Today I Learned

[Hornbein]

TIL of the 1981 coup attempt in Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt

 

[Hornbein]

"William Vanderbilt’s brownstone double house on Fifth Avenue in New York sported lighting powered by a one-off basement dynamo built by Edison, although Vanderbilt’s system had to be removed after a smoldering fire appeared in the metallic-threaded wallpaper."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/18/home-energy-trading-a-coming-utopia-or-dystopia/

 

[Swamp Thing]

TIL that a horsehair rope circle won't protect me from rattlers, sidewinders or indeed any kind of North American snake

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that a horsehair rope circle won't protect me from rattlers, sidewinders or indeed any kind of North American snake

Sure. you forgot your snake tinfoil hat!

 

[Hornbein]

​

TIL of the cultural traditions of wild boars.

I had a neighbor who raised a wild boar as a pet. The little guy was friendly. As an adult pig he probably weighted about 300 or 400 pounds. His way of saying hello was to slobber on your shoes and then urinate on them. Wearing rubber garden boots was the remedy. -- 568843daw

 

[pinball1970]

TIL Hubble is reducing its observations due to gyroscope failures.
https://phys.org/news/2024-06-hubble-veteran-space-telescope-easy.html

As a follow on from the June the 5th post.

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-hubble-telescope-shifted-gyro-mode.html

Hubble is using one gyro but has a work around using other instruments, to orientate the telescope correctly.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL "United States banned all collaboration between NASA and Beijing in 2011."

From the article https://phys.org/news/2024-06-china-france-satellite-universe.html

 

[pinball1970]

Nice little video of the pillars of creation in 3D using JWST and Hubble images.

 

[BillTre]

TIL that RNA may be used to control pests.
Tests are being planned for a potato insect pest and possibly for the mite that attacks honey bees.

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that RNA may be used to control pests.
Tests are being planned for a potato insect pest and possibly for the mite that attacks honey bees.

Seems like an excellent idea. I learned something. I really should get up to date with biochemistry.

Why are they not doing it at the big wave place in Portugal?

Nazare doesn't break in the summer. Even if it did, it is a gargantuan pile without much shape. You can't get tubed there. You can't do any sort of maneuver. You can't do anything but run to the shoulder to get out of the danger. Even if you could it's a tow-in wave, which quite rightly isn't allowed in tournaments.

Nazare is dangerous : the wave broke a man's back. But Teahupo'o is perhaps equally so. It's name means something like "the place of broken skulls." Maya Gabeira almost drowned there after she couldn't kick out of the wave. At a women's tournament both surfers declined to take off during their heat. The event organizers angrily told them to get back out there. One of the two took off, was injured, and had to withdraw, so the other won by default without ever having surfed the wave.

As long as we are on this topic, world champ Kelly Slater said the most dangerous waves are Pipeline and Mavericks. However there are more dangerous waves. Indeed there are waves that are almost guaranteed to be fatal, but no one surfs them. Where do you draw the line?

​

 

[symbolipoint]

TIL of the 1981 coup attempt in Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt

M.Y.A. I.L. (Many years ago, I learned) :
The a description about the event was later fit to the rhythm of Tanguillo, with lyrics, and this *can be found on YouTube.

* change this to "could" be found, since I am trying to search for one of them on YouTube and so far am unable to find one.

Okay I found one of them:

 

[BillTre]

This would seem to correct for tilting, but not for horizontal movements of the ship.

 

[pinball1970]

This would seem to correct for tilting, but not for horizontal movements of the ship.

I have never had sea sickness but that clip made me a little woozy!

 

[pinball1970]

T.I.L a little bit about black holes

https://phys.org/news/2024-07-cosmic-simulation-reveals-black-holes.html

There is a YT video link and paper in the article

 

[jack action]

How much can roof-mounted bicycles on a following team car reduce cyclist drag?

This principle of the upstream effect suggests that the larger the body riding behind a cyclist, the larger the aerodynamic benefit for this cyclist will be. Therefore, researchers studied the effect that a following team car, as present during individual time trials, could have on the drag of the cyclist (Blocken and Toparlar, 2015). CFD simulations, validated with WT tests, demonstrated the large overpressure bubble in front of the car (Fig. 1), and revealed that the drag reduction for a time trial cyclist by a following team car at 1, 3, 5 and 10 m could go up to 13.7, 3.7, 1.4 and 0.4%, respectively, potentially providing several seconds of time gain over a typical individual time trial of a few tens of kilometres, compared to a cyclist followed by a team car at 25 or 30 m. Based on this research, the International Cycling Union (UCI) in 2023 decided to raise the minimum distance between a cyclist and the following team car from 10 m up to 25 m (International Cycling Union, 2023), thereby referring to the scientific study by Blocken and Toparlar (2015).

However, this previous work on the aerodynamic benefit for a cyclist by a following team car did not consider the potential additional aerodynamic benefit by the bicycles that are typically mounted on the roof of such a team car. Fig. 2 shows four photographs of the individual time trial in the Tirreno-Adriatico in 2022, where figures a–d show team cars with 10, 4, 2 bikes and only 1 bike on the roof, respectively. On the one hand, this suggests that at that time, there was no consensus in the professional cycling community about the potential benefit by stacking many bicycles on the roof of the team car. On the other hand, a single cyclist in a single individual time trial would certainly not need ten spare bicycles. This suggests that at least one team was aware of the potential aerodynamic benefit by stacking multiple bicycles on the team car roof. However, time trial bicycles are designed to be as aerodynamic as possible, so one could question whether and to what extent these roof-mounted bicycles, when oriented in the riding direction as shown in Fig. 2, provide an extra upstream “push effect” for the cyclist.

