Cool Science Story Of The Day [Continuing Thread]

[flatbutt]

Too bad we have to suffer a drought to see cool stuff like this.

https://www.facebook.com/DinosaurValleyStatePark/videos/5780894828612048/

[Shaun @ Tru6]

[Geneman]

thats is great shaun. its also amazing to think that whales evolved from hippos that lost their extremities ...

[flatbutt]

The Webb scope delivers a very distant atmospheric reading:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-detects-carbon-dioxide-in-exoplanet-atmosphere

[kach22i]

December 25, 2022
A 15-metric ton meteorite crashed in Africa. Now 2 new minerals have been found in it
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/24/world/new-minerals-discovered-in-el-ali-meteorite-scn/index.html

Scientists have identified two minerals never before seen on Earth in a meteorite weighing 15.2 metric tons (33,510 pounds).

The minerals came from a 70-gram (nearly 2.5-ounce) slice of the meteorite, which was discovered in Somalia in 2020 and is the ninth-largest meteorite ever found, according to a news release from the University of Alberta.

[kach22i]

Mystery of why Roman buildings have survived so long has been unraveled, scientists say
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/roman-concrete-mystery-ingredient-scn/index.html

Their findings suggest that the lime clasts can dissolve into cracks and recrystallize after exposure to water, healing cracks created by weathering before they spread. The researchers said this self-healing potential could pave the way to producing more long-lasting, and thus more sustainable, modern concrete. Such a move would reduce concrete's carbon footprint, which accounts for up to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study.

For many years, researchers had thought that volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples, was what made Roman concrete so strong. This kind of ash was transported across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time.
Masic said that both components are important, but lime was overlooked in the past.

[flatbutt]

I saw this article too. The Romans certainly were capable of great things. I hope our industry adopts this finding. I wonder if I can get a similar result by adding Type S lime to Sakrete.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Too bad we have to suffer a drought to see cool stuff like this.

https://www.facebook.com/DinosaurValleyStatePark/videos/5780894828612048/

The drought that occurred this past summer exposed all sorts of interesting stuff all over the world. The drought itself sucked, but finding or seeing stuff that had been hidden for so long was a small silver lining. Similar to that are some of the things that are being found in places where snow and ice are receding to levels that haven't existed in a long time. They are finding all sorts of stuff in Scandanavia that is melting out of the ice.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by kach22i

Mystery of why Roman buildings have survived so long has been unraveled, scientists say
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/roman-concrete-mystery-ingredient-scn/index.html

Originally Posted by flatbutt

I saw this article too. The Romans certainly were capable of great things. I hope our industry adopts this finding. I wonder if I can get a similar result by adding Type S lime to Sakrete.

I've read over the years about how impressive the Roman concrete/cement is/was. It's pretty cool that we're still figuring it out (and surprising that it has taken so long).

[GH85Carrera]

Now this is impressive!

The waves from the record-breaking quake lasted about 10 hours — a very long time, considering no previous Marsquakes exceeded an hour.

Wow. I have felt a few earthquakes in Oklahoma but I can't imagine a 10 hour quake at 4.7 magnitude. Not massive, but long lasting. Crazy long lasting.

https://scitechdaily.com/massive-marsquake-five-times-larger-than-previous-record-holder/

“The energy released by this single Marsquake is equivalent to the cumulative energy from all other Marsquakes we’ve seen so far, and although the event was over 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) distant, the waves recorded at InSight were so large they almost saturated our seismometer,”

[GH85Carrera]

I just watched this video. I have long loved learning about just how hard it was to get men to walk on the moon.




This is just really cool, It is about just the rocket used (Saturn 5) to get them there. And the part about Apollo 12's third stage is really amazing. Sometimes it orbits earth, sometimes the sun, and in a far distant time it will smack into Earth or the moon.

[IROC]

Interesting cancer research here at my facility:

https://www.ornl.gov/news/neutrons-reveal-how-spider-lily-preys-cancer-preserves-healthy-cells

[IROC]

One more for me:

https://www.ans.org/news/article-4799/record-power-at-the-spallation-neutron-source-means-more-neutrons-for-research/

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Whales have arm, wrist & finger bones in their front fins. This is the front fin bones of a Grey whale.
All cetaceans (Whales, Dolphins, Porpoises) and Pinnipeds (Seals, Sea Lions, Walruses) have flippers. However, inside those flippers are bones that resemble a human hand, thumb included!

[NY65912]

Advances in battery technology, very interesting

[john70t]

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/scientists-discover-electricity-thin-air-160001942.html
Scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into electricity, potentially unlocking a near-limitless source of clean energy.

A team from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, found that a hydrogen-consuming enzyme from a common soil bacterium was able to generate an electrical current using the atmosphere as an energy source.

“We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters, and deep in the ocean,” said Professor Chris Greening from Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute.


from https://www.voat.xyz/v/science

[IROC]

I'm not directly involved in this, but I am a member of an advisory committee at J-PARC in Japan and we discuss this during our reviews because the muon target is part of the facility I review. The scale of this undertaking is impressive:

https://www.science.org/content/article/showdown-two-huge-neutrino-detectors-will-vie-probe-matter-s-origins

[masraum]

Originally Posted by john70t

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/scientists-discover-electricity-thin-air-160001942.html
Scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into electricity, potentially unlocking a near-limitless source of clean energy.

A team from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, found that a hydrogen-consuming enzyme from a common soil bacterium was able to generate an electrical current using the atmosphere as an energy source.

“We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters, and deep in the ocean,” said Professor Chris Greening from Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute.


from https://www.voat.xyz/v/science

Ver cool!

300 years from now "the atmosphere is shrinking!"

[masraum]

Originally Posted by IROC

I'm not directly involved in this, but I am a member of an advisory committee at J-PARC in Japan and we discuss this during our reviews because the muon target is part of the facility I review. The scale of this undertaking is impressive:

https://www.science.org/content/article/showdown-two-huge-neutrino-detectors-will-vie-probe-matter-s-origins

That's really cool! I always nerd-out on this sort of stuff that is often not terribly mainstream.

[masraum]

The math nerd in me loves this.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/at-long-last-mathematicians-have-found-a-shape-with-a-pattern-that-never-repeats-180981899/



(Not the full article, only excerpts)

After decades of searching for what mathematicians call an “einstein tile”—an elusive shape that would never repeat—researchers say they have finally identified one. The 13-sided figure is the first that can fill an infinite surface with a pattern that is always original.

Repeating patterns have translational symmetry, meaning you can shift one part of the pattern and it will overlap perfectly with another part, without being rotated or reflected. The shape described in a new paper does not have translational symmetry—each section of its tiling looks different from every part that comes before it.

David Smith, a retired printing technician and nonprofessional mathematician, was the first to come up with the shape that could be a solution to the long-standing “einstein problem.” He shared his ideas with scientists who took on the challenge of trying to mathematically prove his conjecture, per the New York Times’ Siobhan Roberts.

The team published a preprint paper detailing the findings on the site arXiv last week, and it has not been peer-reviewed yet. But experts say the work is expected to be supported with further investigation, per Science News.

“This appears to be a remarkable discovery,” Joshua Socolar, a physicist at Duke University who did not contribute to the finding, tells the Times. “The most significant aspect for me is that the tiling does not clearly fall into any of the familiar classes of structures that we understand.”