Today I Learned

[Hornbein]

I like a quotation from an American novelist. I have forgotten his name, but he said: "We are the first generation that won't save itself because it's not profitable."

Similar thoughts have occurred to me. Or more directly, to destroy itself because it's profitable.

 

[BillTre]

They release the byproduct of methane of LNG pumps into the air. A flame would provoke questions, but methane is invisible so there is no need to draw any attention.

The flames make a better opening in the Blade Runner film:

 

[Hornbein]

The flames make a better opening in the Blade Runner film:
View attachment 346892

View attachment 346893

The real world just doesn't have enough appreciation for film noir style.

 

[Hornbein]

Today I learned that Asakasa Tokyo is not the same as Asakusa Tokyo. They are a few miles apart.

 

[Ibix]

Off the back of a conversation in the animal photos thread I read the Wikipedia article on chickens so TIL that "a landmark 2020 Nature study that fully sequenced 863 chickens across the world suggests that all domestic chickens originate from a single domestication event of red junglefowl whose present-day distribution is predominantly in southwestern China, northern Thailand and Myanmar."

So Adam and Eve may be a myth, but apparently not for chickens.

(The text says the study was in Nature, but the referenced paper is in Cell Research.)

 

[fresh_42]

So Adam and Eve may be a myth, but apparently not for chickens.

So the apple was an egg?

 

[ergospherical]

The surfing at this years Olympics will be held in Tahiti, nearly 10,000 miles from Paris. It's the furthest away from the host city that an event has been staged, with the runner up being back in 1956 when equestrian events were moved from Melbourne to Stockholm due to quarantine laws.

 

[Orodruin]

The surfing at this years Olympics will be held in Tahiti, nearly 10,000 miles from Paris. It's the furthest away from the host city that an event has been staged, with the runner up being back in 1956 when equestrian events were moved from Melbourne to Stockholm due to quarantine laws.

That’s a very very narrow record though. 15700 km vs the previous 15600 km.

 

[Hornbein]

The surfing at this years Olympics will be held in Tahiti, nearly 10,000 miles from Paris. It's the furthest away from the host city that an event has been staged, with the runner up being back in 1956 when equestrian events were moved from Melbourne to Stockholm due to quarantine laws.

Most of the reason is that surfers get much better waves in the winter. So for the summer Olympics it makes sense to hold it in the southern hemisphere.

 

[Orodruin]

Most of the reason is that surfers get much better waves in the winter. So for the summer Olympics it makes sense to hold it in the southern hemisphere.

Or move the event to the winter olympics …

 

[fresh_42]

Or move the event to the winter olympics …

Well, there are obviously solutions in the northern hemisphere. In August. 560 km.

I guess, the French would rather go to the other side of the world than to Cornwall.

 

[Hornbein]

Well, there are obviously solutions in the northern hemisphere. In August. 560 km.

I guess, the French would rather go to the other side of the world than to Cornwall.

Cornwall says "battered by swells and winds in the winter, but home to beautiful little breaks in the summer."

Tahiti is the home of Teahupo'o, possibly the "best" wave in the whole world. Huge and great shape. In this day of tv and easy travel, why not?
world.https://youtu.be/oNwzDHJHA_g?si=aaCmChHQPc4Twtsq

When I was a surfer I seldom bothered to go out in the summer. But thanks to The Beach Boys, in the mind of Joe Public surfing will always be about Endless Summer.

 

[fresh_42]

Cornwall says "battered by swells and winds in the winter, but home to beautiful little breaks in the summer."

Tahiti is the home of Teahupo'o, possibly the "best" wave in the whole world. Huge and great shape. In this day of tv and easy travel, why not?
world.https://youtu.be/oNwzDHJHA_g?si=aaCmChHQPc4Twtsq

Yes, but WSL means "World Surf League". These are the official, professional tournaments. So if it is good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for the Olympics at the same time?

 

[Hornbein]

Yes, but WSL means "World Surf League". These are the official, professional tournaments. So if it is good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for the Olympics at the same time?

It's because little events like that cater to an audience that physically goes there. The Olympics is all about broadcasts.

 

[Astronuc]

TIL, "Westinghouse Electronic Systems provided research, development, and manufacture of a range of electronic equipment for the United States Armed Forces and other U.S. government agencies from 1938 until it was sold to the Northrop-Grumman Corporation in 1996. Northrop-Grumman continues to operate the division today."
https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Westinghouse_Electronic_Systems
I heard a piece of Westinghouse was associated with Northrup-Grumman, and I wondered how that could be.

