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Japan's Next Sample-Return Mission Could be to a Comet

Promoting Substainable Lunar Bases With Bio-Concrete

Astronomers are investigating the longest and most energetic bursts of X-rays seen from a newly awakened black hole. Watching this strange behavior unfold in real time offers a unique opportunity to learn more about these powerful events and the mysterious behavior of massive black holes.

We may have a unique opportunity to make an infrastructure investment that can demonstrably save money over the long term – by burying power and broadband lines. This is always an option, of course, but since we are in the early phases of rolling out fiber optic service, and also trying to improve our grid infrastructure with reconductoring, now may be the perfect time to also upgrade our infrastructure by burying much of these lines.

This has long been a frustration of mine. I remember over 40 years ago seeing new housing developments (my father was in construction) with all the power lines buried. I hadn’t realized what a terrible eye sore all those telephone poles and wires were until they were gone. It was beautiful. I was lead to believe this was the new trend, especially for residential areas. I looked forward to a day without the ubiquitous telephone poles, much like the transition to cable eliminated the awful TV antennae on top of every home. But that day never came. Areas with buried lines remained, it seems, a privilege of upscale neighborhoods. I get further annoyed every time there is a power outage in my area because of a downed line.

The reason, ultimately, had to be cost. Sure, there are lots of variables that determine that cost, but at the end of the day developers, towns, utility companies were taking the cheaper option. But what price do we place on the aesthetics of the places we live, and the inconvenience of regular power outages? I also hate the fact that the utility companies have to come around every year or so and carve ugly paths through large beautiful trees.

So I was very happy to see this study which argues that – Benefits of aggressively co-undergrounding electric and broadband lines outweigh costs. First, they found that co-undergrounding (simply burying broadband and power lines at the same time) saves about 40% over doing each individually. This seems pretty obvious, but it’s good to put a number on it. But more importantly they found that the whole project can save money over the long term. They modeled one town in Mass and found:

“Over 40 years, the cost of an aggressive co-undergrounding strategy in Shrewsbury would be $45.4 million, but the benefit from avoiding outages is $55.1 million.”

The reduced cost comes mostly from avoiding power outages. This means that areas most prone to power outages would benefit the most. What they mean by “aggressive” is co-undergrounding even before existing power lines are at the end of their lifespan. They do not consider the benefits of reconductoring – meaning increasing the carrying capacity of power lines with more modern construction. The benefit here can be huge as well, especially in facilitating the move to less centralized power production. We can further include the economic benefits of upgrading to fiber optic broadband, or even high end cable service.

This is exactly the kind of thing that governments should be doing – thoughtful public investments that will improve our lives and save money in the long term. The up front costs are also within the means of utility companies and local governments. I would also like to see subsidies at the state and federal level to spread the costs out even more.

Infrastructure investments, at least in the abstract, tend to have broad bipartisan support. Even when they fight over such proposals, in the end both sides will take credit for them, because the public generally supports infrastructure that makes their lives better. For undergrounding there are the immediate benefits of improved aesthetics – our neighborhoods will look prettier. Then we will also benefit from improved broadband access, which can be connected to the rural broadband project which has stalled. Investments in the grid can help keep electricity costs down. For those of us living in areas at high risk of power outages, the lack of such outages will also make an impression over time. We will tell our kids and grandkids stories about the time an ice storm took down power lines, which were laying dangerously across the road, and we had no power for days. What did we do with ourselves, they will ask. You mean – there was no heat in the winter? Did people die? Why yes, yes they did. It will seem barbaric.

This may not make sense for every single location, and obviously some long distance lines are better above ground. But for residential neighborhoods, undergrounding power and broadband seems like a no-brainer. It seemed like one 40 years ago. I hope we don’t miss this opportunity. This could also be a political movement that everyone can get behind, which would be a good thing in itself.

 

The post Bury Broadband and Electricity first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

The human perception of stars is that they are largely unchanging although of course in reality stars and their host galaxies do change over time, just very VERY slowly. When galaxies deplete their star forming materials, they traditionally become redder as short lived stars die while long lived dwarf stars persist for trillions of years. However, recent research challenges this understanding.

Diamonds formed in Earth’s lower mantle contain tiny flecks of minerals that are helping us understand the inner workings of our planet

Random flashes of radiation in the sky are not all that unusual. A few years ago, once such flash was detected coming from a star that at the time, was believed to be from a star consuming a planet! The exact mechanism was unsure though for example; was it the star bloating up as a red giant and engulfing the planet or did the planet spiral in toward the star? The answer was until now, a little elusive. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope showed the environment around the star didn’t match a red giant so it must have been the planet crashing into the star!

If RFK Jr. is to blame for measles outbreaks and deaths, then I would be responsible for saying he would be a net positive for public health in the US.  Thank goodness that’s not the case.

The post Science Based Satire: Falling Vaccine Coverage Over The Years Is A Problem That Likely Increased Due To The Failed Covid-19 Policies That Jonathan Howard Championed. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The two most prominent satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. A team of astronomers have recently tracked the movements of 7,000 stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and found that many of them are being pulled away towards the Large Magellanic Cloud! It seems the SMC is being pulled apart, perhaps leading to its eventual destruction as the tidal forces strip away its stars!

One of the things about astronomy that captivates me is that for every question we answer, we open up a whole bunch of other questions. Dark matter and dark energy are one such phenomenon that rather continues to confound us. There’s also the mystery of missing infrared light too but a team of astronomers think they may have found it! The team examined a region of sky using the Herschel Space Telescope and, by staking 141 images, found where individual dust-rich galaxies appeared blended together. The galaxies are absorbing starlight and re-emitting infrared radiation, and is this that may well account for the missing light.

Exploring the Moon with Biologically-Inspired Subsurface Robots

Wider hips may make childbirth easier, but increase the risk of other health issues

A fossil jawbone found by fishers in the Taiwan Strait has extended the known range of ancient Denisovan people thousands of kilometres to the east

Schrödinger called his metaphorical cat “quite ridiculous” but the quantum weirdness it represents has become a useful benchmark for the quantum computing industry, finds our quantum columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

A machine controlled by AI that sprays bears with the chilli pepper chemical capsaicin could reduce dangerous confrontations with people

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals have been detected in athletic clothing. Should we be worried?

The post Is your workout gear killing you? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A newly discovered settlement in the north-western Nile delta was built by the Egyptian New Kingdom perhaps 3500 years ago and included a temple dedicated to pharaoh Ramesses II

Solvej Balle's newly translated speculative novel, On the Calculation of Volume (parts I and II), examines the numbing effects of time through the old trope of being stuck in a single day. It is an effective meditation

An AI analysis finds that since the 1970s, speeches by US Congress members have shifted to favour language such as “fake news” and “mislead” over words such as “science” and “statistics”

What can exozodiacal dust, also called exozodi, teach astronomers about identifying Earth-like exoplanets? This is what a recently submitted NASA white paper—which highlights key findings from the annual Architecture Concept Review—hopes to address as a team of researchers discussed how exozodi orbiting within a star’s habitable zone (HZ) could interfere with detecting Earth-like exoplanets. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand observational constraints of observing Earth-like exoplanets and what improvements could be made for future telescopes and instruments to overcome these constraints.