Welcome to Thursday Things! This week we close out the eclipse, study a meat map, and fly into the AI danger zone.
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They should call this the eclipse burger. Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash
Meat map
I enjoy random infographics that answer questions I wasn’t asking. This one I stumbled across recently answer the question of which countries consume the most meat by type.
Mapped: Meat Consumption By Country and Type
How do countries differ in how much, and what type of meat, they eat? In this colorful graphic, our creator theWORLDMAPS highlights the most consumed type of meat in every country in the world, using data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Each color denotes a different category of meat—bovine, pork, mutton, poultry, seafood, or other—with annual consumption calculated per capita in kilograms (kg).
As you see below, North America and much of South America are all in for eating poultry above other types of meat (with Argentina and Paraguay eating more beef.)
China, India, and Southeast Asia are heavy on fish and seafood. Central and Eastern Europe eat more pork than they do other meats. I don’t know what it all means, but it’s a fun, colorful map.
Meat consumption mapped. Image via Visual Capitalist
Deeper in the accompanying article are interactive graphics detailing the most consumed meat by country, and total meat consumption by country. If you’re into that kind of trivia.
You may wonder what’s in the “Other” meat category. Here’s the answer: “Other meat includes less frequently farmed animals like rabbit, horse, and camel, as well as game—meat from wild animals.”
We also learn:
Papua New Guinea, meanwhile, tops the “other meat” consumption rankings. The country is the largest producer of game meat in the world, due to its mostly rural and indigenous population relying on hunting.
I have not eaten rabbit, horse, or camel and have no immediate plans to do so. Have you? What’s your favorite meat to eat, if any? Let me know in the comments!
Red dots around the sun explained
If you were fortunate enough to view the total eclipse this past Monday, you may have noticed some mysterious ruby red dots in the Sun’s corona during totality. What were they? Fortunately, scientists have the answer:
What Were the Red Dots around the Total Solar Eclipse?
During the total solar eclipse, skywatchers saw ruby-colored prominences sticking out of the moon's shadow. Here's the science of those red dots.
A total solar eclipse is the only time when earthlings can see the sun’s atmosphere, or corona. During an eclipse, the moon blocks all the light from the sun’s visible surface, which usually masks the corona. But during totality, for just a couple of minutes, the corona appears as a fiery white halo around the black moon…
Indeed. And it was amazing to see. But this eclipse we got something more when “the sun provided a stunning prominence that was visible near the bottom of our host star to many during totality.”
Okay, the red dot was a prominence. But what does that mean?
A solar prominence is a massive loop of the sun’s plasma that hangs attached to the visible surface of the sun, forming perhaps within a day but lasting as long as several months, according to NASA. They come in a couple of different varieties, most notably eruptive prominences, which are more dynamic structures, and quiescent ones, which can become eruptive when a new prominence forms below them.
Prominences often appear reddish because their plasma can originate deeper in the sun’s atmosphere, in a layer called the chromosphere, which is characterized by hydrogen at high temperatures that emits red light.
And now you know!
By the way, the next total eclipse visible in places that aren’t Antarctica will be in 2026, visible in Greenland, Iceland, and northern Spain. Plan accordingly.1
Skynet takes flight
We don’t even have self driving cars working at a level that most people would feel comfortable riding in one. So, naturally, it’s time for self-flying fighter jets!
F-16s arrive at Eglin to be modified with self-flying tech
The first three F-16 Fighting Falcons that will be loaded with self-flying technology have arrived at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the Air Force said Tuesday.
The arrival of the F-16s marks the service’s biggest step forward yet in standing up the program known as Venom, which stands for Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model-Autonomy Flying Testbed and aims to speed up the testing of autonomous technology on both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.
What could go wrong?
The Air Force wants to develop a fleet of at least 1,000 collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, that will use autonomous capabilities to fly alongside the service’s future Next-Generation Air Dominance family of fighter systems and F-35A fighters. CCAs could carry missiles or other weapons, perform electronic warfare operations, or fly ahead of other aircraft so its sensors can provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
But before the Air Force can fly CCAs into combat, airmen need to be confident the autonomous software operating the drones will work properly, Brig. Gen. Dale White, the service’s program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said Monday in an online forum hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.2
Yes, that seems like an important point to get right.
But maybe let’s not give this experiment a name that sounds like the title of a movie about AI fighter jets going rogue:
The service’s proposed fiscal 2024 budget includes nearly $50 million to start a program called Project Venom — or Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model — to help it experiment with and refine autonomous software loaded onto six F-16s.3
Seriously, this sounds like the plot of Top Gun 3.
Project Venom? I feel safer already.
Thank you for reading!
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“That eclipse will notably cross over Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and a small portion of Portugal, and a partial eclipse will be visible in parts of Europe, Africa and North America.”
https://www.cnn.com/world/next-total-solar-eclipse-2044-scn/index.html
Ibid