Hello again science fans!

I hope your new year is off to a pleasant start and i trust the new year will bring joy along with a few minor unavoidable travails and challenges. And if learning new things brings you joy - read on!

¿If an advanced species of vertebrate arose hundreds of millions of years ago and invented - all in the space of only 10,000 years - agriculture, mathematics, automobiles, jet airplanes, atomic power, and spaceflight before self-destructing, how would we know about it? That’s the crux of the thought experiment called the “

Dear science aficionado,

Another journey around the Sun is at its end. It is safe for me to say that each of us experienced delights and suffered hardships in this latest orbit, but unlike rocks and boulders we undoubtedl

Dear reader,
Welcome aboard for a flight on this week’s SciSchmooze. {Snacks optional.}

CLIMATE

¿Why is the climate conference taking place called “COP28”? Because it’s easier than calling it the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference Of the Parties #28. ¿And why is it being held in Dubai, a country where fossil fuels account for over 4% of its revenue?  [The United States is the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels - Ed.]; a country that denies entry to travelers who ‘might’ protest government policies?; a country that does not confer upon its own citizens the right to protest? However, things change - at least temporarily. 

Dear science fans,

Storm Ciarán bashed England and left many thousands without power across Western Europe last week. 

The Panama Canal is restricting shipping since a drought left the region without enough fresh water to operate the locks for normal ship traffic. Some container ships had to off-load enough containers to meet weight restrictions. The container

Dear science fan,

The above Quantum Squeeze Apparatus made me laugh. It looks like a far more complex version of one of my goofy grammar school inventions that i assembled from bottles, cans, defunct car parts, light bulbs, wires, and batteries. My inventions didn’t ever do anything - but i always hoped they would lead to some major discovery. The above apparatus actually does something - so they say - that allows greater sensitivity in detecting gravity waves at higher frequencies and at lower frequencies - but not both at the same time. If you believe you can get me to understan

Dear SciSchmoozers,

A 6.1 earthquake topped off my birthday this month in Oaxaca, Mexico (and abruptly terminated a huge outdoor rock concert). Since the quake was located 108 kilometers below the terrain, there was almost no damage - except to nerves.

The Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 was a 6.9 magnitude event. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 was a 7.9 magnitude event. Because the magnitude scale is logarithmic, the San Francisco quake was 10 times “bigger” than the Loma Prieta event. In terms of energy, however, the San Francisco quake released over 30 times the energy of the 1989 quake.

¿Is our Bay Area threatened by another 7.9 quake? Well, yes, but not for a while. The g

Dear reader,
I’ve assembled some ideas and information you might enjoy.

SPACE

On Tuesday, go outside at 1938 hrs (that’s nerd-notation for 7:38 PM) to watch the ISS make a 6-minute pass over the Bay Area. (NW horizon to directly overhead (86°) to SE horizon)

Astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin returned to Earth from

Dear Reader,
Below are a few items of interest: discoveries, ideas, and issues. Pick and choose as you wish and click on links for deeper stories.

Bike sharing rentals seemed like a great idea and many millions of these bicycles were manufactured in China, clogging sidewalks and streets. Excess bikes numbering in the millions were rounded up and scrapped. This created tons of non-recyclable waste. This was a tiny trickle of the over 2 billion tons of waste created annually world-wide. Every year another 13 million tons of waste plastic enters our oceans. In less than 20 years, there will be more tons of plastic in the ocean than tons of fish. Methane is a powerful gre