Also note that due to isotope decay in the ore, a natural reactor is no longer possible. From the wikipedia article:
"A key factor that made the reaction possible was that, at the time the reactor went critical 1.7 billion years ago, the fissile isotope 235U made up about 3.1% of the natural uranium, which is comparable to the amount used in some of today's reactors. [...] the current abundance of 235U in natural uranium is only 0.72%. A natural nuclear reactor is therefore no longer possible on Earth without heavy water or graphite."
Another fascinating detail from the article, due to our understanding of fission, we can get some incredible results:
"The concentrations of xenon isotopes, found trapped in mineral formations 2 billion years later, make it possible to calculate the specific time intervals of reactor operation: approximately 30 minutes of criticality followed by 2 hours and 30 minutes of cooling down"
Another example is the Honeywell corporation: from thermostats to computers, then parts of defense/aerospace. Looking at its wikipedia, it also seems like one factor of diversification was the WWII war economy where the government paid lots of different corporations to build new stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell
hacker news really needs a best-of page the way craigslist did (sorry, does), just so I can nominate this. Made me discover a great song (and a great cover), with such a wry commentary (the song's and your own comment being spot on for the original drivel). Or like we used to say, you win the internet for today.
The island of Kaua'i in Hawaii has both tours of a chocolate farm (Lydgate Farms) and a coffee plantation (Kaua'i Coffee) with a visitor center. Just gotta find a conference out there, then hop on a Southwest flight.
Why make (wrong) guesses when you can find the answer in minutes on Wikipedia? Plus it doesn’t make sense to do a TEI with unnecessary mass. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module :
“The six landed descent stages remain at their landing sites; their corresponding ascent stages crashed into the Moon following use. One ascent stage (Apollo 10's Snoopy) was discarded in a heliocentric orbit after its descent stage was discarded in lunar orbit.“
Elsewhere, I read that the ascent stages were crashed into the moon to provide impulses for the seismometers left on the moon. Snoopy is still in orbit around the sun. And the one from Apollo 13 is in the Tonga Trench. Two fascinating lists:
As for littering the surface of the moon, I was surprised to see in videos that in addition to the scientific equipment ( and golf balls) they left on the moon, there was a lot of other little pieces. In one of the videos on the rover, they literally remove the cover off something and just throw it aside on the ground.
I was on my phone (materialistic app) so even a wikipedia search is difficult :) I hate using the web on a mobile, it feels like I'm looking through a toilet roll.
But I mentioned it was an assumption... The parent poster mentioned that the ascent stage was carried into TEI so I assumed that was true.
The boba phenomenon has always surprised me. I enjoy boba, but there are so many other cool slimy-solids-in-sweet-drink to be had at Ranch 99 market (the Chinese supermarkets in California): grass jelly, basil seed drink, nata de coco, and some I’m forgetting. It seems that most boba tea places only have the regular tapioca balls.
I was once in Chinatown in New York and found a sweet tea with small mushrooms floating in it (I think they were straw mushrooms) but I can’t find anything like it with Google. Then there is falooda from India with vermicelli, among others. But I think the next popular “drink/dessert” will be Filipino halo halo.
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