Cool Science-y Tidbits

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Cool stuff about lemurs:

-They are the most diverse group of primates, with about 100 species (depending on which primatologist is doing the counting).

-95% of those species are endangered.

-The name 'lemur' is derived from the Latin for 'ghost'.

-They are edible (I have been unable to find a source that claims lemurs taste like chicken).

-The largest lemurs today peg out at around 20lbs, but one variety that became extinct about 2000 years ago clocked in at approximately 400lbs (roughly the size of an adult male gorilla).

-The smallest lemur weighs about an ounce.

-I'm glad I don't own any lemurs.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Meteor Crater, near Winslow, Arizona, USA, is arguably the best-known impact crater in the world. It is almost 4000 feet across and nearly 500 feet deep.  A rim wall around the crater stands an impressive 150 feet above the surrounding plain. A Visitors Center (and attendant caravan park) on the north rim attracts thousands of visitors per year. Apollo astronauts trained at the crater and it has been designated a National Natural Landmark.

Some 1300 miles northeast of Winslow is another impact crater near Manson, Iowa.  This crater absolutely dwarfs the one in Arizona.  It is nearly twenty two miles in diameter and over three miles deep.  But no one goes to see the Manson crater - there's no visitors center, no souvenir shops, no museum, no nothing.  Of course, this crater is rather inconveniently buried under some 300 feet of glacial till, which may account for it not getting a lot of attention from the general public.

Stupid glaciers.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Connections" was famous for broken connections.

[Alan V]

"Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN near Geneva have discovered antimatter and matter versions of “charm” quarks—one of six types, or flavors, of a class of elementary matter particles—acting differently from one another. In a new study, which was presented in March at the “Rencontres de Moriond” particle physics conference in La Thuile, Italy, the physicists found that unstable particles called D0 mesons (which contain charm quarks) decayed into more stable particles at a slightly different rate than their antimatter counterparts. Such differences could help explain how an asymmetry arose between matter and antimatter after the big bang, resulting in a universe composed mostly of matter."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...redirect=1

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

In 1916, Robert Goddard submitted a request for funding to the Smithsonian entitled, 'A Method For Reaching Extreme Altitudes', which - among much else - outlined the mathematics for a liquid-fueled rocket.  Goddard was dissuaded by his colleagues from including mention of and plans for sending a rocket to Mars.  They urged him to propose something less 'fantastical', so he suggested a rocket with a payload of magnesium which would crash into the moon, with the resulting flare visible from Earth.

The press managed to get its mitts on Goddard's request and roundly ridiculed him.  The New York Times went to far as to pity 'poor Doctor Goddard' for forgetting that a rocket will not work in the vacuum of space, having nothing to push against.  To the Times' credit, though, once someone had explained Newton's Third Law to them, they did print a retraction and an apology...

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...in 1970, twenty five years after Goddard's death.

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Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

In 1916, Robert Goddard submitted a request for funding to the Smithsonian entitled, 'A Method For Reaching Extreme Altitudes', which - among much else - outlined the mathematics for a liquid-fueled rocket.  Goddard was dissuaded by his colleagues from including mention of and plans for sending a rocket to Mars.  They urged him to propose something less 'fantastical', so he suggested a rocket with a payload of magnesium which would crash into the moon, with the resulting flare visible from Earth.

The press managed to get its mitts on Goddard's request and roundly ridiculed him.  The New York Times went to far as to pity 'poor Doctor Goddard' for forgetting that a rocket will not work in the vacuum of space, having nothing to push against.  To the Times' credit, though, once someone had explained Newton's Third Law to them, they did print a retraction and an apology...

---

...in 1970, twenty five years after Goddard's death.

---

Boru

When Werner von Braun was questions about his developments of rocket engines one of them was "where did you get your inspirations"?

He replied, "From your Robert Goddard."

