News 21 May 2021
The government just made a statement that could move the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. The clock is used to tell us how close the scientists think we are to nuclear war. On January 22, 2021 it was only 1.5 minutes to midnight. The_Byte listed an article by Dan Robitzski which states the US Strategic Command which it in charge of our nuclear weapons posted, “The spectrum of conflict today is neither linear nor predictable,” the agency tweeted. “We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option.” Could this have anything to do with the number of terrorists coming over our open borders? It is probably easier than ever to sneak in a small nuke.
Scientists are trying to develop a new type of concrete. Concrete has been around for thousands of years and the ancient Roman concrete is the strongest. They even discovered how to make it dry under water. The scientists have added an ingredient to concrete to allow it to conduct electricity. This will make it far more useful and also allow it to be heated. If you could heat concrete, I can think of one use which could make it last far longer. Getting the temperature of the concrete above freezing would prevent ice from forming and expanding in cracks which in time destroys concrete. I am sure there will be far more uses for this stuff.
Misleading news is everywhere. A recent headline stated the U.S. was embarrassed because in a computer simulation an artificial intelligence program beat our F-16 fighters five times to zero. It never mentioned the fact this was a plane first flown in 1974 and was almost 50 years old. How would it have done against out new planes; guess we will never know? The paper managed to make a derogatory headline against us making us look inferior so they accomplished their mission. I also wonder how foreign fighter planes would have done.
One has to wonder why some dunes on Mars have turned out to be blue. This April (2021) the NASA Odyssey orbiter released pictures of the surface of Mars which showed blue dunes scattered over the planet. The truth is NASA fooled us with false color photos. The colors represent different degrees of heat with blue being colder and the areas on the planet which are red are hotter.
Scientists have made a connection between Alzheimer’s disease and aluminum. Years ago we were told by some sources cooking in aluminum pots and pans was not good but it seems drinking and eating food from aluminum containers isn’t good for you either. It is being said the aluminum turns up in the same places in the human brain as tangles of tau protein that appear in the early stages of the disease. Scientists think there is a good chance the aluminum could cause the formation of these tangles and plaques which precede Alzheimer’s.
DARPA stands for the Defense Advanced Research Agency. Much of our secret weapons come from there. It is being said they are working on a nuclear powered spacecraft. It would be much faster than the chemical rockets we now use. What might seem strange to many of us is the fact it may not be powerful enough to blast off from the earth. It will have to either be flown into space or built there. Once in space it will be able to reach Mars in about 90 days according to scientists instead of the usual 5 to 9 months. Obviously, this is still far from ideal even around the solar system, but better than what we are now using.
Sometimes unexplained things happen and they aren’t restricted to any country in particular. In 1978 a young man named Frederick Valentich was flying a small plane above the Bass Strait in Australia. He began to get worried and we know this because he radioed, he was being followed by an unknown aircraft. He said the unknown craft was flying about 300 meters above him. He said the craft was metal and shiny and flying fast and began to orbit his plane. Melbourne tower asked Valentich to describe the airplane and he replied with his last message, “It isn’t an aircraft.” The communication went dead, but not before the air traffic controller heard a metal scraping sound. Valentich and his plane were never found.
Talking about unusual things, something strange is going on in the world. The rate of twins being born has been steadily increasing. This has a lot of scientists scratching their collective heads. There are a few guesses why such as Invitro Fertilizations and better healthcare, but no one really knows why. Multiple births have increased from 2 percent of the population in 1915 to 3.5 percent of the population in 2014.
It turns out some of the procedures in video games for imaging can be very useful in other areas such as archaeology. Take for instance the discovery of a partial suit of chain armor which was found. Scientists were interested in finding out what it would have looked like if it was complete and they were able to accomplish this virtually using engines developed for games to construct characters and such. Can you imagine how hard it must have been for a blacksmith from those days to construct this armor. He would have had to create it one tiny link at a time and forging them together as he went along. I have to wonder how long this process would have taken him.
Today we have WiFi in most places, but there was one area where it didn’t exist and that area was bigger than all the land on the planet. It was in the water. Researchers have developed a WiFi system which can be used underwater. It consists of lasers and LEDs. The new system was named Aqua-Fi and will be much more reliable than systems being used today. Another great thing is the system is cheap, a radio sends the data to a Raspberry Pi computer board which initiates a light beam to the surface. This means since electronics are used the speed can be increased as more powerful and faster chips are used.
When we look at the planets in our solar system most of us think they are all just round balls of matter floating in space, but recently something strange was discovered about Uranus. It is putting out X-Rays. This was not expected and now scientists want to know why. This is why a new study has been launched.