Well…just a short one on the SpaceX launch of the Falcon super heavy and Starship that is happening in 36 minutes…as much as I hate elon musk, I do still like that there is progress on rockets and space ships…not sure how much it will do to lift my mood…don’t think there is anything that will help with that…oh, and it is snowing here…in the middle of frickin April…
Category Archives: Science
An effect of electric cars…
Well…with reading an article today about the effect that the adoption of electric cars is going to have, it reminded me that I had this same idea a couple of years back so I thought I’d talk about it a bit….in this article, the author posits that at the current pace of adoption where 17% of the cars in California are already electrics, there will be 50% less gas stations for the rest of us that will probably still have ICE cars…and the possibility of only having 1-2 stations in a town the size of Muskegon…right now, gas stations don’t make any money on gas but on the snacks and other stuff they sell…without people coming in for gas, though, they won’t have enough traffic to stay in business…so there is going to be huge disruptions in business related to ICE cars as less and less of them are on the road…I wonder if I’ll see a ban on them in my lifetime…could be…
Another reason…
Well…as you know, I continue to be careful about getting infected with covid by social distancing and still masking up whenever I go out anywhere…and with reading more about the damage the virus does to your body, it gives me another reason to continue being careful. Just yesterday, I read an article that said a recent study of infected people found that the virus suppresses the immune system by up to 80% making infected people much more susceptible to the other viruses going around like RSV and the flu…and this effect lasts from 8 months to a year…and this is in addition to the debilitating effects that you get with long covid that many people still feel years after their infection and is going to result in a tsunami of permanent disability in the near future…and don’t get me started on the 1,000 people a day who are still dying and adding to the total of 1.1 million who have already died…so, am I trying to justify my being careful? Nope, I’m comfortable with what I’m doing to try to avoid this disease and I really don’t care that no one else is…it’s their lives…
True fusion?
Well…I think I’ll talk a little about science this morning since I haven’t been able to find a political topic yet and I just put some chicken in the oven for lunch…yesterday, there was a news story that would be surprising if it’s true since true fusion has been 40 years away since I was a kid…so this story said that the National Ignition Facility, that uses lasers to compress a deuterium pellet to trigger fusion, got almost 20% more energy out of the reaction than they put into it….the holy grail of fusion reactors across the world…oh, I probably should explain what the difference is between fusion and fission reactors…in fission, atoms of uranium are split and the resulting heat is used to turn a steam turbine to create electricity…while in fusion atoms of deuterium are squeezed together by lasers or giant magnets to form a new element which also releases energy and that is what happens in the sun…one of the reasons that fusion is being pursued all over the world is that it is much more clean than fission with no leftover radioactive waste that piles up from the fission reactors currently in use….so the reporting has been breathless about this one event since it was the first time that more energy came out than went in to the start the reaction…but I’ll reserve judgement until they make the announcement tomorrow and the data is peer reviewed….more later….
This is pretty cool…
Well…forgot about this little bit of news that was reported last week but I did want to talk a little about it…just last week, the owner of the clothing company Patagonia put the whole company in a trust so that all the profits, almost 100 million dollars a year, go toward fixing the climate crises that are ravaging the entire world…I mean how many times in your lifetime has there been a typhoon hitting Alaska like one did this week? And it’s nearly the end of September and it’s 84 degrees here in Muskegon? There really wasn’t any detail in the article on what the money will be used for but giving up a 2 billion dollar corporation is pretty damn cool and every penny that can be used to stop burning fossil fuel has to help…maybe I can get a grant to go solar here? That would be cool….
This is scary…
Well…I have been questioning being so careful and masking up when I go out for groceries or to depot but a new study just published has some scary numbers in it and will make me continue to be careful. In a large study coming out of the UK, it was found that if you get covid after the age of 65, your chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease increases by 80%…yep you are 80% more likely to get that terrible disease if you blithely go about your business without the Omicron boosters or masking up and if it’s that easy to prevent, I’ll do it…I’m so used to wearing a mask now anyway and I’ve gotten my boosters…so the covid crisis is not over…but, I don’t think most people have heard about this study and I know I haven’t seen it on the news…adding this to the possibility of long covid gives me all the reason I need to stay careful even if I’m probably 1 in 100 by the looks of it….this is scary….
Look up tonight…
Well…on a lighter note, there is a possibility of a meteor shower tonight as the Earth passes through the remnants of a comet that has been breaking up for a few years now…it looks about 50/50 if we’ll see anything but what is the cost of walking out the door and looking up when it’s dark? On the optimistic side, some scientists are saying we could see 1,000 meteors an hour from this comet but others have some formula that hinges on the speed of the fragments as they move away from the main body of the comet and if they are moving more than 234 MPH away from it, we may see a show…so, I’m going to take a look anyway…it’s supposed to peak in the early am on Tuesday but I won’t be up that late…maybe til 11 or so but that will be it…oh, and yes, I am still sitting on my porch couch writing this and smelling all the people cooking out…and it’s making me hungry even after just eating lunch…probably should clean now…I wonder if I should play some vinyl while I work?
Go out and look up tonight…
Well…almost forgot to talk about this one in the earlier post…if you are still up and in the US, go out tonight and look up…there is a total eclipse of the moon tonight that will be total by about midnight..and it is a blood moon which means it will be even redder than it normally is during an eclipse…and it will start around 10:30 or so with the Earth’s shadow moving slowly across the moon….let’s keep our fingers crossed for clear weather….going to take the binoculars out and give it a look…..
Bird flu…
Well…damn, just when I finally get birds coming to my feeder, the experts are saying to take it down and not to feed the birds until summer because of the bird flu that is starting to kill birds all over the US…and yet, they say that songbirds are not really affected by it right now…and the thing that I don’t understand is why feeders? The grackles out here travel in huge flocks and feed right next to each other and there are never more than two birds on my feeders at a time so the chance of spreading the virus from bird to bird is quite small….so I guess I have to make a decision here in a while…do I fill it or take it down? Have to think about that one…..
Back to the mask….
Well…darn, just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in…that line from “Godfather 3″ really describes this pandemic and the new variants that continue to evolve and explode across the world….over the past few days, China has basically locked down over 100 million people in 4 cities across the country and the trend is that South Korea and other Asian countries are going to have to do the same…and that all but guarantees that the recession that has been looming on the horizon is going to happen when all of the computer chips manufacturing from the affected areas in China just stop…as they have just yesterday….and one of the biggest contributors to this explosion of virus in China is that the Sinovac vaccine is not really effective against Omicron2 and they have not been getting boosters into arms there…there is even a huge spike in cases in Europe where they have lifted all covid restrictions just like here in the US and you can see where that is leading us…another “wave” just like the original Omicron and another quarter of a million deaths that I am not going to be one of…so, back to masks for whenever I go out around people starting tomorrow…I do have 26 N-95′s that I haven’t started to use yet and will probably hold off on until it gets bad around here….and I will get the 4th shot as soon as it is available to boost protection against getting sick…and my second set of free covid tests are supposed to arrive today so I can know what is going on if I do get sick….and then I can protect people around me by using the n-95′s or just staying home….here we go again….