However, a fairer comparison would be obtained by considering the cyclist followed by a car with 1 bike on the roof as the reference situation instead of the cyclist riding alone, because indeed there is always a car with at least 1 bike on the roof riding behind the time trial cyclist, as shown in Fig. 2. Table 9, Table 10 hold the corresponding values. We again only discuss the results for the top time trial speed of 50.4 km/h, because these yield the smallest time gains. For a car with 10 bikes, as in Fig. 2a, the additional drag reductions compared to a car with only 1 bike are 0.32, 0.14 and 0.09% for d = 5, 10 and 25 m, respectively. This provides additional time gains per kilometre of 0.07, 0.05 and 0.04 s. For the car with the 2 bikes placed perpendicularly, the additional drag reductions are 2.99, 0.89, 0.50 and 0.36% for d = 1, 5, 10, 25 m, respectively. The corresponding additional time gains per km are 0.77, 0.21, 0.12 and 0.08 s. Finally, for the car with the vertical plate, the additional drag reductions are 4.15, 1.89, 0.99 and 0.65%, and the additional time gains 1.09, 0.44, 0.23 and 0.15 s for d = 1, 5, 10, 25 m, respectively.

When you are thinking about putting additional bicycles on the roof of the following team car, you officially run out of ideas.

This is why I dislike competitions where we try to evaluate "the best" among people with tenths of a second differences. I'm sure there are better ways to spend our time, energy and resources.

 

[Hornbein]

This is why I dislike competitions where we try to evaluate "the best" among people with tenths of a second differences. I'm sure there are better ways to spend our time, energy and resources.

But it's harmless. In this day and age I see this as a major advantage.

 

[pinball1970]

https://phys.org/news/2024-07-lifetime-explosion-star-sky.html

From "the conversation" so I have put it here rather than science sub.

wiki says before August too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Coronae_Borealis

Manchester is pretty rubbish for star gazing so I may have to get to the Pike to see it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartshead_Pike

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that on March 11, 1978, Claude François died of an electric shock in his Paris apartment when he touched a broken lamp from the bathtub. He was the one who wrote (with Jacques Revaux and Gilles Thibault, the version you know is a cover, translated by Canadian musician Paul Anka) Comme d'Habitude! What a stupid death at 39!

 

[BillTre]

TIL that tree trunk can contain more than a trillion microbes (bacteria and archea, fungi not counted).
Science news article.
biorxiv.

Interesting info bit: trees are estimated to have 450 gigatons of carbon, animals only have about 2 gigatons of carbon.

 

[BillTre]

 

[pinball1970]

T.I.L. NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this color-enhanced view of the giant planet's northern hemisphere May 12, 2024,
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-image-nasa-juno-mission-captures.html

 

[fresh_42]

TIL about FC United Manchester on a TV documentation and a very special dialect.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL about FC United Manchester on a TV documentation and a very special dialect.

Most Man U fans I know supported it. Deep down though? The club is a business and the major share holders sold their stock legally.
The protesters seem to be quieter when we are winning!
Good luck to FC though.
United had the green and gold away kit in 93 worn by Eric Cantona one of my heros.
Beckham took a green and gold scarf off a fan on his return to OT when he was with Madrid.
Stir things up a little!

 

[fresh_42]

Most Man U fans I know supported it. Deep down though? The club is a business and the major share holders sold their stock legally.
The protesters seem to be quieter when we are winning!
Good luck to FC though.
United had the green and gold away kit in 93 worn by Eric Cantona one of my heros.
Beckham took a green and gold scarf off a fan on his return to OT when he was with Madrid.
Stir things up a little!

I liked that one fan was wearing a knit cap with FC St. Pauli printed on it. It is one of our rebel clubs.

 

[DaveC426913]

TIL: how my surveyors laser level can still be used, even though I had given up on it.

It is way too dim to see the beam play across any surface more than 6 feet away during the day, even with the JooJanta 200 goggles that come with it.

But I just had the brilliant inspiration to get a small shiny surface and stick it in the way. The first thing at-hand was a metal pencil case.

The beam can easily be seen ay any point along the entire length of my yard. Had to take a video to capture it, but there it is:

I did some experimentation to see how accurate a level line I could get with the bubble levels.

A mere quarter turn of the adjustment knob offsets the beam by 1/2 inch over 20 feet, and I can easily distinguish a tilt of much less than a quarter turn with the bubble levels. So I think I can get within 1/8 inch over 20 feet.

 

[Ibix]

even with the JooJanta 200 goggles that come with it.

...because the beam is still powerful enough to be perilous? Or because it is no longer powerful enough to be perilous?

 

[BillTre]

 

[OmCheeto]

TIL that 1 in 12 men are colorblind.

 

[docnet]

TIL that 1 in 12 men are colorblind.

https://enchroma.com/

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that and how you can measure c with a microwave and a slice of cheese.