Also:
3 Likes
Years ago I worked a follow-spot light in a theatre which had a 5kW bulb in it. Not sure if it was incandescent or xenon arc though. You made sure not to put your hand in the beam when it was on, and certainly not to walk around in front of it.
On the subject of Mercury, how come they haven’t replaced all of the mercury baths in lighthouses, especially those open to the public?
Of wider interest to me - why the fuck is mercury dental amalgam still a thing?
I’ve got a skullful and I’m a mad cunt with 0 (zero) functional memory, and I may not have been born that way…
I think because it works really well and is inexpensive.
The evidence seems to indicate that the patient picks up hardly any Hg from the filling, beyond a little when it’s put in and a little more if it’s ever taken out.
The environment was more of a worry a) because dentists used to put their amalgam waste down the drain, or in with the medical waste which was then incinerated and b) because all the mercury was vaporised and released to the atmosphere if/when bodies were cremated. But they’ve got the dentists and crematoria to clean up their acts recently.
ISTR a bigger contributor to the public Hg exposure used to be burning coal, mostly in power plants (which also chucked out a surprising quantity of radioisotopes). But we’re getting away from that too now.
The memory thing could be down to all that GIN (“I drink to forget …”) 
.
1 Like
Forgot I posted that 
2 Likes
Well this was accurate in some ways:
Certainly very interesting! 
Fecking Einstein was not of this world.
Just saying, like
1 Like
Neutrino map of universe created from data captured by a neutrino detector experiment buried in ice… matter not light.
1 Like
Good news
1 Like
2 Likes
JWST might just be the best investment in cosmology ever - a new theory emerging from data produced by it posits that the ‘visible’ Universe may be at least twice as old as previously believe at ~26Ga as opposed to ~13Ga:
If this is so, it also puts to bed some existing anomalies, including so-called ‘tired’ photons.
The implications for broader and simpler notions more accessible to the rest of us are considerable, not least questions of scale, plus the gigantic amount of time available for advanced life to have developed across the Universe.
I don’t understand any of this, obviously, but it’s still cool-as, even if just viewed as a window into a world of new ideas and new science that has yet to unveil itself.
5 Likes
Impressive though it certainly is, it won’t get my full seal of approval until it reaches the endless blackness of space that leads to the chasm of Clams!
4 Likes
6 Likes
Found this.
FoL#1 Ellie (studying Zoology, but with Herpetology rather than Entymology) reckons it’s an empty cicada, which, considering there’s millions of the noisy fuckers here, that’s a fair enough guess I think.
1 Like
Exactly, loads about in summer where we grew up in NZ
1 Like
Would eat well. Bit like a pork scratching?
1 Like
Crunchy enough, but no substance, would need injecting with lard and salt.
That sounds like something Heston Blumenthal would serve. 
4 Likes