The Land Under Antarctica
A team of glaciologists from the University of California Irvine (UCI) made public the most accurate portrayal of the land underneath Antarctica’s ice sheet yet.
Science
The Early History of Human Excreta
As humans kept wandering, they fertilized places along the way—especially those “rest stops” where their clans chose to stay for a while. Some of these early humans may have even noticed that plants tended to grow bigger, better, and tastier in such rest stops. So, tribes made a point of coming back to those spots the next season, or even several years in a row—and then, one year some decided to just settle at those convenient spots. These early settlers brought us to the advent of farming.
Airport Runway Names Shift with Magnetic Field
For example, the Fairbanks International Airport in Alaska renamed runway 1L-19R to 2L-20R in 2009 when magnetic north shifted enough to mandate a change. And the airport operators know—from NCEI’s World Magnetic Model (WMM) and other sources—that they’ll likely need to update the name again in 2033…
Lunar Eclipses – 2021-2030
Eclipses recur over the Saros cycle, a period of approximately 18 years 11 days.
The saros is a period of exactly 223 synodic months, approximately 6585.3211 days, or 18 years, 10, 11, or 12 days (depending on the number of leap years), and 8 hours, that can be used to predict eclipses of the Sun and Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saros_(astronomy)
The ‘Great Shoe Spill of 1990’, Art, and Flotsam Science
Tens of thousands of NIke shoes fell into the Pacific in 1990
What the Dippin’ Dots ‘cold chain’ can teach us about COVID-19 vaccines
Countless people across the country are desperate to get their hands on the coronavirus vaccine. But the same could be said for another icy treat with some surprising similarities: Dippin’ Dots.
Invented by a microbiologist in 1988, Dippin’ Dots’ self-proclaimed “Ice Cream of the Future” maintains its characteristic beaded form only if stored at -49 degrees Fahrenheit. Slipping even a few degrees in the wrong direction can jeopardize the quality of a batch.
Shipping a coronavirus vaccine is a similarly delicate dance.
Why do things keep evolving into crabs?
For some reason, animals keep evolving into things that look like crabs, independently, over and over again.
Tsar Bomba – Unclassified Footage
Rosatom has released previously classified footage of the largest bomb to ever be detonated, Tsar Bomba.
With a yield of 50 megatons (50 million tons), equal to around 3,800 Hiroshima bombs, the weapon was set off over Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2020/08/rosatom-releases-previously-classified-documentary-video-50-mt-novaya-zemlya-test
Update: I think they took it down? So, this seems to be a re-upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJhZ3i-HXS0
Tip: YouTube’s auto-translated captions do a great job turning it into english.
Plastic Bag Found at the Bottom of World’s Deepest Ocean Trench
A recent study revealed that a plastic bag, like the kind given away at grocery stores, is now the deepest known piece of plastic trash, found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench. Scientists found it by looking through the Deep-Sea Debris Database, a collection of photos and videos taken from 5,010 dives over the past 30 years that was recently made public.