Pauline Dixon, Вулиця Шота Руставелі, Дом 8, Kyiv (2025)

14/01/2025

The history and future of Earth-Moon system

According to the latest theories, the moon was born from the Earth, its matter torn off when a Mars-size planetoid hit the Earth in a grazing collision some 4.5 billion years ago, when the Sun and its court of planets were emerging from a contracting and spinning hydrogen-rich primordial cloud of matter.

Given that the moon emerged from Earth, their distance was once smaller. Simulations place the initial distance at about 10 Earth radii, while now it is at about 60, a huge difference. So, if today the full moon occupies an area in the celestial sphere comparable to that of your thumb nail (about 0.5 degrees), in the distant past the view was considerably more dramatic. Also, since the gravitational force varies with the square of the distance, in the past the mutual influence of Earth and moon was much larger.

Far into the future, with the continuous slowing-down of Earth's spin, a day will last about 47 hours and the distance to the Moon will be 43 percent longer than today. At this point, Earth will spin about its axis at the same rate that the moon will orbit the Earth — the pair will be tidally-locked: the moon will hover over the same point on Earth, somewhat like geostationary satellites do today. It will be a very weird reality, quite different from what we see today: on one side of the Earth there will be no moon to see; and there will be no tides. (Actually, no one will be around to see and it won't happen: the sun will blow up before then, destroying the Earth-moon system.)

The duration of a day changes, even if absurdly slowly for human standards. As of now, a day becomes longer by about 1.7 microseconds per century. At this rate, half a billion years ago a day lasted a bit over 22 hours and one year had 397 days.

28/12/2024

How Was Popcorn Discovered?

Figuring out when people started making popcorn is harder. There are several types of maize, most of which will pop if heated, but one variety, actually called “popcorn,” makes the best popcorn. Scientists have discovered phytoliths from Peru, as well as burned kernels, of this type of “poppable” maize from as early as 6,700 years ago.
You can imagine that popping maize kernels was first discovered by accident. Some maize probably fell into a cooking fire, and whoever was nearby figured out that this was a handy new way of preparing the food. Popped maize would last a long time and was easy to make.
Ancient popcorn was probably not much like the snack you might munch at the movie theater today. There was probably no salt and definitely no butter, since there were no cows to milk in the Americas yet. It probably wasn’t served hot and was likely pretty chewy compared with the version you’re used to today.
It’s impossible to know exactly why or how popcorn was invented, but I would guess it was a clever way to preserve the edible starch in corn by getting rid of the little bit of water inside each kernel that would make it more susceptible to spoiling. It’s the heated water in the kernel escaping as steam that makes popcorn pop. The popped corn could then last a long time. What you may consider a tasty snack today probably started as a useful way of preserving and storing food.

19/12/2024

Sweet peppers surge into ripeness in late summer and flourish into fall.

The things that we call peppers are actually chilies, not peppers at all. The misnomer started with a persistent case of mistaken identity and wishful thinking by Spanish and Portuguese explorers who confused New World capsicums — chili plants — with the plants that produce peppercorns, one of the profitable spices they had hoped to discover during their travels. Chilies are berries because they are the seed pods of the plants, botanically speaking.

Botanists and culinary historians tell us that peppers are native to Central and South America. When trade ships began to crisscross the globe during the 16th century, they carried peppers that got planted on new shores. Cultivated varieties now grow in all but the coldest of climates.

Some peppers are hot, but the rest are not. Hot peppers contain varying levels of capsaicin, a colorless, odorless but unmistakable fiery compound. Mild and sweet peppers carry a recessive gene that keeps them from forming capsaicin. The only way to know a pepper is to taste it, but in general most sweet peppers are green while unripe and change into colors (usually red, orange, yellow or purple). Sweet peppers tend to grow much larger than hot peppers.

No vegetable benefits from roasting more than ripe sweet peppers. Roasting intensifies their natural sweetness and removes their thin, tough skins.

The heat caramelizes the sugars in the peppers, so they must be ripe enough to have developed sugars. So don't try this with an unripe green pepper, because all you will get is an acrid, burned green pepper. (This caveat does not apply to green chilies because the point of roasting them is to char the skins, not sweeten the flesh.)

Leave the peppers whole and do not oil them. If using a gas burner or grill (either gas or charcoal), place them directly on the grate as close to the heat source as possible. Roast the peppers until they are blistered and blackened all over, turning as needed with tongs. Don't stop until they look ruined. Transfer the charred peppers into a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the peppers rest until they are cool enough to handle. The captured steam will finish cooking them. Gently pull out the stem and core of each pepper; most of the seeds will come out still attached to the core. Gently rub or peel off the blackened skin. It's fine if a few charred bits stay stuck to the flesh.

Use the peppers at once, or cover and refrigerate up to three days. You also can freeze the peppers in an airtight container for up to three months. Frozen peppers retain their flavor, but they soften, so they are best used in cooked dishes.

13/12/2024

For reasons having to do with optics and the way your brain works, the camera can in fact make you look heavier than you are.

