• 0 Posts
  • 175 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

help-circle

  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzLaunches
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    5 days ago

    So, yeah, bottom line: you only need a delta-V of about 12 km/s to get out of the solar system, but a delta-V of 30 km/s to get to the sun without going into orbit.

    This is true, but the possibility of gravity assists mostly nullifies the difference. If you can get out to Jupiter you can basically choose: either let it sling you out of the system, or let it cancel out all your orbital velocity so you fall into the sun.


  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzLaunches
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    5 days ago

    These are all technically correct but fairly inconsequential. Even just to graze the sun you need to lose 90% of your orbital velocity. And although everything orbiting the sun will eventually fall in, the friction is really low. It will take billions of years to lose enough velocity to fall in.



  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzMoss
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    16 days ago

    Note that although species can be described as tree-like, they didn’t quite look like modern trees do. Also, much of the world was swamp, and much of the dead plant material sank into these bogs and decayed into peat.

    The amount of CO2 trapped during this period caused the atmosphere to be around 35% oxygen. This allowed life with inefficient respiratory systems to grow much bigger in size without suffocating, mainly insects. Think woodlice 6 feet long, spiders the size of dogs, millipedes as big as cars, and dragonflies as big as eagles.


  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzMoss
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    16 days ago

    Nowadays, trees absorb CO2 and produce oxygen, and when they die and rot the opposite happens, releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.

    However, during the carboniferous period, when plants first developed the ability to produce lignin (i.e. wood, essentially) there was not yet any bacteria or fungus that could break this material down. The result is that when trees died they would kinda just lay there. For 50 million years, trees absorbed CO2 and then toppled over and piled on the ground and in water. Most of the world was swamp and rainforest. Millions of years of plant growth all dying and laying on top of each other

    So much CO2 was turned into oxygen that O2 levels were 15% higher compared to today. This allowed some truly large lifeforms to develop: trees 150 feet tall, dragonflies with wings 13 inches long, millipedes the size of a car.

    The trapping of so much CO2 led to a reverse greenhouse effect, cooling the planet, and eventually an ice age. The forest systems collapsed from the climate change (we think) killing about 10% of all life on earth. Eventually a species of fungus developed the ability to eat lignin, and cleaned up the dead trees that remained on the surface within a few generations. The millions of years of tree material that sank into the bogs eventually turned into coal.

    Now we’re digging all that good stuff back up and are burning it, yay!






  • Generally, if you want to pass food to someone, put it on a plate so they can pick it up themselves.

    The only reason to use the back of the chopsticks, is if there is a shared plate of food in the center without a separate set of serving chopsticks. Taking from the shared plate with chopsticks that have been in your mouth could be considered unhygienic. You can use the back of the chopsticks to move the food to your own plate, then eat it.

    However this is more like advanced etiquette and not a crucial rule, in my opinion. The only really bad things to avoid are sticking your chopsticks upright into rice and passing food between chopsticks.


  • The only one I really would avoid is passing things between or touching chopsticks together. This is reminiscent of Japanese funeral rituals and thus considered rude to do at the table.

    The others are more about common sense and trying to help you enjoy the sushi as the chef intended:

    • They are bite-sized pieces, designed as a flavour combination, so don’t break them up in any way
    • If you don’t want rice, sashimi is a good way to get that
    • Putting too much soy sauce on the rice can make it fall apart
    • (real) Wasabi is delicate and mixing it with soy sauce will certainly destroy its subtle flavour. In any case in a high-end place the sushi chef will have added everything that’s intended as part of the flavour combination before serving the sushi, so adding stuff is not necessary

    But again, these are suggestions. Enjoy the sushi how you like, you’re not hurting anyone.



  • Semmelweis discovered that a particular type of infection was much less likely to occur when doctors washed their hands with chlorinated lime water between doing an autopsy and examining a patient. However he did not know why or how this worked, and did not discover microorganisms (which were already observed by Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek some ~180 years earlier).


  • And the upside down flying is simply due to gliding mechanics, no?

    Not sure what you mean by this. But planes still generate lift when flying upside down. Wings with a symmetrical curve can also generate lift. Flat wings with no curve at all can also generate lift.

    Pressure differences are definitely involved. That’s the only way air pushes against things, after all, so the fact that there is a lift force implies a pressure difference. However the cause of the pressure difference is rather complicated.