Westinghouse: The Life & Time of an American Icon​

 

[Hornbein]

TIL, "Westinghouse Electronic Systems provided research, development, and manufacture of a range of electronic equipment for the United States Armed Forces and other U.S. government agencies from 1938 until it was sold to the Northrop-Grumman Corporation in 1996. Northrop-Grumman continues to operate the division today."
https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Westinghouse_Electronic_Systems
I heard a piece of Westinghouse was associated with Northrup-Grumman, and I wondered how that could be.

Westinghouse: The Life & Time of an American Icon​

My granddaddy Rolla was a bigshot at Westinghouse. He was very proud of his role in developing the first atomic bombs.

 

[BillTre]

Why are they not doing it at the big wave place in Portugal?

 

[fresh_42]

Why are they not doing it at the big wave place in Portugal?

I thought about that, too, but I think it is too dangerous.

 

[PeterDonis]

They said that people don't want to see burning flames, so they release the methane directly into the air.

I suspect whatever TV show it was was making a (garbled, apparently) reference to venting of methane during flaring--the methane is supposed to be burned but not all of it is.

It appears that new regulations are being put in place to limit the practice:

https://www.nrdc.org/bio/josh-axelrod/rule-will-cut-methane-waste-federal-lands-drilling

 

[fresh_42]

I suspect whatever TV show it was was making a (garbled, apparently) reference to venting of methane during flaring--the methane is supposed to be burned but not all of it is.

It appears that new regulations are being put in place to limit the practice:

https://www.nrdc.org/bio/josh-axelrod/rule-will-cut-methane-waste-federal-lands-drilling

https://www.zdf.de/ard/story/page-video-ard-lng-um-jeden-preis-100.html


It is voice over, but the English original can be heart. I hope that native English speaker can understand it anyway. 8:00 - 11:15 (statement from a professor at Cornell included).

 

[Hornbein]

TIL of the 1981 coup attempt in Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt

 

[Hornbein]

"William Vanderbilt’s brownstone double house on Fifth Avenue in New York sported lighting powered by a one-off basement dynamo built by Edison, although Vanderbilt’s system had to be removed after a smoldering fire appeared in the metallic-threaded wallpaper."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/18/home-energy-trading-a-coming-utopia-or-dystopia/

 

[Swamp Thing]

TIL that a horsehair rope circle won't protect me from rattlers, sidewinders or indeed any kind of North American snake

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that a horsehair rope circle won't protect me from rattlers, sidewinders or indeed any kind of North American snake

Sure. you forgot your snake tinfoil hat!

 

[Hornbein]

​

TIL of the cultural traditions of wild boars.

I had a neighbor who raised a wild boar as a pet. The little guy was friendly. As an adult pig he probably weighted about 300 or 400 pounds. His way of saying hello was to slobber on your shoes and then urinate on them. Wearing rubber garden boots was the remedy. -- 568843daw

 

[pinball1970]

TIL Hubble is reducing its observations due to gyroscope failures.
https://phys.org/news/2024-06-hubble-veteran-space-telescope-easy.html

As a follow on from the June the 5th post.

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-hubble-telescope-shifted-gyro-mode.html

Hubble is using one gyro but has a work around using other instruments, to orientate the telescope correctly.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL "United States banned all collaboration between NASA and Beijing in 2011."

From the article https://phys.org/news/2024-06-china-france-satellite-universe.html

 

[pinball1970]

Nice little video of the pillars of creation in 3D using JWST and Hubble images.

 

[BillTre]

TIL that RNA may be used to control pests.
Tests are being planned for a potato insect pest and possibly for the mite that attacks honey bees.

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that RNA may be used to control pests.
Tests are being planned for a potato insect pest and possibly for the mite that attacks honey bees.

Seems like an excellent idea. I learned something. I really should get up to date with biochemistry.

Why are they not doing it at the big wave place in Portugal?

Nazare doesn't break in the summer. Even if it did, it is a gargantuan pile without much shape. You can't get tubed there. You can't do any sort of maneuver. You can't do anything but run to the shoulder to get out of the danger. Even if you could it's a tow-in wave, which quite rightly isn't allowed in tournaments.

Nazare is dangerous : the wave broke a man's back. But Teahupo'o is perhaps equally so. It's name means something like "the place of broken skulls." Maya Gabeira almost drowned there after she couldn't kick out of the wave. At a women's tournament both surfers declined to take off during their heat. The event organizers angrily told them to get back out there. One of the two took off, was injured, and had to withdraw, so the other won by default without ever having surfed the wave.

