Month: May 2013

Google Maps ICBM

That is actually a feature of the old maps (you can clearly see it’s the older version)

Google announced that their newest version of Maps will enable users to fire a missile at any location on the planet. “Simply zoom in on any point on the map, set the crosshairs, and tap the ‘Launch’ button, and a Google satellite will immediately send an ASM cruise missile accurate within 2m”

Venus

This video makes it look like Venus is much closer to the sun than it actually is (100M km) but still, well done.

2014-07-02: Colonizing Venus

If the thought of Thanksgiving Dinner on Venus gives you the heebie jeebies, you don’t even need to think about plunging into the roiling atmosphere with nothing but a cheap plastic heat shield and a thin balloon to save you from the crematorium that yawns down below. Dangle the bird into the depths of the Stygian hell, feast as someone who walks between worlds and lives on an airship that rides the hell born winds 48km above a surface so hot it glows visibly red.

2014-07-03: Venus is a good fraction of solid surface in the solar system.

2020-09-18: Phosphine on Venus

observations indicate a level of phosphine at 20 parts per billion. That may sound low, but it turns out that from what we currently know, on Venus it’s hard to make anywhere near that much. The phosphine was seen at altitudes of at least 50 km. The environment there is pretty hostile to phosphine, which would decompose fairly rapidly. They estimate that that it should all be gone in less than 1 ka at that level, and probably much faster. So something must be actively making it to keep the levels up. But what?

2021-01-14: Jupiter killed Venus?

we present the results of a study that explores the effect of Jupiter’s location on the orbital parameters of Venus and subsequent potential water-loss scenarios. We argue that these eccentricity variations for the young Venus may have accelerated the atmospheric evolution of Venus toward the inevitable collapse of the atmosphere into a runaway greenhouse state. The presence of giant planets in exoplanetary systems may likewise increase the expected rate of Venus analogs in those systems.

Universal flu vaccine?

I hope this pans out. That would be extra amazing.

Current flu vaccines use inactivated whole viruses and must be regularly remade to target the strains most likely to cause illness in the coming year. But the new nanoparticles would require fewer updates because they induce the production of antibodies that neutralize a wider range of flu strains. They could even protect against varieties of flu that have not yet emerged.

2020-12-08: Targeting the stalk

The beauty part of this vaccine is that it’s not only broad, but multifunctional with stalk-specific antibodies that can neutralize many kinds of influenza viruses. This universal vaccine could be particularly beneficial to low and middle income countries that don’t have the resources or the logistics to vaccinate their populations each year against influenza.

Bill of Rights

this is pretty cool, especially the case:

It’s one of those nifty contraptions that replaces the oxygen inside the case with inert argon gas, reduces damaging light and stabilizes humidity. It’s basically a portable micro-environment ideal for preserving historic parchment.

NYPL original copy of Bill of Rights to go on display

The 4th estate? Please.

In many respects, the non-detection of these business frauds is far more alarming than failure to uncover governmental malfeasance. Politics is a partisan team sport, and it is easy to imagine Democrats or Republicans closing ranks and protecting their own, despite damage to society. Furthermore, success or failure in public policies is often ambiguous and subject to propagandistic spin. But investors in a fraudulent company lose their money and therefore have an enormous incentive to detect those risks, with the same being true for business journalists. If the media cannot be trusted to catch and report simple financial misconduct, its reliability on more politically charged matters will surely be lower.