News 21 June 2023 There is a lot going on and I thought I might talk about some of these things today. One of the first thing I would like to mention might appeal to archaeology buffs. Ever notice when archaeologists find metal objects buried in the dirt how corroded and rotted they are. That is what makes the find I am going to tell you about so unusual. A sword which was over 3,000 years old was found. This is unusual enough, but it was still shiny. It was made of bronze and was found at a burial site. The burial site was in Bavaria, Germany. Another unusual thing was the sword was in the grave of three people, which might have been a family. There has been a lot of talk lately about ancient boat construction and how countries like ancient Egypt constructed boats 3,500 years ago. It seems they used an unlikely method. They would tie the planks together and when the material used to do this with would get wet it would pull together so tight, the boats became watertight. Not one nail or peg was used. These were the same boats which were built very large and were used to transport obelisks and the stone to build the pyramids. It wasn’t only Egypt building boats this way in ancient times, other ancient countries were also doing it. Archaeologists are planning to raise what they call a hand sewn boat found off the coast of Croatia. This boat has been said to have been on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea for over 3,200 years. It seems to be well preserved for something this old and is about 12 meters long. An Indian airline named IndiGo has made an incredible order for airliners. I am sure they made Airbus very happy. It is said they ordered 500 A320 airliners and the order could be worth as much as 55 billion dollars. IndiGo is a low cost airlines. It is said they also have more planes on order with Airbus and the total orders are for 1,300 planes. That seems incredible to me. It is said they are Airbuses biggest customer. I can believe that. Qantas is said to be the safest airline in the world. They recently had to turn one of their flights around and some of the cabin crew were sent to the hospital upon landing. It was said there was an unusual smell on the plane. The crew members said fumes were having an effect on them. Five crew members were treated but only two taken to the hospital. NASA has said it wants to mine the asteroid which was said to be worth 10,000 quadrillion dollars. It earned the name the golden asteroid. The asteroid is Psyche 16. It is a solid metal asteroid containing all sorts of precious metals. We currently are not capable of doing this, but in the future it could become common place. Will we make it there before the Chinese? I have talked about this kind of thing before and pointed out the more of these types of asteroids, the less valuable what we find might become. Take gold for example, it is valuable because it is relatively rare, but if it was a common metal it could be only worth the same as iron. More countries and companies are talking about getting into a new type of solar industry, that is one which beams electricity down from space or beams down concentrated sunlight to be used to create power. In World War 2, the Germans had plans for a space station which had the ability to beam down concentrated sunlight as a weapon to burn a target. Thank goodness they never had the chance to develop this plan. Since rocket flights are getting cheaper we could be getting closer to this dream. Dark Matter has intrigued scientists ever since the first idea it might exist was stated. The European Space Agency is going to launch a special telescope named the Euclid to try and explore dark matter. It is thought about 80% of the universe is composed of dark matter and we can’t see it. It is said we can never fully understand the universe if we cannot understand dark matter and also dark energy which is thought to be the force behind the expanding universe. Here we go again with the same promise which seems like it never will be fulfilled. A presidential candidate is promising to reveal all the alien and UFO secrets on his first day if elected. That was the promise made by Kennedy but he is facing an up hill battle against Biden for the nomination who has said he won’t debate him or anyone else so far. As I said others even when elected have not been able to fulfill that promise. A new material promises to be very helpful with some of the problems we are having on the planet. Scientists want to develop new materials that will help with both our energy problems and water problems. MIT has been working with hydrogels which are very absorbent and making them even more absorbent to the point they can absorb moisture from the air. It is said even if the conditions are extremely dry it can still absorb moisture. It eventually could become a source of fresh water where there is none.
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