TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Tizer]

We got a very impressive sunset due to the US wildfires on Sunday. The sky was a uniform pale grey with the big, blood red sun sitting a little way above the horizon. Spooky and like something out of a sci-fi film! Yesterday evening the sky was overcast and went dark earlier than usual, presumably also due to the smoke. Fortunately the smoke is high up in the jet stream and therefore not a danger to our health. We'll experience more of this as the politicians and world events get in the way of preventing climate change.

[Stanley]

Very True Peter.
Interesting that you made the connection between it going dark early and the wildfire smoke. I noted it getting dark but never made the connection. However I did see the effect it had on the full moon. It was much brighter and cleaner last night.

[Stanley]

THIS caught my eye....
Drones could soon be working together in swarms to put out flames before they become wildfires, UK researchers hope. A team of firefighters, scientists and engineers are working on a project they say will allow swarms of up to 30 autonomous planes to spot and extinguish fires by working collectively using artificial intelligence. Drones piloted by people are already used in firefighting, for example to detect hidden blazes and assess safety risks. The research is still in the test phase and has not been used on a wildfire, but the team claims it is the first to combine unpiloted drone technology with swarm engineering in the field of firefighting.
There is more in the article. This looks like very promising research......

[Tizer]

Better to spend the money on developing that application than on drones for faster delivery of Amazon parcels!

[Tripps]

Speaking of drones - and solutions in search of a problem -
I noted this equally silly example two years ago.
Drone protection scheme
I'm amazed it got past the Tory 'Minister for Common Sense'.
By the way how much water could each fire - drone carry?

Nonsense on stilts. . . .

On the positive side - I'm told the robot grocery deliverers in Cherry Hinton are still working. One said 'thank you - have a nice day' when my friend rescued it from being stuck in the icy weather.

[Stanley]

Having just spent ten minutes filling in on-line forms to ensure DHL deliver my parcel today I wonder if it would be any easier if I was dealing with a drone. Everything is so complicated these days.....
I got a text message yesterday from the leccy distributor telling me about storm Lillian and what they were prepared to do for me. All totally useless and I wondered how much energy it cost to send every customer that message and tick a box.

[PanBiker]

I received a message on my phone the other day, apparently from DHL/TNT? Hedging their bets probably It was regarding the parcel that I didn't order they said they were holding from Amazon! Surprisingly the sender had not paid the carriage charges and there was a convenient link provided to offer up my credit or debit card details to rectify the error.

Unfortunately some folk will fall for this scam..

[Stanley]

That sounds very similar to the message I got that purported to be from EVRI. They wanted my bank details so they could charge me a small fee for re-delivery....

[Stanley]

My sympathies go out to these two! (LINK)
Two NASA astronauts who have been stuck in space for over two months will return to Earth in February 2025 with SpaceX. Nasa said the Boeing Starliner spacecraft the astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore had travelled to International Space Station (ISS) on would return to Earth "un-crewed". The pair took off on what was planned to be an eight-day mission on 5 June but will now spend around eight months in orbit. The Starliner experienced problems on its way to the ISS, including leaks of helium, which pushes fuel into the propulsion system. Several thrusters also did not work properly.
I hope they have plenty of jigsaw puzzles!

[Tizer]

I hope they have enough chocolate to keep them happy!
Talking of which...
`Have Swiss scientists made a chocolate breakthrough?' LINK
Imagine picking up a nice juicy apple - but instead of biting into it you keep the seeds and throw the rest away. That's what chocolate producers have traditionally done with the cocoa fruit - used the beans and disposed of the rest. But now food scientists in Switzerland have come up with a way to make chocolate using the entire cocoa fruit rather than just the beans - and without using sugar. The chocolate, developed at Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology by scientist Kim Mishra and his team includes the cocoa fruit pulp, the juice, and the husk, or endocarp....

[Stanley]

That sounds interesting Peter. I wonder how (or if) we'll know if we are eating the results?

[Tizer]

I expect it'll be a long time before we see it in the shops and I doubt it will have exactly the same taste and texture of traditional chocolate. Although I have to admit that the taste and texture of the latter is already very variable, especially between different countries. Americans seem to like our milk chocolate but continental Europeans usually find it abominable!

