Today I Learned

[BillTre]

TIL that 2023 was a hot year:
from NY Times:

 

[PeroK]

TIL that 2023 was a hot year.

There's an article in today's Guardian where James Hansen, one of the scientists who first raised the issue of greenhouse gas emissions in the 1980s, is calling BS on the emissions pledges and the current narrative on climate change. His view is that FAPP we have already hit 1.5C above the pre-industrial average.

 

[kyphysics]

Bottled Water Contains More Plastic Particles Than Previously Thought​

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...r-contains-previously-undetected-nanoplastics

A typical one-liter (33-ounce) bottle of water contains some 240,000 plastic fragments on average, according to a new study. Many of those fragments have historically gone undetected, the researchers determined, suggesting that health concerns linked to plastic pollution may be dramatically underestimated.

The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to evaluate bottled water for the presence of “nanoplastics” — plastic particles under 1 micrometer in length, or one-seventieth the width of a human hair. The findings show that bottled water could contain up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously estimated, as earlier studies only accounted for microplastics, or pieces between 1 and 5,000 micrometers.

Nanoplastics pose a greater threat to human health than microplastics because they’re small enough to penetrate human cells, enter the bloodstream and impact organs. Nanoplastics can also pass through the placenta to the bodies of unborn babies. Scientists have long suspected their presence in bottled water, but lacked the technology to identify individual nanoparticles.

Interesting read.

 

[kyphysics]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-in-three-gen-zers-has-stolen-from-self-checkout-poll-shows/
https://apnews.com/article/selfcheckout-theft-labor-walmart-target-1a8a6da0291651815557316964d7f8f9
Nearly 1/3 of Gen-Zers have stolen using self-checkout kiosks.

Self-checkout lanes are getting trimmed due to increased theft, but cannot be entirely done away with, due to their popularity and shortage of labor.

I'm better understanding why my self-checkout lanes are sooooooo long lately (while cashier lanes are shorter and constantly inviting people over) and why security/staff hawk the self-checkout lanes.

https://www.kob.com/new-mexico/albuquerque-doctor-accused-of-shoplifting-repeatedly-from-target/

Doctor making ~$300,000/year arrested for repeatedly shoplifting at Target. I wonder if she's related to Sam Bankman-Fried?

 

[berkeman]

Doctor making ~$300,000/year arrested for repeatedly shoplifting at Target.

She's a dentist, so that explains it.

Spoiler

Well, not really...

 

[BillTre]

TIL from the NY Times
some not bad news:

 

[Hornbein]

Unburned natural gas is much worse than CO2. With leakage the net result is worse.

 

[pinball1970]

T.I.L. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67950749

Very large structure discovered by a PhD student at Preston. Findings presented at American Astronomical Society in New Orleans.

 

[kyphysics]

Dad discharged from E.R. 5AM today (UTI & dehydration). 4th time at hospital in less than 40 days (previous 3x being admissions and luckily in & out quickly this time). I asked the nurse if my dad holds their record. She emphatically said, "NO!"

I was told there are specific people the hospital KNOW are cheating/tricking them and literally come every other day. They come, get seen for a bogus reason (but get to stay indoors in warmth/cool, get their butt wiped/diaper cleaned by nurses, maybe get other bodily wounds addressed, maybe get a bath of sorts, maybe get some food, maybe get some IV fluids, can watch TV, and chill out). Their labs may indicate no other concern or reason to admit/keep them and they get discharged.

They might wait a day and come back literally in 48 hours and do it again and again and again. Nurse said it was not hyperbole that they are there literally EVERY other day.

E.R.s are interesting. They HAVE to see you and stabilize you before kicking you out. It's the law. To stabilize you (from whatever fake symptoms you present), they need to run tests and that takes time (possibly 12 hours or more, depending on who is in front of you as priority). So, in the meantime, these people get to hang out in the hospital and perhaps that's the nicest place they've been if they're homeless or have poor living conditions.

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that President Putin works out for two hours every day. Huh. I'm gonna have to start doing that. It's a matter of national pride.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL that President Putin works out for two hours every day. Huh. I'm gonna have to start doing that. It's a matter of national pride.

Half of that probably involves swimming upstream in icy conditions wearing nothing but an AK 47.

Which reminds me, I have to get a badminton session booked in sometime. Lose my holiday weight.

 

[kyphysics]

IHOP's website has no tipping option.

Shocker in the age of tipflation and ubiquitous tipping prompts on credit card processing machines and ordering websites.

An employee said they just revamped IHOP's website 4 weeks ago and there is no tipping option, which contrasts with probably 99% of all other restaurant businesses.

 

[pinball1970]

T.I.L. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-key-moment-evolution-life-earth.html

A study in Wales, 500 + mya fossils, multicellular. If you look at the images in the paper they look like fossils (I suppose) but also look like bumps and stuff you get on rocks!

https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/10.1144/jgs2023-081

I was going to put it in the https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/nick-lanes-on-sean-carrolls-podcast.1016752/ thread by Bill.

Although these things are very old, this is not abiogenesis old (4+ billion ) or specific to that so T.I.L. is better.

 

[pinball1970]

the above reminded me of this

higher magnification on the Martian meteorite from the 90s.

From memory the verdict was this could be life, then most probably a non-biological feature.

https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/fossil-microbes-mars

https://www.universetoday.com/15408...tian-meteorite-turns-out-it-was-just-geology/

 

[BillTre]

Gross Out Warning!

