Things to Think About It is amazing to me after all this time humans have been around there are still so many things which are mysteries to us. Some of these things don’t seem that complicated but that is deceiving. Take gravity for example. The concept seemed simple enough, we are drawn to the bigger body we inhibit. One might think there is enough in this to figure out how to create artificial gravity, but then we find out on the quantum scale gravity acts different. It also is said to act different near black holes. Scientists have been trying to explain quantum gravity and several different theories exist, none of which have been proved on the quantum scale. What would you think if I told you there was an ancient people so incredibly precise, they created faces on their stone statues that were exactly the same on both sides of the face. Even today unless special instruments were used it seems almost impossible to do this. The ancient Egyptians seemed to somehow make some of the faces perfectly symmetrical. An example of this incredible symmetry is the Colossi of Memnon which is a statue of Pharaoh Amenhotep 3. Other statues, but not all, bear this symmetry. I have to wonder about nuclear fusion. When I say this, I mean it seems to still be in the development stage and yet there have been statements ever once in a while indicating we have developed it. Years ago, a famous aerospace company put out a statement which said they had developed a nuclear fusion reactor and it was so small and light it could fit into a fighter plane. After that statement was released, I never heard any more about it. There are many companies today who seem to be at different stages of development with some claiming to be within a few years of creating one which will produce electrical generation. The company which announced the compact fusion reactor has since faced problems with it. The project is named the CFR which stands for Compact Fusion Reactor. Getting to Time Crystals. They are very big with science right now but most people either have not heard about them, or just don’t understand what they do. No, they cannot take you through a time travel trip. When asked to define them, A.I. said they were a quantum system that exhibits a periodic pattern of motion in time. In more simpler terms, they are crystals which keep absolutely perfect time because they oscillate at a constant frequency. They have particles that move in a repeating loop and this loop is thought to go on forever in the crystal’s lifetime with the same constant motion. Scientists are working on creating time crystals that will work at room temperature. Another problem is a time crystal is fragile and the crystal itself will fail, even though it kept perfect time for its lifetime. Did you ever wonder why some metals last longer than others? There are factors which come into play which determine this. Some people think the harder or stronger the metal is the longer it lasts, but this is certainly not necessarily true. One metal which is neither is gold yet it is one of the longest lasting minerals. The reason is gold forms a layer which fights against oxygen and moisture. Oxygen is a corrosive agent and gets more corrosive when it is combined with water, yet we need oxygen to survive. The amount of oxygen in the air we breathe is about 21 percent. The air contains over 78 percent nitrogen. How does stealth actually work? The stealth you usually read about has to do with the detection of planes and ships, and other flying and sailing devices. These devices are created in such a way if they use stealth, when radar beams bounce off of them, they might get scattered as much as possible, or even partially absorbed. For example, a stealth fighter might return such a small presence, it might look like a bird on radar. Stealth itself has been around for thousands of years. When the first hunter hid behind a tree, he was using stealth. When snipers wear a ghillie suit they are using stealth. A ghillie suit is made of the surrounding material so the sniper would blend into the background. In previous wars ships and planes were sometimes painted with patterns to make them harder to detect. The James Webb telescope is the largest telescope ever launched into space. When it was launched it was compacted into a bundle which would fit into the rocket. Before it could be used it had to unfold into the proper form, which some thought was so complex an operation it might fail. Astronomers said it was more complex than the first manned missions to the moon. It was placed at a distant area of space known as the Lagrange point where it seems to always be at the same place in space. It is also being used to analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets and report the composition of their atmospheres. Suggestions have been made to fill a moon crater with mercury and spin It at a constant speed to make even a more powerful telescope, because the size of the crater filled with mercury would create a powerful light gathering mirror which is the basics of a reflecting telescope. There has been more talk about lab grown meat lately. One of the reasons to try and grow meat was to save the environment. It has been said cows release large amounts of methane, and many people accepted this explanation, but a report has come out from the University of California, Davis. It states lab produced meat could be up to 25 times worse for the environment. How can this be? The report is said to state the purification process causes 4 to 25 times the CO2 emissions. Are people who pay for a quick ride into space and back astronauts? Some say yes while others say they are not. The no side explains a ten- or eleven-minute trip to the beginning of space and back where you do absolutely nothing is more like getting on an elevator. You actually control more on the elevator because you select the floor to get out on. Riding on the rocket you do nothing, so the prep is quite different from what the astronauts go through. The yes side say if you get into space, you are an astronaut. What do you think?
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