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

In 1916, Robert Goddard submitted a request for funding to the Smithsonian entitled, 'A Method For Reaching Extreme Altitudes', which - among much else - outlined the mathematics for a liquid-fueled rocket.  Goddard was dissuaded by his colleagues from including mention of and plans for sending a rocket to Mars.  They urged him to propose something less 'fantastical', so he suggested a rocket with a payload of magnesium which would crash into the moon, with the resulting flare visible from Earth.

The press managed to get its mitts on Goddard's request and roundly ridiculed him.  The New York Times went to far as to pity 'poor Doctor Goddard' for forgetting that a rocket will not work in the vacuum of space, having nothing to push against.  To the Times' credit, though, once someone had explained Newton's Third Law to them, they did print a retraction and an apology...

---

...in 1970, twenty five years after Goddard's death.

---

Boru

When Werner von  Braun was questions about his developments of rocket engines one of them was "where did you get your inspirations"?

He replied, "From your Robert Goddard."

Yup, Goddard is regarded as the father of rocketry.  A man of great skill and rare vision.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Eduard Buchner (1860-1917) was a German chemist.  Around the turn of the 20th century, there was a lot of arguing about whether yeast cells were required for fermentation, or whether there was a compound in the yeast cells that was responsible.  Buchner settled things once and for all.  In what sounds like a pretty tedious process, he ground yeast along with sand and diatomaceous earth with a mortar and pestle and extracted the resulting goo.  Microscopic examination showed no yeast cells.  Buchner was a vitalist (one of those convinced that fermentation could only arise from living yeast cells), so we can well imagine his surprise when he added sugar - intended as a preservative - to the goo and it began to ferment.  A little more fiddling about and Buchner was able to isolate the compound responsible and called it 'zymase', one of the first half-dozen or so enzymes to be discovered.  Buchner won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.

In 1914, in a fit of patriotic pride, Buchner volunteered for the German army in WWI and was killed by a shell fragment in 1917.  Some fifty years earlier, Louis Pasteur volunteered for the Franco-Prussian War.  The French authorities patted him soothingly on the head (metaphorically speaking), pointed out that his scientific work was much more valuable to France than one middle-aged soldier, and sent him back to his laboratory.

Stupid Germans.

Boru

[Sal]

Thomas Midgely, Jr was a complete shite.

Trained as an engineer, his discovered that tetraethyl lead would, when added to gasoline, reduce 'engine knock'.  Thanks to him and the Ethyl Corporation lying about the health effects of TEL (loss of coordination, hallucinations, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer), you now have about 600 times as much lead in your body as would have had in 1920, the year before the compound was introduced.

As if that weren't enough, Midgely is also the inventor of chlorofluorocarbons, which found their way into everything from aerosol sprays to household refrigerators to automobile air conditioners.  Given the damage this class of chemical is still doing to the ozone, it has been claimed with some justification that CFCs might just be the worst invention of the 20th century.

On a more positive note, Midgely became crippled with polio later in life. He designed an elaborate pulley system to raise and turn him in bed.  In 1944, he became entangled in the cables of the machine and was strangled.  He was 55, so he snuffed it before he could do any more damage.

Boru

A real life joker.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

We all know that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and used the fortune resulting from that (and several other rather explode-y ventures) to found and fund the Nobel Prizes.  As it turns out, Nobel likely never would have founded the Prizes if not for a newspaper error.

Ludvig Nobel, elder brother of Alfred, was one of the richest men in the world and founded the company that - at one point - produced about half the world's oil.  He died of a heart attack in Cannes, France in 1888.  Through various and sundry reporting errors, several French newspaper reported that it was Alfred who had died.  At least one of the papers published an obituary that was scathingly critical of Alfred, calling him 'the merchant of death' and adding 'Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday'.

Nobel became obsessed with his reputation and founded the Nobel Prizes as a way to polish his legacy.  Contrary to some opinions, it wasn't that he was particularly upset over Ludvig's death, as a younger brother (Emil) died along with five other Nobel employees in a nitroglycerin explosion at one of the family's factories, and Alfred when right on building munitions plants.

Boru