Weird News Compilation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Evo
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    News Weird
Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
Sign up Log in
2,158 replies · 174K views
This could be an Onion article if it wasn't a serious one.

An underground radioactive chemical storage tank in southeast Washington state is leaking gallons of nuclear waste...

Ok.

his department recognized that B-109's liquid level was decreasing more than a year ago, but that they weren't sure what was causing it. The Washington DOE were notified Thursday, however, that the tank was indeed leaking...

Hmm, decreasing liquid levels in underground tanks. I wonder what alternative hypothesis they had besides leaking.

constructed during World War II to make plutonium for nuclear weapons, includes tanks that contain various mixed waste materials made of both radioactive components and some of the "most dangerous waste created over four decades,"...

Hmm, so it dates back to 8 decades ago, and it's leaking the most dangerous waste created over 4 decades? Which decades are we talking about exactly?

In the past, more than 67 tanks at the reservation have been suspected to be leaking or have actually leaked...

Some of it is confirmed leaking and some of it might be leaking, but also could be just shrinking, or possibly escaping the tank through some kind of not leaking based process.

"It will just basically sit around in the soil but in fact, it does migrate and some of it has migrated," he said...

Hmm. So it will just sit there, but it won't just sit there and some of it has already gone from there. Sounds good.

Alarming, but also reassuring. It's like if the doctor says you might be dying of cancer, but this could also just be a dream or a simulation.

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEESzqcXZPpFV0yGbZAXLkwQqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowyNj6CjDyiPICMJyFxQU?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
Jarvis323 said:
This could be an Onion article if it wasn't a serious one.
Ok.
Hmm, decreasing liquid levels in underground tanks. I wonder what alternative hypothesis they had besides leaking.
Hmm, so it dates back to 8 decades ago, and it's leaking the most dangerous waste created over 4 decades? Which decades are we talking about exactly?
Some of it is confirmed leaking and some of it might be leaking, but also could be just shrinking, or possibly escaping the tank through some kind of not leaking based process.
Hmm. So it will just sit there, but it won't just sit there and some of it has already gone from there. Sounds good.

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEESzqcXZPpFV0yGbZAXLkwQqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowyNj6CjDyiPICMJyFxQU?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Yes, the internet has killed journalism. It's all about how fast you can type and how many clicks you can get. Copy editors have gone the way of buggy whips.
 
In a documentary about long-term implications in Chernobyl, a Ukrainian scientist said, that one major risk is ##{}^{241}\text{Am}## as a consequence of ##{}^{241}\text{Pu}## decay, which was produced in the facility. Americium is solvable in water and bears therefore the possibility that it enters the food chain via groundwater or leaks.

So "stays there, will migrate, has already leaked" can be plausible.
 
Jarvis323 said:
Hmm, decreasing liquid levels in underground tanks. I wonder what alternative hypothesis they had besides leaking.
John drank it.

No information how problematic the tank contents are, or why they didn't bother to convert its content to something solid in all these decades.
 
Reply
  • Like
  • Wow
Likes   Reactions: BillTre and jack action
fresh_42 said:
Belgian farmer accidentally moved the border with France, making his home country about 1,000 square meters bigger.
This will make up for that time the French janitor knocked over the Meter Bar, making everything smaller.
meter27.jpg
 
Reply
  • Haha
Likes   Reactions: Astronuc, Frisbee and BillTre
Some turtles do this when they hibernate underwater.
They have greatly reduced metabolic oxygen needs when hibernating and can stay underwater a long time during non-hibernating.
 
China ultramarathon: Severe weather kills 21 runners
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57216601
High winds and freezing rain hit participants in the 100km (60-mile) ultramarathon in the Yellow River Stone Forest, a tourist site in Gansu province, on Saturday.
The race was halted when some of the 172 runners went missing, and a rescue operation was launched.
Eight of the 151 rescued runners were injured.

I'm guessing it is in the Jingtai Yellow River Stone Forest, which is located in the southeast of Jingtai County, Baiyin City, Gansu Province.

In Jingtai county:
Highest elevation 3,321 m (10,896 ft)
Lowest elevation 1,276 m (4,186 ft)

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/23/999546242/21-die-in-extreme-weather-in-china-cross-country-race

The race is a 100-km ultramarathon! In the mountains.

