OneGuyFromBarlick

They may be fake colours but what stunning images! Amazing.

It's travelled 300 million miles, is doing 50,000mph and is almost there. (LINK) The Perseverance Mars Rover should be touching down at about 8AM tonight. The scientists involved must be getting very excited. I wish them all the best and will be keeping my eye on the mission.

Currently about 10 hours to go as I write...the live countdown page is here: LINK Hover your mouse over the page and you'll see left and right arrows at the side. Click the right hand one and it gives a live page with speed, distance etc.

And it's only 300 million miles away.....

They did it. Wonderful achievement.

We've had to wait a long time for this and it's taken the shock of a pandemic to get it back as a priority...
`UK to launch 'high risk' science agency' LINK

To a layman it sounds like a good idea. The further it can distance itself from 'influencers' and party funders the better the results will be.

We've heard of most of these smart applications already but there'll be many more to come...
`Smart materials: From tiny robots to colour-swapping clothes' LINK

Is the increase in new scientific advances linear or exponential? We seem to be moving faster and faster or is that simply because I am getting old.....

Probably exponential as regards small advances but we might have fewer of the big ones. A lot depends on advances in what the scientists call enabling technology. An example of enabling technology is this news today about the use of the Diamond X-ray Light Source near Oxford...

`Human origins: 'Little Foot' fossil's big journey out of Africa' LINK
`A priceless fossil was briefly brought to a UK research centre in complete secrecy two years ago, in an operation that had more than a touch of the spy novel about it. The specimen was transported across South Africa with an armed guard, treated like an incognito VIP on an international flight, and then whisked slickly to the Diamond X-ray Light Source just south of Oxford. It was at the British research facility that scientists were able to see some microscopic details in the ancient remains that could help unravel key clues to the origins of modern humans. Details of the operation have been made public only now, as the first results from the X-ray investigations have been shared with the wider research community..'.

Someone will write a book......

A special type of meteorite that will provide a lot of useful information for astronomers and mineralogists...
`Gloucestershire meteorite is first UK find in 30 years' LINK

Fascinating link Peter. Now that really is news! I'm trying to get my head round 4.5 billion years......

Many scientists were very sceptical of MS's original Nature paper...
`Microsoft-led team retracts quantum 'breakthrough'' LINK
`The journal Nature has published a retraction. And the paper's authors have apologised for "insufficient scientific rigour". Their errors included: having "unnecessarily corrected" some of the data and not having made this clear, and mislabelling a graph, making it misleading.'

Oh Dear. Will heads roll or just wrists be slapped?

Stanley wrote: ↑11 Mar 2021, 04:24 Oh Dear. Will heads roll or just wrists be slapped?

It makes you wonder what they've been doing over the last 30 years!

Fascinating information about living near Mount Etna...
`Etna: Life beneath the volcanic dust of repeated eruptions' LINK

I think I would have flit long ago Peter but you never know, if you owned a house and it was unsaleable that might be factor.
It would be good stuff for setting flags in, sort of natural fly ash.

People risk living close to volcanoes because the soil is so rich in plant nutrients and you get marvellous crops. As you drive up the slopes of Etna you pass through different climatic zones with different crops growing at different levels, everything from veg to chestnut trees!

But a heavy price to pay occasionally! I think I'd rather have Barlick and lots of Wendy's manure. Safer......

You have to choose your volcano carefully. Ones with acidic lava are explosive but the lava only moves slowly and you can run away from it. Ones with basic (alkaline) lava don't explode violently but it's runny and can catch up with you! Etna's lava is slow and people worry more about damage to property than to life. They're used to rebuilding or moving to a safer bit of the slopes.

"They're used to rebuilding or moving to a safer bit of the slopes."
That's the bit I'd hate!

I've been absorbed in a book about dinosaurs and it's been a revelation. We all feel we know a lot about the beasts because they're so popular and often on TV, in books and in films such as Jurassic Park. The book is written by an American palaeontologist who now works at Edinburgh University and has specialised in dinosaurs and the reptiles they are descended from. It's not a surprise to find he loved them as a child but he went as far as corresponding, while a child in Illinois, with leading dinosaur experts.

Why a revelation? Well, first off we all think that Tyrannosaurus rex ruled the roost in the dinosaur age - but it didn't. The `age of dinosaurs' was from about 230 million years ago to 66 million when the asteroid hit Earth. T. rex only existed during the last 20 million years. Even then it didn't `rule the Earth'. It was confined to what is now North America and to Asia, although there has recently been a bone found in Australia which might be dinosaur. That doesn't mean there were no dinosaurs elsewhere - there were many other types, for example Triceratops, but not T. rex.

Another surprise is that dinosaurs had lightweight bones with lots of cavities filled with air. These `air sacs' were linked to the lungs and provided the animals with much greater breathing capacity. When breathing in, the sacs and lungs filled with air. When breathing out, the air from the sacs went out via the lungs, so the dino got a second boost of oxygen. These air sacs meant the dinosaur was lighter in weight and had much improved blood oxygenating capacity. This helps explain how a 4 ton dino could ambush a Triceratops at the water hole - it couldn't chase prey like a cheetah (they had about 20mph max speed) but could produce a sudden burst of energy to ambush prey.

And the final revelation. The birds we see about us today have exactly the same air sac, porous bone structure and `double breathing' capacity as the dinosaurs they are descended from. In the case of the birds, it has given them the ability to fly - light weight and high blood oxygenation. Also, we now know the later dinosaurs had feathers (albeit rudimentary compared with birds) and were more warm-blooded than other reptiles, as are modern birds.

I just surfed into the Science and Research Committe taking evidence from Dominic Cummings. The subject was ARIA

I paused to watch, as I'd seen him described recently as a 'high functioning autistic savant' and wanted to see if he was. I'm no expert, though I've seen 'Rain Man' twice. I think it's an exaggeration, but a possibility. He answered questions factually without spin I'd say, and I bet a lot of politicians were glad to see the back of him. I think the Committee were a bit in awe of him. He offered to come back and speak more about his resignation. That would be interesting.


For some reason I can't imagine him ever laughing, I thought the same of Trump. Anyway his eyes don't seem to be causing any problems now, and he'd ironed his shirt.

Peter, fascinating and isn't it good when someone has a fresh look at an old subject and surprises us like that. It reminds me of my man Merlin Sheldrake and his revelations about fungus.
David, I've never doubted Cummings' intelligence, it's his world view that frightens me and I fear we will find he has left a legacy in the government system that could pop up in future. See THIS accusation that the Police and Crime Bill is 'a coup without guns'. Is any of Cummings' thinking in there?
I just have a very bad feeling about the man and would avoid him if I could.