News article in Science on pets eating deceased owners:
Articles linked to from the article:
Gross warning: At this point, you probably know what you’re getting into if you click these links, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Forensic Science International: the hamster, paywall
Forensic science, medicine and pathology: cats and dogs scavenging, no paywall
Forensic science, medicine and pathology: cats, paywall

It creates problems for forensics people trying to figure causes of death.
The Science article has a flow chart for investigating crime scenes involving pet scavenging, but its too big to post here.

Dogs, cats and even a golden hamster can do this.

Australian police probably expected a gruesome scene when they checked on a 69-year-old man suspected to have been dead for days. But when they opened the door to his home, they didn’t expect the approximately 30 cats that came flooding out. Inside, they found the man’s body on the floor, with his face gnawed down to the skull and his heart and lungs gone. As if to dispel any doubt about what happened, one cat was still sitting inside the man’s emptied chest cavity.

Previous studies have revealed some differences between canine and feline scavenging. Dogs tend to eat the face and throats of humans, then break the ribs and chew on bones. Cats, on the other hand, often strip skin from the nose, upper lip, and fingers (the same places, Rando notes, that they nip at when playing with a living owner). Scavenging is more common with dogs than cats, Byard adds, “but I don’t trust either of them.”

even a hamster, which made a nest with pieces of its owner’s facial skin.

Still, some pet owners might take comfort in knowing that their bodies could help their lonely, hungry animals. “If it kept my old golden retriever going after I died,” Byard says, “I’d be quite happy for it to have a feed.”

 

[pinball1970]

This is not in the Quantum sub forum as yet so I will put it here. T.I.L

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-quantum-nature-large-masses.html

The paper https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.030202

From memory was the limit Feynman mentioned in general public lectures, “Buckyballs”

https://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html

 

[Hornbein]

This is not in the Quantum sub forum as yet so I will put it here. T.I.L

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-quantum-nature-large-masses.html

The paper https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.030202

From memory was the limit Feynman mentioned in general public lectures, “Buckyballs”

https://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html

"quintillionth of a gram, or more precisely 10-20g." That's ten sextillionths. A quintillionth is 10-18. Phooey on phys.org.

Subtract three from 18 to get fifteen, divide that by three to get five. Quint.

 

[pinball1970]

"quintillionth of a gram, or more precisely 10-20g." That's ten sextillionths. A quintillionth is 10-18. Phooey on phys.org.

Subtract three from 18 to get fifteen, divide that by three to get five. Quint.

They say "quantumness" too, I don't think that's a thing. Overall though?

 

[Hornbein]

They say "quantumness" too, I don't think that's a thing. Overall though?

Quite interesting. It's clever piggybacking on LIGO like that. It's going to be a very delicate measurement. I guess they are going to average over a great many measurements. How rapidly do those mirrors vibrate?

 

[fresh_42]

"quintillionth of a gram, or more precisely 10-20g." That's ten sextillionths. A quintillionth is 10-18. Phooey on phys.org.

Subtract three from 18 to get fifteen, divide that by three to get five. Quint.

And next week, we will discuss the different numerical prefixes according to global location.

 

[Hornbein]

And next week, we will discuss the different numerical prefixes according to global location.

In the UK 10-20th would be ten thousand quadrillionths?

 

[fresh_42]

In the UK 10-20th would be ten thousand quadrillionths?

I don't know. We have millions, milliards, billions, billiards etc.

 

[DrGreg]

In the UK 10-20th would be ten thousand quadrillionths?

Wikipedia has an article Long and short scales about this.

Whereas the US has almost always used the short scale (billion = a thousand million), the UK traditionally used to use long scale (billion = a million million). But since 1974, the UK officially adopted short scale (though occasionally you may find examples of long scale). Long scale is still used in most of Europe, and some other parts of the world.

 

[BillTre]

 

[berkeman]

(billion = a million million)

Really? What's a trillion then?

 

[fresh_42]

Really? What's a trillion then?

No, a billion. A trillion would be $10^{18}.$

 

[Hornbein]

Wikipedia has an article Long and short scales about this.

Whereas the US has almost always used the short scale (billion = a thousand million), the UK traditionally used to use long scale (billion = a million million). But since 1974, the UK officially adopted short scale (though occasionally you may find examples of long scale). Long scale is still used in most of Europe, and some other parts of the world.

The advantage of the long scale is that a million times a million is a billion [1+1=2] and so forth. It's logarithmically correct.

 

[pinball1970]

This is a black frog post.

No, a billion. A trillion would be ##10^{18}.

 

[fresh_42]

The advantage of the long scale is that a million times a million is a billion [1+1=2] and so forth. It's logarithmically correct.

A billion times a billion is not a trillion in either scale. Your logic breaks down immediately after your example.

 

[Ibix]

A billion times a billion is not a trillion in either scale. Your logic breaks down immediately after your example.

Two plus two is four, not three, and a billion times a billion is a quadrillion in the long scale.

 

[Orodruin]

A billion times a billion is not a trillion in either scale. Your logic breaks down immediately after your example.

I mean, the logic of long scale is $10^{6n}$ and the logic of short scale is $10^{3(n+1)}$ with $n$ corresponding to whatever the name states, e.g., quadrillion $n=4$: $10^{24}$ or $10^{15}$ depending.

 

[DaveC426913]

If trillion =10¹²
And billion - 10⁹

That means that the root - illion - equals one thousand, no?

And a million should be called monillion.

 

[pinball1970]

I don't suppose there is any chance of ditching the British American thing? That must be confusing to students.

10 to the 6 million
10 to 9 billion?

 

[Orodruin]

And a million should be called monillion.

To be fair, million could very well be a contraction of monillion …

 

[pbuk]

I don't suppose there is any chance of ditching the British American thing?

It was ditched in 1974, as above.

That must be confusing to students.

Not since 1974.