The high-altitude Huanghe Shilin Mountain Marathon began saturday morning in sunny conditions, with 172 runners in the lying area. According to local data, around noon yesterday, the ultrarunners contesting the high-altitude stage of the 100-kilometre background race had already arrived between 20 and 31 kilometres of the route.
https://trailrunningspain.com/2021/...in-marathon-extreme-weather-kills-21-runners/

Rescuers said hail, freezing rain and high winds hit the runners when they were about 20-30 kilometers in on the high-altitude section of the race held in the Yellow River Stone Forest in northwestern Gansu province.
https://www.dw.com/en/china-extreme-weather-kills-21-runners-in-ultramarathon/a-57633712

When in the mountains, it is important to be prepared for a rapid change in weather. In places like the Grand Canyon, hikers are told to be prepared for extreme heat and extreme cold.
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Wrichik Basu and berkeman
fresh_42 said:
Avoid totalitarian regimes by all means, even in air during a fly-over!
Ryanair flight was flying from Greece to Lithuania. I wonder how close they were to the Polish border.

They should have tried to make it to Polish airspace, and contacted NATO for protection.
 
Astronuc said:
Ryanair flight was flying from Greece to Lithuania. I wonder how close they were to the Polish border.

They should have tried to make it to Polish airspace, and contacted NATO for protection.
I don't think your average low cost airline pilot is going to try to out run a fighter that shows up on it's wing. I bet they weren't giving any advanced warning, they didn't know the political status of each of their passengers, and they would probably lose their job if they did anything risky. No one died, that is the pilots first responsibility; European politics is their last responsibility.
 
fresh_42 said:
he blue line is by car. It is 900 km longer, so the deviation above EU countries would only have been about 300 km I guess. Still cheaper than the gas needed for an additional landing.
Maybe 50 km or so to the west would put them over Poland, and maybe 100 to 150 km further.
 
DaveE said:
I don't think your average low cost airline pilot is going to try to out run a fighter that shows up on it's wing. I bet they weren't giving any advanced warning, they didn't know the political status of each of their passengers, and they would probably lose their job if they did anything risky. No one died, that is the pilots first responsibility; European politics is their last responsibility.
Welfare of the passengers is the responsibility of the crew and pilot. Someone was kidnapped and could be killed by Lukashenko.
 
Astronuc said:
Welfare of the passengers is the responsibility of the crew and pilot. Someone was kidnapped and could be killed by Lukashenko.
Welfare of ALL of the passengers, not just one. Plus the captain undoubtedly doesn't have all of the information he would need to make a decision like that.
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: epenguin and dextercioby
Having seen the film, Come and See, I find it shocking that a Belarusian leader would have the nerve to praise Hitler.



Remarks about Adolf Hitler​

In 1995, Lukashenko made a remark in which he named Adolf Hitler as a role model for his presidential system in Belarus: "The history of Germany is a copy of the history of Belarus. Germany was raised from ruins thanks to firm authority and not everything connected with that well-known figure Hitler was bad. German order evolved over the centuries and attained its peak under Hitler. This corresponds with our understanding of a presidential republic and the role of a president in it."[220][221] Lukashenka refused to take the quote back, but stated that the consequences of Hitler's leadership style in foreign policy had been bad.[222]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lukashenko#Public_image

Belarus is the country which suffered more loss of life as a percentage of its population than any other at the hands of the Nazis (at 25% with Ukrain coming in at second at 16.3%), and in fact Hitler had planned to exterminate the entire population.

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

Germany imposed a brutal regime, deporting some 380,000 people for slave labour, and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians more. The population was to be exterminated for German colonization. At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and some or all their inhabitants killed (out of 9,200 settlements that were burned or otherwise destroyed in Belarus during World War II).[3] More than 600 villages like Khatyn were annihilated with their entire population.[3] Altogether, over 1 million were killed in Belarus during the three years of German occupation.[3][4][5]
...
In total, Belarus lost a quarter of its pre-war population in the Second World War, including practically all its intellectual elite. About 9,200 villages and 1,200,000 houses were destroyed. The major towns of Minsk and Vitebsk lost over 80% of their buildings and city infrastructure. For the defense against the Germans, and the tenacity during the German occupation, the capital Minsk was awarded the title Hero City after the war. The fortress of Brest was awarded the title Hero-Fortress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Belarus_during_World_War_II
 
Astronuc said:
Ryanair flight was flying from Greece to Lithuania. I wonder how close they were to the Polish border.

They should have tried to make it to Polish airspace, and contacted NATO for protection.
It was almost in Lithuania, another NATO member. Diverted maybe 2-3 minutes before reaching the border. I guess nothing would have happened if they would have continued to fly straight, but apparently the pilot didn't want to take that risk.

Map from the NYT:

airplane.png

I guess airplanes will make a small detour via Poland in the future.
 
Flight Radar app gave sent colleague an alert due to the bomb scare so he followed it live.
He is a member so I will request a screen shot. @astronut