Dear science aficionado,
Join us in another romp through recent (and not so recent) science revelations. But first, “Infinity.” Somehow i missed the Netflix movie, “A Trip to Infinity,” when it came out last year. Carve out 80 minutes this week to watch it. You won’t be sorry. The movie reminded me of a book i ‘absorbed’ during my senior year in high school: “One Two Three… Infinity” by George Gamow. In 1956 Gamow was awarded the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for popularizing science. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sean Carroll, and Steven Pinker credit the book with informing or downright setting their careers. It was largely responsible for my majoring in physics at Cal. However, the book was first published in 1947 — so i’m recommending more recent books.
CLIMATE
The CBAM
Some materials essential to industry – especially steel, aluminum, and cement – require a great deal of energy to produce and come with the potential of releasing great quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. As the United States, Canada, and the European Union clamp down on industrial CO2 release, it becomes more expensive to produce these materials domestically and cheaper to import them from countries with less stringent CO2 regulations. (Ex: steel from China) The typical strategy to boost domestic production is to levy import duties – a strategy fraught with political infighting and international tensions. ¿What to do? Enter the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism – CBAM – just adopted by the European Union. The E.U. will gradually implement CBAM over the next three years at which time their imports will be taxed on the basis of how much more it is carbon-dirty compared to domestic production of that material – i.e., not taxed on political considerations. You get the gist: at the same time that E.U. domestic production is provided some protection, foreign producers are incentivized to clean up their production methods. It becomes a win for our planet but debate continues as to implementation details and fairness. Canada is working toward a similar system. The U.S. is making no progress in this direction. Here is a deep academic video discussion of CBAM made last December.
¿Want to do something for our planet? Encourage your federal representatives to implement a CBAM in the U.S.
Central Valley Flooding?
Tulare Lake continues to grow, submerging farmlands. A levee protecting Corcoran State Prison is being enlarged. Whether flooding becomes disastrous depends on how quickly snow melts in the Sierra Nevada. It does not bode well. The expected high temperature in Truckee today is 47°F (8°C). Next weekend they are expecting a high of 68°F (20°C). If heavy warm rains soon blanket the Sierra, flooding will indeed be disastrous.
SPACE
Hungry Star
About 5 billion years from now, Sol will eat Terra. That is, our Sun will eat the Earth. Throughout the cosmos, suns are engulfing their planets but until now astronomers had not seen such an event. Well, they didn’t see it in ‘real’ time but found the event in data from NASA’s NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer). Watch a reënactment video of the planet’s last moments. The actual ‘swallow’ only took a moment.
Not so Tasty
It’s not a surprise, but extensive analysis of data collected in the last 50+ years agrees that our Moon has a solid core mostly of iron – and no green cheese.
BIOLOGY
¿Dancing Lessons?
Honeybees communicate the location of good nectar sources to other honeybees by using the waggle dance. It’s been assumed that the waggle dance comes ‘naturally’ to honeybees, and that’s partly true. Young honeybees raised separately did indeed use the waggle dance to communicate the location of nectar sources, but they were terrible at it. Apparently, young bees in a normal hive learn how to dance correctly from older bees, a surprising case of social learning among invertebrates.
Transportation Crisis
We are intimately aware of the COVID-19 Pandemic and many of us are – by now – aware of the Flu Pandemic of 1918, but few of us have heard of the Equine Flu of 1872. It is estimated that New York City at that time had 70,000 horses and mules drawing carriages, carts, fire-fighting pump wagons, streetcars, canal boats, and more. The equine flu spread rapidly throughout North America incapacitating horses and mules for weeks, but killing only about one percent of them. Imagine what would happen if all of today’s gasoline pumps suddenly went dry: commerce, transportation, shipping, and major events would come to a halt and fighting fires and transporting patients would be more difficult. That is what happened during the Equine Flu of 1872.
Squirrels
I rather like squirrels. We had a pet squirrel when i was just five years old and he was affectionate and delightful. (Today, keeping native animal species as pets is generally illegal.) So i was intrigued to learn that Eurasian Red Squirrels had been trained to sniff out drugs – in Chongqing, China – for real. Yes, dogs are great at sniffing out drugs, but dogs cannot crawl in and between large piles of packages.
FUN NERDY VIDEOS
Taking care of other animal’s young – SciShow – Hank Green, MS – 8 mins
Earliest galaxies too large? – Dr. Becky – Becky Smethurst, PhD – 19 mins
Fusion startups – Sabine Hossenfelder, PhD – 30 mins
Blueberry magic? – Cup o’Joe – Joe Schwarcz, PhD – 3 mins
How quantum computers break the Internet – Veritaseum – Derek Muller, PhD – 24 mins
What if alien life were silicon-based? – PBS Space Time – Matt O’Dowd, PhD – 22 mins
Get together and enjoy yourself with your friends this week,
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
– Stephen Hawking (1942 – 2018) English theoretical physicist
Thanks, Dave. Watching “A Trip to Infinity” reminded me of how when we were kids, my cousin and I gave each other goosebumps discussing/contemplating/trying to grasp the concept of infinity. When I was a teenager I thought I wanted to be an astronomer, and then I read George Gamow (“The Birth and Death of the Sun”). It made me realize that my brain was not geared for it. Plus, academically, I didn’t particularly care for Physics and was glad that I didn’t have to take Calculus, but loved English and History classes.
I, too, read Gamow’s book, “One Two, Three…..Infinity,” back then. Same outcome as Ted’s. No way did I have the aptitude in math and physics much less chemistry to be the astronomer of my dreams. But I still love to follow all the made-for-the-general-public new learnings.