Quote of the week!

[Cody]

Necklaces and accessories claiming to "protect" people from 5G mobile networks have been found to be radioactive.

What can one say!

[Redspear]

Unlucky to be superstitious?

[RockDoctor]

Necklaces and accessories claiming to "protect" people from 5G mobile networks have been found to be radioactive.

What can one say!

Speaking as someone who recently got hold of three tumblers and a jug in beautiful green-glowing uranium glass, in which to serve the finest of single malts ... perhaps I should become a brandy connosewer and serve that in 5G-enabled glasses?

Uranium glass was popular from the mid-Victorian period - it gives the green glaze to the bricks of bogs at a variety of railway stations - until WW2 with several % w/w of the glass (or glaze on a ceramic) being made of un-depleted uranium. So yes, it is decidedly radioactive. Mostly alpha, which doesn't get through your skin. But still radioactive enough to scare away the hard-of-thinking. Less malt for them ; more for me ; doubleplusgood.

[Cody]

... green-glowing uranium glass, in which to serve the finest of single malts ...

Nice! I have some lovely Bohemian lead crystal tumblers which, like the matching wine goblets, rarely get used these days.

[RockDoctor]

... green-glowing uranium glass, in which to serve the finest of single malts ...

Nice! I have some lovely Bohemian lead crystal tumblers which, like the matching wine goblets, rarely get used these days.

The very thing for your wine-flavoured antifreeze.

I wonder how much of a bang you'd get from mixing quirium crystals in your Leestian Evil Juice?

[Cody]

Leestian? Zaquessoian, please - the purple poison!

[Cody]

Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.

Coincidentally, more on octopus intelligence here, via the BBC iPlayer:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000vx48

News that the world's first commercial octopus farm is closer to becoming reality has been met with dismay by scientists and conservationists.

Very sad! BBC article here.

[RockDoctor]

Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.

For varying values of "closeness".
We have good grounds to believe that chimpanzees, meerkats and dolphins (cetaceans more generally) are performing complex communications within the mammals. And they're "closer" to us than cephalopods (including both octopii and cuttlefish) in phylogenetic terms. In terms of environment, however, the cetaceans are more distant than the meerkats and chimpanzees, and have that vision-supplement sonar sense (and signal) to complement the skin signals of the cephalopods.

Even if the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri don't turn up any time soon, we've no shortage of alien creatures to practice communicating with. We've even got past the "we have guns and you look tasty" level of communication - at least with the cetaceans. Which might stand us in good stead, if the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri look more like whales than squid. On the other hectocotylus ...

[Cody]

A US schoolteacher says she spent five hours in voluntary self-isolation in a plane's toilet after testing positive for Covid-19 mid-flight.

Five minutes in a plane's toilet is tough, let alone five hours!

[GearsNSuch]

Musa, however, does not simply want to give the [Buran] vehicle back to Russia. In September, reports emerged that he would only return Burya to Russia in exchange for the skull of the last Kazakh Khan, a man named Kenesary Kasymov.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10 ... ull/?amp=1

Skulls for shuttles… Interesting times.

[Cody]

Shyster! I don't think the relevant quote is required in this case.

[Cody]

Scientists have confirmed the discovery of Earth's second Trojan asteroid leading the planet in its orbit around its nearest star. Dubbed 2020 XL5

Fireball XL5?

[CaptSolo]

Nearest star?

[RockDoctor]

Nearest star?

Errr, yes. "Sol" (aka "the Sun") is very definitely a star, and it's closest competitor for "nearest star" is Proxima Centauri, about 3.5 light years away. (Sol is about 8 light minutes away, nearly 1 million times further away)
Sorry, insert standard rant # 23 on the superabundance of English graduates in "science journalism" and the underabundance of Science graduates in "English journalism".

[Cody]

Heavy snow has caused major disruption to the Winter Olympics schedule [...] the difficulty caused by the fresh snow came after the Games had been criticised for being the first Winter Olympics to rely almost 100% on artificial snow.

<guffaws>