Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
26 March 2023
So, How many of you forgot that the clocks went forwards an hour today in the UK? Mine are all set, with the exception of the clock on the cooker, the controls for which were obviously designed by Torquemada. I figure that in six months or so time it will start telling me the correct time. Procrastination rules OK!
Well as always, a thrill-packed edition of Winding Down... In it we have material on fuel problems ahead for fusion reactors, canned and frozen food, the Earth’s inner inner core, the story of N95 masks, Britain’s role in the abolition of the slave trade, a piece on women and pubs, and a URL for the complete report on London’s Metropolitan Police Force.
There is also a nice picture with a cat in it and the quote is from the intro to an article on the Boris affair in the UK.
Scanner has pointers to material on fake news, the Japanese moon mission, solar storms and solar panels, winter storms and global warming, and Tokyo’s farms.
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue 2 April 2023
Credits: Thanks to Fi for editing, correcting errors, etc.
Energy:
This ‘Wired’ article on a likely fuel crisis for fusion reactors when they eventually get working, has been on my list for some time. I thought that they ran on deuterium, but apparently they also need to use tritium. Deuterium can be extracted from sea water, but not so tritium. Tritium is a very rare substance. Apparently there is less than 20kg of the stuff left on the planet today. Most of that was produced by nuclear weapons testing before the ban in 1963, and it is not likely to be started again!
The remainder comes from heavy water fission reactors, of which there are only 30 remaining in the world, each producing about 100 grams a year. Only India has plans to build more of these reactors, but it’s not likely to make much difference. The other problem is storage. Tritium’s half life is only 12.3 years. That means that in 12.3 years time half of the atmospheric tritium will have turned into helium-3!
For now, it’s enough to remember when reading about how fusion reactors are going to solve ecological power crises, that tritium currently costs $30K /gram and that working reactors will use anything up to 200kg a year!
https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-fusion-is-already-facing-a-fuel-crisis/
Food:
Wow! You learn something new every day. I always thought that canned and frozen foods were inevitably inferior to fresh foods. It appears that’s not the case. Not only that, in some cases the nutrition is better preserved because the freezing and canning process takes place as soon as the produce is harvested!
Check out this article by two professors at Reading University, for the full story.
https://theconversation.com/frozen-and-tinned-foods-can-be-just-as-nutritious-as-fresh-produce-heres-how-201740
Geology:
I guess by now that most people know that not only is the earth not flat, but it is a sphere which has an inner molten core. We know quite a bit about the core by studying how the shock waves from earthquakes .
It turns out from the latest research that we don’t know as much about the core as we thought we did. It seems that there is a strong possibility that the core that we all knew about (well most of us anyway) has its own inner core.
I foresee a lot of interesting new research coming out of this discovery, even if the subject is thousands of miles of rock away!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-find-evidence-of-another-core-within-earths-center-180981704/
Health:
Ever wondered how the N95 masks made famous by the coronavirus epidemic work? I bet you thought they just had a very fine weave to let air molecules through and stopped viruses. Well, I for one, couldn’t have been more wrong! They are in fact an amazing physics and materials science application.
Take a look at this YouTube animation to find out just how clever their workings are!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA&t=4sl
Ever heard of face blindness No? It’s a condition that makes it difficult to recognise faces. There are varying degrees of it, but at its worst a sufferer can’t even recognise members of their own families. It turns out that that it has a suitably impressive name – developmental prosopagnosia – and it seems that many more people suffer from it than was at first believed.
https://www.sciencealert.com/struggle-to-recognise-faces-face-blindness-may-be-more-common-than-scientists-assumed
History:
There have been lots of protests in the UK about civic statues of city fathers who made their fortunes in the slave trade. Sadly there hasn’t been much in the way of recognition of Britain’s role in suppressing the slave trade. So, I though I would point you at two articles about that topic on the Historic UK site.
The first is about the historic ‘West African Squadron’. This was set up by the British Navy in 1808 and was finally folded into the Cape of Good Hope squadron in 1867. During its lifetime the West African Squadron is believed to have seized around 1,600 ships.
The second is about the British struggle to abolish slavery, and it makes fascinating reading. It was a long campaign in which many of the women who took part later became members, and leaders of the suffragettes! Fascinating reading.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/West-Africa-Squadron/
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Abolition-Of-Slavery/
Social (non-Media!):
And while we are on the subject of the women’s movement, let me draw your attention to a piece in Atlas Obscura about the history behind the so-called Ladies’ entrance’ to pubs in the UK and the USA. You probably have never heard of such things, but in my (misspent) youth I can remember going in pubs and wondering what the ‘snug’ that some of them had was all about!
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/feminist-history-saloon-pub-ladies-entrance
Police:
Baroness Casey’s Report on the Metropolitan Police came out this week – it’s very thorough and over 360 pages. It’s a large document but it’s in clear English and very easy to read, I’m currently about half way through it. I should have finished it by next week and will let you have my take on it.
https://www.met.police.uk/police-forces/metropolitan-police/areas/about-us/about-the-met/bcr/baroness-casey-review/ [click on the March 2023 report to get the full report (pdf) – AL]
Pictures:
I thought this was a great picture of what was obviously an important conversation!
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/talks/
Quotes:
“Boris Johnson appeared before the House of Commons committee of privileges this week to explain to MPs that photos of him standing with a glass raised in front of tables strewn with champagne bottles were depicting ‘essential work meetings’ at Downing Street. I don’t know about you but if I’d have realised that cracking open a bottle of Veuve Cliquot with dozens of pals was admissible under lockdown rules, my pandemic would have looked very different indeed.”
Comment made in ‘The Conversation’ daily newsletter, introducing an essay on the issue. You can find the essay at https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-evidence-to-mps-partygate-investigation-the-key-points-of-disagreement-explained-202190
Scanner:
Study reveals the key reason why fake news spreads on social media
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-reveals-key-fake-news-social.html
Japanese outfit’s private moon mission enters lunar orbit
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/23/japanese_private_moonshot_hakutor/
Strongest solar storm in nearly 6 years slams into Earth catching forecasters by surprise
https://www.space.com/strongest-solar-storm-nearly-6-years-surprises-forecasters
Are floating solar panels the future of clean energy production?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/are-floating-solar-panels-the-future-of-clean-energy-production-180981830/
What is the link between winter storms and global warming?
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-link-winter-storms-global.html
How Tokyo’s farms have survived for centuries
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/tokyo-urban-farms-protection-law/
Footnote:
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
26 March 2023
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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