The weekend and time for all the news that you probably did not hear, see or read….

There was the usual Ukraine, China, Russia, Trump Blah, blah, blah…..and sadly the unusual news was just as boring….sorry about that.

College students build a cheap satellite…..

It costs a lot of money to get a satellite into orbit onboard a rocket—around $50 million minimum, to be more specific. While this massively restricts who can access the space industry, it’s not all bad.  According to NASA, there are approximately 27,000 hunks of space junk orbiting high above humans’ heads at the moment, with an average of 25 years before they fall from orbit and burn away upon atmospheric reentry.

Still, lowering costs while also shortening satellite lifespans is important if space exploration and utilization is to remain safe and viable. As luck would have it, a group of students and researchers at Brown University just made promising headway for both issues.

College students built a satellite with AA batteries and a $20 microprocessor

We all have heard of the ‘lost continent’ of Atlantis, right?

Ever heard of Lemuria?

In the 19th century, a rumor circulated in the scientific world that a “lost continent” was laying undiscovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. They named it Lemuria as their misguided efforts were driven by some very confusing lemurs.

The idea is largely credited to British zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater who wrote a paper titled “The Mammals of Madagascar” in 1864, published in the Quarterly Journal of Science. Sclater explained that lemur fossils could be found in Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or the Middle East, suggesting that Madagascar and India were once been part of a larger continent that’s since gone missing in the Indian Ocean.

Sclater wasn’t alone in his dreams of Lemuria and a number of other prominent European scientists jumped on the bandwagon. 

In 1868, German biologist Ernst Haeckel published “The History of Creation,” in which he argued the origin of humanity was to be found in Asia, not Africa as Charles Darwin correctly stated, and that humans were closely related to the primates of Southeast Asia. 

 

The “missing link, ” he believed, could be found on the long-lost landmass of Lemuria. Acting as a continental superhighway between India and Africa, Lemuria could explain how humans migrated to the rest of the world, at least in his mind. 

That’s right: according to Haeckel, we are descended from lemurs and the remains of some strange lemur-human hybrids are likely to be lurking in the Indian Ocean on a long-lost continent.

https://www.iflscience.com/the-bizarre-tale-of-lemuria-a-long-lost-continent-inspired-by-lemurs-68041

The whole ‘plant- based’ stuff has become a marketing ploy, a trend if you will, but mjust how ‘good’ is the diets?

People often adjust their diets to keep themselves healthy—but what about changing what we eat for the health of the planet? It appears that some popular meal plans, such as ketogenic and Paleolithic diets, aren’t very good for Earth or for your wellness, according to a recent study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked into the environmental impact and nutrition quality of food commodities.

Our food choices can have major consequences: What we eat contributes about a third of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally, when accounting for agriculture and land use, supply chain, and our dietary habits. Given food’s huge impact on climate change, it’s important that dietary patterns become more sustainable. This begins with identifying the food choices that are environmentally friendly, which is exactly what the study sought to find out.

“Given that many people are experimenting with different diets, it’s helpful to have a sense of the differences in their impacts,” says Diego Rose, study author and director of nutrition at Tulane University. “What individuals choose to eat sends signals to producers about what to produce, so individual behaviors can affect what gets produced and thus the impacts from our overall food production.”

Paleo and keto diets aren’t great for you or the planet, study says

Now that I have bored you guys to tears….you can go out and enjoy your Saturday without the worry of the crap I have passed on.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”