The main difference between a camera's view of the world and yours is that the camera has a single "eye" whereas you have two. That subtly changes the way things look. Here's an experiment. Pose a round object in front of a varied background — a coffee cup in front of the computer monitor worked well enough for me. From a distance of two or three feet, look at the object alternately with both eyes, then one. You'll notice that, seen with one eye, the object looms larger in your field of vision, and obscures more of what's behind it. It seems bigger and bulgier. In other words, it looks fat.

If you look at the object first with your right eye, then your left, you notice the familiar shift in perspective known as parallax — background features hidden from one eye can be seen by the other. When you look at the object with both eyes, the brain blends the two views together. You see more of what's behind the object, making it seem smaller. Result: binocular vision is slimming, monocular the opposite.

There are ways to compensate for the fattening effect of the camera. One is to use a telephoto lens when shooting portraits. Step back from the subject and zoom in — parallax, and thus the addition of pounds, diminishes with distance. (I knew a photographer who swore by the rule "Never use a lens whose focal length, in millimeters, is less than the weight of the woman.")

If you don't have a telephoto lens but you do have digital photo-editing software, you can still step back when taking portraits and crop out the extra background later on the computer. If you're on the other side of the camera, here's some advice: watch out for amateur photographers who feel they need to have the subject fill the frame. They'll tend to take portraits from three feet away, making it appear that your face has been painted on a balloon. And do not forget those vertical stripes.

05/12/2024

Iconic American movie star Marilyn Monroe once famously sang, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend". Scientists from the University of Liege in Belgium believe they have unearthed a gargantuan amount of these precious stones. There could be an 18-km wide layer of the gems beneath the crust of the planet Mercury. Our nearest planetary neighbour could quite literally be a celestial jewel. Researchers tested how Mercury formed, approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The planet evolved from a gyrating cloud of cosmic dust and gas. Over millions of years, the dust was compressed into graphite, which is chemically identical to diamond. Both are solid forms of the element carbon. It is unlikely Mercury's diamonds could ever be mined as they are about 500 km below the surface.

Researchers used a machine called an anvil press to simulate the conditions under which Mercury was formed. The press is used to make synthetic diamonds. Researchers mixed elements inside a graphite capsule. These included silicon, magnesium and aluminium. The capsule was subjected to pressure 70,000 times greater than that on Earth. It was heated to temperatures of 2,000 degrees Celsius. The lead researcher speculated about the diamonds on Mercury. He said: "Diamonds are made of carbon only, so they should be similar to what we know on Earth…They would [resemble] pure diamonds." Scientists believe there are a quadrillion tons of diamonds beneath the Earth's surface. Experts say the value of these hidden gems is pretty much incalculable.

04/09/2024

Thailand wages war against 'alien' tilapia fish
Battling an alien species
Thailand had experienced outbreaks of blackchin tilapia in the past, but none has been as widespread as this most recent episode.
Mr Nattacha estimates that this particular outbreak is going to cost Thai economy at least 10 billion baht ($293m; £223m).
The core problem is that the blackchin tilapia prey on small fish, shrimp, and snail larvae, which are among Thailand's important aquaculture products.
So for months now, the government has encouraged people to catch blackchin tilapia, which have found their way in rivers and swamps. The fish thrive in brackish water, but can also survive in fresh and salt water.
The Thai government has also doubled the amount that it will pay people who catch the fish, to 15 baht ($0.42; £0.33) per kilogram. The result? In Bangkok's suburbs, crowds have waded in knee-deep waters hoping to catch blackchin tilapia with their plastic basins.
Authorities have also released the blackchin tilapia's predators - Asian seabass and long-whiskered catfish - to hunt them down.
However, they are battling a species which reproduces at speed: females are able to produce 500 fingerlings at a time.
And so authorities have also gone to the extent of developing genetically-modified blackchin tilapia that would produce sterile offspring, planning to release them as early as the end of this year, in the hopes of stopping their population from exploding further.
But Mr Nattacha told BBC Thai the government needed to do even more.
"Who will win?" he wondered. "We need the people to follow the case closely, otherwise this matter will be quiet, and we will pass on this kind of environment to the next generation."

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26/08/2024

A crisis cabinet has been set up by the São Paulo state government to deal with wildfires which have put 30 Brazilian cities on alert.
Flames have killed two people and smoke has disrupted traffic on a dozen highways, while the capital, São Paulo, is shrouded in a grey haze.
Soaring temperatures and low humidity are stoking dangerous fire conditions in the state, which has endured a prolonged drought.
Local government said two employees at an industrial plant in the city of Urupes had died on Friday while fighting a fire, without providing more details, Reuters reported.

