Science:
We have this new chemical that’s amazing! Now you can have water repellent clothing and non-stick cookware! We can even make better tools to fight fires! What’s amazing is that these chemicals last practically forever, how great is that?
Science Part 2:
Oh shit we just learned these chemicals even in small amounts are terrible for you - cancer, liver damage, decreased fertility, and increased risk of asthma and thyroid disease. Whooops, those fancy items we gave you a little while ago mean that it’s in the water. Oh, and these chemicals last practically forever, how terrible is that?
Science Part 3:
Sorry about that, we know we called them forever chemicals, but we thought about it a bit longer and there are ways to break them down. We thought it would be super hard, but it’s actually easy, barely an inconvenience [1].
How to destroy ‘forever chemicals’: cheap method breaks down PFAS
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02247-0?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=6928ded863-briefing-dy-20220819&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-6928ded863-47248244
[1] Not exactly, but it’s really promising research that there are some methods to do this far more easily than before, and the degradation mechanisms will help us learn even better methods.
Djscman
2069
At least there’s a part 3! What a downer it would be if we were stuck on Part 2, just more and more fire-retardant corpses piling up…
Part 4: Oops, sorry the chems we used to break down the forever chemicals have their own disastrous effects.
Part 5: Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.
etc.
We use DMSO in the lab all the time, and drugs are frequently suspended in DMSO, so it’s not quite a terror chemical that’s going to be murdering people. It’s not cheap, and you wouldn’t want it in high concentrations, so it’s not a solution for everything, but it may be really helpful for recycling centers to treat some items to break down some PFAS before doing their thing.
This has been in the news locally because an organic composting center in MA was composting lots of paper that had been treated with PFAS. Instead of being awesome crunchy organic bros they polluted
all the water around them.
in physics, it’s dangerous to assume that things ‘exist’ in any conventional sense. Instead, the deeper question is: what sorts of processes give rise to the notion (or illusion) that something exists?
I love questions like this. What is a question, anyway?
This is probably more ‘philosophy of science’ than anything, but I find it to be a very well written article.
So, recently, a group of scientistsd basically drugged a plant. They put anaesthesia into it’s water, and the plant…wilted.
They were using a variety of plants, including a Venus Fly Trap…
Under the influence, the plant failed to react.
So that begs (:P) or rather leads onto the question, what exactly was being surpressed? Was the plant “unconscious”? → which would imply some sort of consciousness to begin with.
Do plants “feel?” Are they intelligent?
If so…where does that leave vegans?
Delicious mindf*ckery.
More reading:
Oof, that’s gonna suck for vegans… :D
They could convert to breatharianism.
But plants breathe as well!
Fruitarians are a thing. Also a very unhealthy diet, but who am I as an American to talk about someone’s diet being unhealthy?
I’ve long told people I’m a vegetarian because I hate fruits and vegetables, anyways - why else would I tear them apart with my teeth and melt them in the acids of my digestive system?
This is a week or two old, but I only just heard about it. Very cool if they follow through, unlike last time:
Houngan
2081
Over the years I’ve seen a few articles saying that we really don’t understand at all how anesthetics work, so it kinda fits the narrative. We’ve gotten good at using them, but how they actually do it, shrug?
I don’t think it actually makes a difference re: plant intelligence, just that they are using some similar chemical pathways to create and respond to actions.
RichVR
2082
How much of it is putting chemicals in the plant? Are there studies done with other chemicals? Would putting cat pee in a plant have a similar effect?
jpinard
2084
What a brilliant protein for adaption to dehydration.
Matt_W
2085
Random Saturday morning question for science/physics nerds: Why don’t astronauts on the space station experience centrifugal acceleration toward the outer part of the station? I’m not entirely satisfied with conventional explanations involving gravity “balanced out” by centrifugal acceleration (though they are the same value.) If I’m static in any other rotating frame, I “feel” the centrifugal acceleration, either through a wall pushing on me from outside or a string pulling on me from inside. If I was on a rocket in deep space describing the same circular orbital path using engines to maintain the circle, I would definitely feel the centrifugal acceleration as a “down” toward the outside of the orbit. Why don’t I on the ISS? I feel like I’m pretty savvy for a layperson about modern physics and orbital mechanics, but I can’t convince myself I understand the answer to this question.
CraigM
2086
Do you feel acceleration while standing on the ground? In a sense, yes, as the ground pushes up at equal force to the earths gravity, so you feel the acceleration as weight.
When skydiving you feel gravitational acceleration as, well, acceleration. Until you hit terminal velocity at which point air resistance provides equivalent force and you feel the acceleration as wind.
In a frictionless vacuum in freefall you would theoretically accelerate infinitely, and so would feel constant acceleration, as your velocity is constantly changing.
In space there is no air resistance or ground to provide counter force. You are in theory constantly accelerating towards the center of the earth. The difference between your rocket in the same motion (sans earth) and orbit is that fact. In your rocket example the engines are providing a constant thrust pushing against your velocity vector. As such your current momentum wants to carry you in the direction of your current travel, which forces you ‘outward’ as the walls of the rocket need to provide the force to ‘push’ you along your new velocity vector. In essence the walls are providing a constant 9.8m/s of force towards the center of your ‘orbit’ to counter that portion of your currnent velocity vector. With no force in the center to provide acceleration this is what forces you outward.
However in an orbital situation you have some velocity vector that runs perpendicular to the earths gravity. You are constantly accelerating 90° (give or take some fractions) from your current travel vector towards earth. This should cause you to fall ‘inward’ towards the inside of the craft. However your current velocity is so high it pushes you ‘outward’ against this. And though you are accelerating due to the trigonometry of it, the 9.8m/s acceleration is counteracted by the change in velocity vector. Because orbital equilibrium your total velocity remains the same, so you feel no ‘acceleration’ from that perspective, your total velocity is more. or less constant.
As for why no force outward? Well both you and the rocket are subject to the same acceleration. So unlike your powered circular path where the rocket is supplying a force that is not acting on you, that pushes against you, which causes you to feel falling ‘outward’. But since you and the rocket experience the same forces due to earths gravity there is no force difference to require the craft to provide force against you, so both you and the craft are changing the same rate.
Matt_W
2087
I’m not sure about the rest of your explanation yet, but I know this is incorrect. Einstein’s equivalence principle says that if you’re in a closed room, there’s no experiment you can do to distinguish between floating at rest in deep space far from any gravity source and free falling in a uniform gravitational field. A sky diver in vacuum would experience no sensation of acceleration. They’d feel weightless. The reason astronauts on the ISS feel weightless isn’t because they’re orbiting; it’s because they’re free-falling.
I think the rest of your explanation is probably basically correct, but I’d probably phrase it differently. There is a balance between centrifugal and gravitational forces perceived in our local frame. The reason there’s no perceived tension or compression is because you feel those forces uniformly on your whole body. You don’t have a reaction force pushing on your back causing compression–the forces are felt by the whole volume of your self. I think most of our perception of any acceleration is because we are almost never uniformly accelerated. When we sit in a car seat the seat pushes on our back, which then pushes on our organs and the reaction force is due to the “springiness” of our internals, which causes a feeling of compression. With gravity my back, organs, and front are all accelerated at the same time. There’s no reaction force.
