Category: [Science & technology]

Potatoes are better than human blood for making space concrete bricks, scientists say

Engineers have created an intriguing concrete alternative using simulated Martian or lunar soil, potato starch and salt.
The “space concrete” is twice as strong as conventional concrete, the researchers say. They hope the new material will eventually facilitate construction efforts on the moon and Mars.
In a new study published in the journal Open Engineering, two researchers from the University of Manchester in England demonstrate the effectiveness of potato starch as a binder to create the novel “StarCrete.” […]
Stronger concretes typically last longer, but that isn’t StarCrete’s major advantage as a potential building material on the moon or Mars. The scientists estimate that just 55 pounds (25 kilograms) of dehydrated potatoes could be used to produce nearly half a ton of StarCrete, which is enough to sculpt over 200 bricks. For context, you need about 7,500 bricks to construct a three-bedroom house here on Earth. […]
Potato starch wasn’t the first medium that University of Manchester scientists tested in their search for ISRU building supplies. In a previous study, the same team explored the possibility of using human blood and urine as binding agents for their extraterrestrial concrete. The blood and urine of astronauts, after all, are renewable resources, and they’re available wherever an astronaut’s mission might take them.
Concrete from the researchers’ trials using blood and urine also produced strengths above traditional mixtures, measuring around 40 MPa. These bricks’ construction, however, would require that astronauts repeatedly drain their own bodily fluids, which was viewed as a drawback.

No shit. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t say that in case they try that as well…

The James Webb Space Telescope is marking its first anniversary, and it’s released this image to celebrate:

This, I am told, is the Rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex which is the nearest star-forming region to Earth. I, on the other hand, suspect it is actually some vast Lovecraftian entity. I mean, look at it, fucking tentacles everywhere. The mere fact that it may be a giant cloud of gas doesn’t necessarily make it not a Lovecraftian entity, there’s a sentient gas creature in Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath so obviously this could be another one. Good thing it’s about 400 light years away so it could be a while before it comes to feast on whatever’s left of humanity by then…

New Study Is Extremely Embarrassing for Lab-Grown Meat

Researchers at UC Davis have made a startling discovery that could change the way we view lab-grown meat.
As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, they found that the meat alternative’s environmental impact appears to be “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef you can buy at the grocery store — itself already a very environmentally damaging foodstuff — at least based on current production methods.
If confirmed, the research could be damning: lab-grown meat, long seen as a greener alternative to meat products that don’t involve the slaughter of animals, could be more harmful to the environment than the products it’s trying to replace.
“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef,” said corresponding author Edward Spang, an associate professor at UC Davis, in a statement. “It’s not a panacea.”

Bugger and damnation. As a somewhat repentant carnivore who likes his meat but acknowledges that veganism has the ethical point, I’ve been hoping lab-grown meat would prove a viable alternative for me… I mean, that would further depend on me actually liking the stuff when I finally try it, but if it worked for me then perhaps I might feel a bit better about, you know, not having another living being die for my survival. If this report is accurate, though, that may not actually be the case. Though apparently it’s not all bad news:

Assessing the cycle of energy needed and the greenhouse gas emissions involved in all stages of producing lab-grown meat compared to conventional beef, they found that the global warming potential — an environmental metric measured in kilograms of CO2 emissions — of lab-grown meat is between four and 25 times greater than the average for beef products sold in stores. […]
Lab-grown meat companies have tried to end their reliance on pharmaceutical-grade ingredients and focus on food-grade ones instead, something that would make growing meat in a lab far more environmentally competitive.
“We believe commercial-scale cultivated meat production will be more sustainable, efficient and healthier for the planet than conventional animal agriculture because we will not be raising and slaughtering billions of animals or using one-third of the planet’s ice-free land to grow food for them,” Andrew Noyes, vice president and head of global communications at Good Meat, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
If the companies were to make that switch, cultured meat’s global warming potential could end up being anywhere between 80 percent lower to 26 percent higher than conventional beef production, according to the researchers.

So it might only be substantially more damaging than making real beef instead of hideously so. I feel so much better about that.

‘Ducking hell’ to disappear from Apple autocorrect

Apple has said it will no longer automatically change one of the most common swear words to ‘ducking’.
The autocorrect feature, which has long frustrated users, will soon be able to use AI to detect when you really mean to use that expletive.
“In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,” said software boss Craig Federighi.

This just creates a new problem for people who actually mean to write “duck”, though, doesn’t it? They’re the ones who have to be extra careful now…

The potential death knell for the star Betelgeuse is being sounded, with news that the big red one has somewhat abruptly gone from being the 10th brightest star in the sky to the 7th… this after mysteriously dimming a few years ago when it ejected some mass and went relatively dark for a few months. Mind you, the same author has also observed that, though Betelgeuse’s supernova ending is inevitable, it may not happen for another hundred thousand years, so let’s not get too excited.

Anyway, if it does go off soon, the real complication will be for a certain comic I grew up on back in the 80s. Cos Betelgeuse is about 640 light years from us, which means that if it popped off right now it would actually have happened in the late 14th century, and it would’ve taken 640-odd years for the light to reach us. Which means the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic could have a hard time explaining how the Mighty Tharg came to Earth from Betelgeuse in the 1970s if it had already gone nova 600 years earlier… and some of August Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos stories could wind up looking even sillier than they naturally do, and Zaphod Beeblebrox might be stuck without a home; on which note, I found this blog post from 2009 which ends by citing an article observing that Betelgeuse was shrinking and might go nova “soon”. Fourteen years later, we’re still waiting…