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21/08/2024

The weird way the Los Angeles basin alters earthquakes�Southern California has been shaken by two recent earthquakes greater than magnitude 4.0. The way they were experienced in Los Angeles has a lot to do with the sediment-filled basin the city sits upon.
A little over an hour after sunset on 6 August 2024, a sparsely populated belt of farmland near Bakersfield, Southern California, was shaken from a restful evening. A magnitude 5.2 earthquake, followed by hundreds of smaller aftershocks, shuddered through the area as a fault near the southern end of the Central Valley ruptured.
It wasn't a terribly unusual event, by California's standards. The state is the second-most seismically active in the United States behind Alaska, with Southern California experiencing an earthquake on average every three minutes. While most are too small to be felt, around 15-20 events exceed magnitude 4.0 each year.
This latest magnitude 5.2 earthquake is the largest to hit Southern California in three years. The epicenter was about 17 miles (27km) south of Bakersfield, California, and people reported shaking nearly 90 miles (145km) away in portions of Los Angeles and as far away as San Diego. Then, a few days later, another jolt rattled the Los Angeles area due to a rupture on a small section of the dangerous Puente Hills fault system. The resulting magnitude 4.4 earthquake had its epicentre just four miles northeast of the city's downtown area.
Although there was minimal damage caused by both quakes, they have highlighted just how the geology under California's largest city can alter the effects of fault movements in the area. The relatively shallow depth of the 6 August earthquake appeared to create more intense or prolonged shaking in some parts of the city, while others felt almost nothing at all.

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14/08/2024

Hurricane blackouts: New Orleans' 'lighthouse' solution to keep the power on through floods and high winds
As Tropical Storm Debby drenches the south-eastern US causing widespread power outages, a solution developed in New Orleans could offer an essential lifeline when the lights go out.
On a Sunday in the Broadmoor neighbourhood of New Orleans, a church full of voices can be heard singing the hymn This Little Light of Mine. But letting it shine has now taken on a whole new meaning for residents in the city. In 2023, the brownstone Broadmoor Church's rooftop was kitted out with a raft of new solar panels, turning that sunlight into energy for local residents.
The church is one of 86 planned "community lighthouses", and part of a wider project to build the nation's largest network of solar and storage resilience hubs at places of worship and community centres. The project is spearheaded by Together Louisiana, a non-profit organisation supported by local and federal funding, to transform these centres into energy-resilient hubs.
As Tropical Storm Debby, which made landfall in Florida as a category one hurricane, continues to inundate Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, causing widespread blackouts and flooding, the search to adapt to such severe storms is growing. (Read more about how hurricanes are becoming more extreme with climate change.)
New Orleans' community lighthouses are in their early days, and haven't yet been tested against a full-blown hurricane. But the project's organisers hope they could be a life-saving model for providing crucial power in the immediate aftermath of a storm.

07/08/2024

The long environmental fight behind Tahiti's Olympic surfing events
Locals have refused to let the Paris 2024 Olympic Games damage their environment – or their way of life – in Teahupo'o, Tahiti.
The village of Teahupo'o, located on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia, is considered remote even by island standards. Nestled between verdant mountains and a clear lagoon, the community is surrounded by natural beauty. Beyond the edge of the lagoon is one of the world's best reef breaks – a wave that breaks over a coral reef – which is now testing Olympic surfers vying for gold. The surfing events are the culmination of a year of extensive construction in Teahupo'o and the surrounding area in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games.
The town's marina was renovated, while temporary white tents have been set up close to the shore. The aluminium judging tower now stands stoically in the lagoon, dressed in Paris 2024 colours. The tower was completed earlier in 2024, and has proven to be controversial. It attracted worldwide attention in 2023, when local residents and surfers came together to protest the build, arguing that it would damage the reef.

01/08/2024

Complex life on Earth may be much older than thought
A group of scientists say they have found new evidence to back up their theory that complex life on Earth may have begun 1.5 billion years earlier than thought.
The team, working in Gabon, say they discovered evidence deep within rocks showing environmental conditions for animal life 2.1 billion years ago.
But they say the organisms were restricted to an inland sea, did not spread globally and eventually died out.
The ideas are a big departure from conventional thinking and not all scientists agree.
Most experts believe animal life began around 635 million years ago.
The research adds to an ongoing debate over whether so-far unexplained formations found in Franceville, Gabon are actually fossils or not.
The scientists looked at the rock around the formations to see if they showed evidence of containing nutrients like oxygen and phosphorus that could have supported life.
Professor Ernest Chi Fru at Cardiff University worked with an international team of scientists.

17/07/2024

Bear rescued from Ukraine dies in West Lothian zoo
A bear rescued from the war in Ukraine and rehomed in a West Lothian zoo has died.
Staff at Five Sisters Zoo in West Calder said they were "utterly devastated" that Yampil had died following an anaesthetic procedure.
The 12-year-old Asiatic black bear had been rehomed at the zoo in January after being rescued from the village of Yampil in the Donetsk province of eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers had discovered an abandoned zoo in the village when they arrived there in July 2022, five months after the Russian invasion.
They found Yampil injured and traumatised after Russian shelling of the zoo.
Of nearly 200 animals at the zoo, he was one of seven survivors.

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Pauline Dixon

14/01/2025

28/12/2024

19/12/2024

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05/12/2024

04/09/2024

26/08/2024

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