Thursday Things: Strange Smell Edition
19 November 2020. Vol 2 No 47 By Dan McGirt. #67
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“It’s me, the Moon, hanging out in the sky. I wonder what the humans are up to now?”
Photo: Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash
Why NASA wants to put a nuclear power plant on the moon Honestly, I don’t know why we don’t have a nuclear power plant on the moon already. Do you even need a reason for that? Just do it!
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy will seek proposals from industry to build a nuclear power plant on the moon and Mars to support its long-term exploration plans. The proposal is for a fission surface power system, and the goal is to have a flight system, lander and reactor ready to launch by 2026.
Anthony Calomino, NASA’s nuclear technology portfolio lead within the Space Technology Mission Directorate, said that the plan is to develop a 10-kilowatt class fission surface power system for demonstration on the moon by the late 2020s. The facility will be fully manufactured and assembled on Earth, then tested for safety and to make sure it operates correctly.
Afterwards, it will be integrated with a lunar lander, and a launch vehicle will transport it to an orbit around the moon. A lander will lower it to the surface, and once it arrives, it will be ready for operation with no additional assembly or construction required. The demonstration is expected to last for one year, and could ultimately lead to extended missions on the moon, Mars, and beyond.
It’s a pop-up lunar nuclear plant! What could go wrong?
"Space: 1999 is a British science-fiction television series that originally aired from 1975 to 1977. In the opening installment, nuclear waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side explodes in a catastrophic accident on 13 September 1999, knocking the Moon out of orbit and sending it and the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha hurtling uncontrollably into space."
Just in time for the holidays. Simple Device Could Help You Sober Up Faster And All You Have to Do Is Breathe
While a speedy way of getting alcohol out of the system might sound like the perfect hangover cure, it has some serious medical potential. Worldwide, around 3 million deaths a year happen because of harmful alcohol use and being able to reverse the effects of binge drinking could save a lot of those lives.
Scientists have now come up with a compact, simple, proof-of-concept system that helps the body clear alcohol at a faster-than-normal rate – and the key to it is enlisting the help of the lungs to join the liver in expelling the alcohol.
Normally, the liver clears out 90 percent of alcohol in the blood, and there's no way to speed this process up; doctors can only try and give the liver some support. If the lungs are working on the job as well, the new research finds, then alcohol can be cleared from the blood and the body up to three times faster.
This sober up fast system will is the perfect 2020 holiday stocking stuffer for many people. And if you call now, we’ll double your order! (Doesn’t this gadget — admittedly an important gadget with life-saving medical uses — have As Seen on TV written all over it?)
And coming soon — Smell-o-rama! We don’t often get news from the world of olfactory innovation, but today I smell a story. Scents of history: study hopes to recreate smells of old Europe
Scientists, historians and experts in artificial intelligence across the UK and Europe have announced they are teaming up for a €2.8m project labelled “Odeuropa” to identify and even recreate the aromas that would have assailed noses between the 16th and early 20th centuries.
“Once you start looking at printed texts published in Europe since 1500 you will find loads of references to smell, from religious scents – like the smell of incense – through to things like tobacco,” said Dr William Tullett of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, a member of the Odeuropa team and the author of Smell in Eighteenth-Century England.
The first step in the three-year project, which is due to begin in January, will be to develop artificial intelligence to screen historical texts in seven languages for descriptions of odours – and their context – as well as to spot aromatic items within images, such as paintings.
I love the name ‘Odeuropa’. They should bottle that.
The team say they plan to use their findings to work with chemists and perfumers to recreate the smells of the past, and explore how the odours can be delivered – alongside insights into their significance – to enhance the experience of visitors to museums and other heritage site
Oh, they are going to bottle that. I’m sure “Odor of the 9th Century” will be a huge hit. Chamber pots, dogs and cattle in the living room, dead bodies in the street, and just a hint of plague.
Unusual quasiparticles discovered in graphene-based materials Yes, it’s particle physics time again here at Thursday Things. I barely understand what’s going on in this story, but it is nevertheless fascinating. Let’s begin!
Scientists have discovered a new family of quasiparticles that defy textbook physics. Researchers found the particles, called Brown-Zak fermions, in graphene-based superlattices.
Oh, those rascally Brown-Zak fermions! So defiant! So contemptuous of your textbooks and your laws of physics! Brown-Zak fermions make their own rules, baby!
Physicists spotted the particles and their odd behavior -- described Friday in the journal Nature Communications -- after aligning a single layer of graphene with an insulating boron nitride sheet.
Typically, in the absence of a magnetic field, electrons travel in straight lines. When a magnetic field is applied, the paths of electrons start to bend and the particles begin to move in circles.
"In a graphene layer which has been aligned with the boron nitride, electrons also start to bend -- but if you set the magnetic field at specific values, the electrons move in straight line trajectories again, as if there is no magnetic field anymore," study co-author Piranavan Kumaravadivel said in a news release.
"Such behavior is radically different from textbook physics," said Kumaravadivel, a physicist at the University of Manchester in Britain.
That’s right! Straight line electrons! I go where I want! I’m a Brown-Zak fermion! I defy your magnetic field like it’s not even there! I spit on your textbook!
(Side note: Why do they even bother to make physics textbooks anymore? It seems as soon as a new edition is published some quirky — or is that quarky? — never before seen particle pops up out of nowhere to defy it. Then all the textbook editors sigh and start over again.)
Anyhow, it never would have occurred to me to align a single layer of graphene with an insulating boron nitride sheet. I’m lucky if I remember to throw a dryer sheet in the the laundry. (And if scientists could solve the physics of missing socks, that would be awesome.) But in retrospect it’s so obvious! Of course! Insulating boron nitride sheet! Why didn’t I think of that?
What does it all mean? Well:
For years, scientists have been studying graphene-boron nitride superlattices to better understand -- and take advantage of -- a fractal pattern known as the Hofstadter's butterfly.
The latest discovery has forced physicists to reconsider everything they thought they knew about the fractal phenomenon.
I know I’ll never look at Hofstadter’s butterfly the same way ever again. I’m sure you feel the same. Especially after what Schrodinger’s cat did to it.
Last word: "The concept of quasiparticles is arguably one of the most important in condensed matter physics and quantum many-body systems," said lead author Julien Barrier.
I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Go read the whole thing.
Google Earth user spots dome-covered cave in Antarctica, sparking alien theories. Yes, Google Earth user strikes again, uncovering yet another hidden mystery of the world from the safety and comfort of his laptop.
An eagle-eyed Google Earth devotee thinks there’s something odd going on in Antarctica.
The self-proclaimed “Earth watchman” claims he spotted an air vent on top of a “metallic shield” in a no-fly zone on the icy continent.
The keen observer posted a video on YouTube titled “HUGE Cave Opening Covered With an Iron Dome in Antarctica! – Appears to go DEEP Underground.”
You may be skeptical, sure. But there’s a YouTube video! So it’s probably all true. Now, I don’t know why they jump straight to aliens, when it’s just as likely to be an outpost of ancient Atlantis or a hidden base of the Antarctic Nazis who got away at the end of World War 2, but I’m sure they have their reasons.
If it is aliens, I bet their flying saucers are powered by Brown-Zak fermion in a Hofstadter’s butterfly configuration aligned with an insulating boron nitride sheet. You want to defy the laws of physics, that’s the only way to go.
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