waste-reduction and climate change.
➥ https://earthshotprize.org/

➥ https://twitter.com/EarthshotPrize/s...rize-1.5754977

➥ https://twitter.com/i/status/1314083108690550784

[GordMay]

‘Superhabitable' alien planets could have more life than Earth:
A new analysis, published in the journal Astrobiology, seeks to identify these worlds, and the researchers say we might have already detected 24 of them.
When we talk about habitable planets, that usually means worlds that are very much like Earth — the kind of place where there’s liquid water, and an atmosphere. A human, plopped down on such a world, would not immediately curl up and die.
The team led by astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, from the Technical University Berlin, defines a superhabitable planet as one that is even more likely than Earth to have life. The research argues that these are the worlds we should focus on when hunting for aliens.
So, what makes a planet superhabitable?
We know that Earth’s warmer regions have greater biological diversity, so a planet somewhat warmer than Earth could host more life. That might not make it very comfortable for humans, but that’s not the point.
Likewise, the team looked for exoplanets that are about 1.5 times as massive as our home planet. These worlds are more likely to have a dense atmosphere, and there would be more surface area for life to occupy.
The star an exoplanet orbit is also an important factor. The sun is a yellow dwarf, and it does a good job of keeping Earth livable, but maybe this isn’t the best kind of star for life. The sun has a lifespan of about nine billion years, and we’ve only got another billion years or so before it heats up and boils Earth like an egg. If you’re playing the odds, planets that orbit longer-lived stars like orange dwarfs could have a higher chance of hosting life.
“In Search for a Planet Better than Earth:Top Contenders for a Superhabitable World” ~ by Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Rene ́ Heller, and Edward Guinan
➥ https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/1.../ast.2019.2161

See also:
“Superhabitable Worlds” ~ by René Heller & John Armstrong
➥ https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.2392