[Stanley]

I find that as I get older I prefer the darker, higher percentage cocoa solids, over milk chocolate.
Mind you, it's largely academic these days as my diet precludes me eating chocolate. Good job I was never addicted!

[Tizer]

More exciting than most of the other news...
`Mega meteorite tore up seabed and boiled Earth's oceans' LINK

[Stanley]

I heard that report Peter. I like the description 'as large as greater London'. Makes a change from using Wales.

[Tizer]

Keep watching out for the Brian Cox Solar System TV programmes. They're very good at helping us understand things that are difficult for us little humans to grasp here on our tiny spot in the universe!

[Stanley]

I've been following them Peter. My problem is that constant amazement can be very wearing!

[Tizer]

I'm pleased to see this report because I've always believed human evolution must have progressed through false starts...
`Humans may not have survived without Neanderthals' BBC

[Stanley]

I like the thinking behind that new view of evolution Peter, largely because it is founded on the fact that we made an arrogant mistake in assuming that our march out of Africa was a total success and led to modern humans. Much more plausible that multiple matings with anything available managed to produce a viable strain. We have only to look at examples like aboriginal populations interacting with another strain, like colonising Europeans, to see what the introduced endemic diseases did to them. Both the American and Australian natives were decimated..... Very easy to see that happening to early humans as they moved out into Europe......

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report on pesticides.
Emergency use of three pesticides that can be deadly to bees will soon be stopped for good, the government has said. Neonicotinoids were banned in 2018 but sugar beet farmers have been given special permission to use them every year for the past four years to fight virus yellows, a disease spread by aphids. The government announced on Saturday that it would be looking at "legislative options" that would legally prevent all future use of three specific neonicotinoids. In the meantime, an application for emergency use in 2025 by the National Farmers' Union (NFU) and British Sugar will still have to be considered under existing laws.
It sounds as though there may be a chance the farmers will get away with using the neonicotinoids once more. That's a pity, we need our bees more tnam beet farmers need the poisons!

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report of a truly astounding achievement....
A Nasa spacecraft has made history by surviving the closest-ever approach to the Sun. Scientists received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe just before midnight EST on Thursday (05:00 GMT on Friday) after it had been out of communication for several days during its burning-hot fly-by. Nasa said the probe was "safe" and operating normally after it passed just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface. The probe plunged into our star's outer atmosphere on Christmas Eve, enduring brutal temperatures and extreme radiation in a quest to better our understanding of how the Sun works.
Read the article for an account of the unbelievable conditions it had to endure and survive.

[Tizer]

The biggest puzzle about the Sun is this:
The hottest part of the Sun is its core, where temperatures top 15 million °C. The part of the Sun we call its surface – the photosphere – is a relatively cool 5,500 °C. In one of the Sun’s biggest mysteries, the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, gets hotter the farther it stretches from the surface. The corona reaches up to 2 million °C, much, much hotter than the photosphere.
That paragraph is from this NASA web page which is worth reading... NASA: Our Sun

[Stanley]

There are so many things that are still a mystery to us. NASA is trying to solve this one......I look forward to the report.

[Tizer]

We still have much to learn about the centre of our planet instead of chasing after other planets (Are you listening Elon Musk?)...
`Earth's inner core may have changed shape, say scientists' LINK

I note this bit of the article: "In science, we generally try to look at things until we understand them," Prof Vidale says. "In all likelihood, this finding doesn't affect our daily lives one iota, but we really want to understand what's happening in the middle of the Earth," he adds.

That's a bit spooky because last night I read a short article written by Terry Pratchett back in the 1990s. After agreeing with Desmond Morris's famous description of humans as neonate (new-born) apes with childlike curiosity he wrote: We like to stick our fingers into the electric socket to see what happens next.
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I've read an article in New Scientist magazine about Trump and Musk's latest attack on US state establishments such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These are world renowned organisations and they work internationally which means that Trump's actions have serious worldwide effects. As well as stopping work and funding, Trump and Musk have banned all outside communications to and from the organisations. Most of the work of the organisations is is inextricably linked with other institutes, universities etc around the world. As the New Scientist ended it's article: We are entering a dark age for science and health worldwide.

[Stanley]

I heard that report Peter and didn't know what to make of it. Mind you I believe that whatever the cause, it will affect us in some way and we might never know how.