I’m getting fed stories on black holes, which is fine, because I’ve been trying to catch up on all the new developments and discoveries announced lately. (I’ve also been watching videos on YouTube from PBS SpaceTime, so there’s definitely a connection there too.)
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I must have been consulting the Daily Express for its entertainingly bizarre takes on Brexit. And now my curiosity is a part of my permanent record. Oops.
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Scary thought.
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For example:
Because “half the size of a mountain in Scotland” is something everyone can relate to. And, waaaaaaay down at the end of the article, they bury this:
Despite this space rock making a close approach to Earth, it is very unlikely that it could threaten our home-world.
(I’m not even bothering to link the article, since 1. it’s clearly horrible click-bait, and 2. it’s one of those sites that claims that it can’t possibly let you read the article unless you agree to the cookie/privacy policy of eleven different third-party sites, because “these cookies are necessary for the website to function” and “Without this type of technology, our Services won’t work properly”. Which is a whole “possibly untrue” category of its own…)
Boy, I feel bad for this Ben guy, getting dragged for his weight in an article that’s supposed to be about an asteroid…
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Meanwhile, music by the heavy metal band Metallica seemed to agitate the dogs present. […] reggae music and soft rock showed the highest positive changes.
Thus, while studies would need to be conducted to test the hypothesis, it may be when talking about verbal commands that perhaps cats aren’t just being dicks as they appear, but rather, you’re just not speaking in tones and tempos their brains naturally consciously pay attention to without significant training.
(emphasis added)
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Quite old, and only chanced upon it because I was responding to some horrible inapt analogy (on a site I will not name)
Apparently Tuberculosis bacteria are resistant to Carbon Monoxide. This is because the bacteria use Carbon Monoxide as a signaling molecule.
I’m tempted to anthropomorphize Mycobacterium tuberculosis so that I might call it evil.
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So fossil fuel burning can make you more susceptible to tuberculosis.
Take that, Alberta and Saskatchewan!
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My cats have no problems giving verbal commands.
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Ours have mostly learned that this kind of thing leads to either being ignored or (if it’s annoying enough) getting a “knock it off” command in response. If that command is in a lower pitched, growly voice, it usually gets obeyed. Though the one that usually gets to that point that will always respond with a petulant-sounding meow as if talking back…
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My key takeaway here is that tire fires have lower carbon emissions than coal.
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Coal is carbon, so that tracks. In a high temp furnace reactor, the toxic organics from burning rubber are going to break down a lot more than in the stereotypical junkyard tire fire. It’ll still make the people downwind suffer.
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I wonder where all the sulfur from vulcanization goes, though.
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Stack scrubber, if they’re being responsible.
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I wonder how efficient it is compared to oil or coal scrubbing. I’m assuming tires are a lot more complicated in composition and microstructure.
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Sometimes, you might just not know…
Sometimes the introduction of a news report will stop you in your tracks, forcing you to reread in fear you didn’t quite grasp its point the first time. That was certainly the case when Mail Online published a story on Mar. 21, 2017: “An alien satellite set up more than 12,000 years ago to spy on humans has been shot down by elite soldiers from the illuminati, UFO hunters claim.”
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It’s a barn owl.
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Not really. Tires decompose when burned to about the same byproducts as oil and coal - burning simplifies composition considerably, eh? Varying amounts of SOx are the main object of scrubbing in all cases, also particulates (and particularly dirty lignite may have more of those than tires).
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I’m curious how often they clean out the furnaces of the steel belting and other fiddly bits that don’t burn off. Is it hot enough to slag it all?
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Well, they’re using them as fuel for a high-temperature kiln (1,450°C for the Portland cement process), so, yeah, the steel belt in the tires will be reduced to slag (most carbon steel melts between 1,350-1,530°C). I’d imagine that they have an ash-handling hopper and conveyor at the base of the kiln - that’s more or less how they handle similar problems for boilers.
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