Nobody Cares! (Science & Tech Edition)

[Essence Lumin]

The Mongolian Death Worm is a cryptid that has never officially been captured (though Westerners have been trying since 1922). The creature lives in the Gobi desert and only surfaces in the months of June and July, supposedly after heavy rains. It reportedly can spit acid at AND/OR electrocute anyone who gets near it.

 

[danielravennest]

NASA announced today that they've found evidence that there's some water molecules locked up in lunar dust even on sunlit portions of the Moon, which is great!

Sadly the NASA press conference immediately pivoted to stressing that this find somehow adds impetus for Artemis, which is the Trump initiative to land humans on the Moon again by 2024 to do things that probes can do more cheaply, just so history can attribute something to Trump.

In reality the amount of water they're talking about isn't a useful-to-exploration amount, nor is it really clear that it is meaningfully extractable in any case.

We've known there is some water in non-polar parts of the Moon for about a decade. It comes from examination of Apollo samples with better instruments than they had in the 1970's, when most of the early research was done. The quantities are pretty small, like below 6 parts per thousand in some rocks, but not all kinds. The polar ice is supposed to be more like permafrost - lunar soil with water ice filling up the spaces between grains. That would be a much easier to mine resource.

The SOFIA observatory shows similar small amounts as the Apollo samples, but over large parts of the Moon which weren't visited by people.

 

[Free]

The Mongolian Death Worm ...reportedly can spit acid at AND/OR electrocute anyone who gets near it.

AND/OR??? Sometimes, I fucking hate nature. *scratches Gobi Desert off her bucket list*

 

[Caete]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Not so fast: Serious problems found with the data suggesting phosphine in Venus' atmosphere

 

[Free]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Ecotricity founder to grow diamonds 'made entirely from the sky'

UK millionaire Dale Vince says lab-grown gems will be ‘world’s first zero-impact’ diamonds

www.theguardian.com

 

[Free]

The future of self-driving vehicles...

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Looks like they've got a little more work to do...

 

[Essence Lumin]

The future of self-driving vehicles...

At low speed too. It really hated that wall.

The whole idea takes a lot of the excitement out of racing. One reply had an idea. Put a passenger in the car that has no access to any controls.

 

[Tigar]

At low speed too. It really hated that wall.

The whole idea takes a lot of the excitement out of racing. One reply had an idea. Put a passenger in the car that has no access to any controls.

And if they live, they receive a full pardon.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The whole idea takes a lot of the excitement out of racing. One reply had an idea. Put a passenger in the car that has no access to any controls.

Better idea: the cars have weapons and are able to attack each other during the race!

 

[danielravennest]

Looks like they've got a little more work to do...

Early human-driven car races were not much better:

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Engineering safety standards, paid for in blood.

Early human-driven car races were not much better:

The Kerbal Space Program wasn't far off, was it?

 

[Free]

Here’s how giant pumpkins get so big

Cinderella took a ride in a pumpkin coach. Though real pumpkins do get big enough, here’s why their ride would be uncomfortable at best.

www.sciencenewsforstudents.org

A pumpkin has to transport water, sugar and other nutrients to swell up the fruit. (Yes, a pumpkin is a fruit.) Water needs to move up from the roots. Sugars produced by photosynthesis in the leaves need to go down to the fruit and roots. To do this, plants use xylem and phloem. Xylems are vessels that transport water from roots to a plant’s stems, fruits and leaves. Phloems are vessels that transport sugars from leaves to the fruit and roots.

Giant pumpkins need a lot of water and sugar, and they need it fast. A typical giant pumpkin grows from seed to huge orange squash in only 120 to 160 days. At peak growth, it’s putting on 15 kilograms (33 pounds) every day. That’s like daily adding a two-year-old child to its mass. And all of that mass must move through the stem, Savage notes. Most of the time, the stem is so narrow that you can still easily get your hands around it.

To study how pumpkin stems transport so much food and water, she asked growers of giant pumpkins to donate small slivers of their competition fruits. She also got any pumpkins that burst before they could be judged.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

AND/OR??? Sometimes, I fucking hate nature. *scratches Gobi Desert off her bucket list*

It's only unsafe during the rainy season, though, when you presumably wouldn't want to go anyway, because of the weather.

 

[Free]

‘First plasma’ achieved at UK’s £55m fusion energy experiment

www.imeche.org

The Mast Upgrade fusion energy experiment has achieved ‘first plasma’, a vital step for the hugely promising future energy source.

All the essential components on the £55m UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) machine – the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak Upgrade – worked together simultaneously for the first time, following a seven-year build.

“Mast Upgrade will take us closer to delivering sustainable, clean fusion energy,” said UKAEA CEO, Professor Ian Chapman. “This experiment will break new ground and test technology that has never been tried before. It will be a vital testing facility on our journey to delivering the Step fusion power plant.”

 

[Casey Pelous]

Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak Upgrade would be a terrible name for a rock band.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

I disagree. Think of it as an Emo-prog outfit.