As long as we are on this topic, world champ Kelly Slater said the most dangerous waves are Pipeline and Mavericks. However there are more dangerous waves. Indeed there are waves that are almost guaranteed to be fatal, but no one surfs them. Where do you draw the line?

​

 

[symbolipoint]

TIL of the 1981 coup attempt in Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt

M.Y.A. I.L. (Many years ago, I learned) :
The a description about the event was later fit to the rhythm of Tanguillo, with lyrics, and this *can be found on YouTube.

* change this to "could" be found, since I am trying to search for one of them on YouTube and so far am unable to find one.

Okay I found one of them:

 

[BillTre]

This would seem to correct for tilting, but not for horizontal movements of the ship.

 

[pinball1970]

This would seem to correct for tilting, but not for horizontal movements of the ship.

I have never had sea sickness but that clip made me a little woozy!

 

[pinball1970]

T.I.L a little bit about black holes

https://phys.org/news/2024-07-cosmic-simulation-reveals-black-holes.html

There is a YT video link and paper in the article

 

[jack action]

How much can roof-mounted bicycles on a following team car reduce cyclist drag?

This principle of the upstream effect suggests that the larger the body riding behind a cyclist, the larger the aerodynamic benefit for this cyclist will be. Therefore, researchers studied the effect that a following team car, as present during individual time trials, could have on the drag of the cyclist (Blocken and Toparlar, 2015). CFD simulations, validated with WT tests, demonstrated the large overpressure bubble in front of the car (Fig. 1), and revealed that the drag reduction for a time trial cyclist by a following team car at 1, 3, 5 and 10 m could go up to 13.7, 3.7, 1.4 and 0.4%, respectively, potentially providing several seconds of time gain over a typical individual time trial of a few tens of kilometres, compared to a cyclist followed by a team car at 25 or 30 m. Based on this research, the International Cycling Union (UCI) in 2023 decided to raise the minimum distance between a cyclist and the following team car from 10 m up to 25 m (International Cycling Union, 2023), thereby referring to the scientific study by Blocken and Toparlar (2015).

However, this previous work on the aerodynamic benefit for a cyclist by a following team car did not consider the potential additional aerodynamic benefit by the bicycles that are typically mounted on the roof of such a team car. Fig. 2 shows four photographs of the individual time trial in the Tirreno-Adriatico in 2022, where figures a–d show team cars with 10, 4, 2 bikes and only 1 bike on the roof, respectively. On the one hand, this suggests that at that time, there was no consensus in the professional cycling community about the potential benefit by stacking many bicycles on the roof of the team car. On the other hand, a single cyclist in a single individual time trial would certainly not need ten spare bicycles. This suggests that at least one team was aware of the potential aerodynamic benefit by stacking multiple bicycles on the team car roof. However, time trial bicycles are designed to be as aerodynamic as possible, so one could question whether and to what extent these roof-mounted bicycles, when oriented in the riding direction as shown in Fig. 2, provide an extra upstream “push effect” for the cyclist.

However, a fairer comparison would be obtained by considering the cyclist followed by a car with 1 bike on the roof as the reference situation instead of the cyclist riding alone, because indeed there is always a car with at least 1 bike on the roof riding behind the time trial cyclist, as shown in Fig. 2. Table 9, Table 10 hold the corresponding values. We again only discuss the results for the top time trial speed of 50.4 km/h, because these yield the smallest time gains. For a car with 10 bikes, as in Fig. 2a, the additional drag reductions compared to a car with only 1 bike are 0.32, 0.14 and 0.09% for d = 5, 10 and 25 m, respectively. This provides additional time gains per kilometre of 0.07, 0.05 and 0.04 s. For the car with the 2 bikes placed perpendicularly, the additional drag reductions are 2.99, 0.89, 0.50 and 0.36% for d = 1, 5, 10, 25 m, respectively. The corresponding additional time gains per km are 0.77, 0.21, 0.12 and 0.08 s. Finally, for the car with the vertical plate, the additional drag reductions are 4.15, 1.89, 0.99 and 0.65%, and the additional time gains 1.09, 0.44, 0.23 and 0.15 s for d = 1, 5, 10, 25 m, respectively.

When you are thinking about putting additional bicycles on the roof of the following team car, you officially run out of ideas.

This is why I dislike competitions where we try to evaluate "the best" among people with tenths of a second differences. I'm sure there are better ways to spend our time, energy and resources.