- casualSTEM
- Posts
- Terminator Fish | Sunkissed | Cyber-monocle - The Convo Kit #27
Terminator Fish | Sunkissed | Cyber-monocle - The Convo Kit #27
Ever learned you were a fan of something? Following F1 racing, I was quickly enamored with the efficiency and strategy. I wasn’t invested in a team until I watched Red Bull steal the title last week. I realized, that phrasing made me a Mercedes fan.
-Steve
Join The Convo for weekly briefings on tech, space, and science news!
Terminator Fish
The invasive mosquitofish is disrupting some ecosystems by eating nearly anything smaller than itself. So researchers sent a fish robot to terminate it.
Robo-fish is modeled after a largemouth bass
Cyborg-bass chases mosquitofish away from prey
Lasting fear > malnutrition > less mosquitofish
While using fear as a weapon feels unnerving, the mosquitofish had it coming, right? It turns out the original villain of this story is…us. The invasive fish was introduced by humans as a way to control mosquito populations. A valuable lesson in how complex ecosystems are, but just like Arnold, we’ll be back.
Touching the Sun, do-do-do-do
NASA’s Parker probe became the first spacecraft to touch the sun. Parker flew through the sun’s corona back in April, but the data took a few months to get to Earth for review.
Top speed: 62 miles per second
Total expected flybys: 21
Flyby temperatures reached nearly 2,500°F
Parker is protected from intense heat by a 4.5” thick carbon-composite heat shield that is working waaay harder than your air-conditioner. Surviving the heat gives scientists more time to study how the sun's magnetic field generates solar wind capable of escaping its gravitational pull.
Dive into the sun. (carbon-composite sunscreen not included)
Cyberpunk x Monopoly
Oppo, a Chinese smartphone company, is launching a smart monocle. Named “Air Glass”, the lens clips to a pair of glasses and provides a customized heads-up display.
Translates speech to text (currently English and Mandarin)
Can act as a teleprompter for presentations
Weight: 1 ounce
Air Glass is expected to launch early next year in China, with hopes of expanding to other countries. Potential unintended benefit: Real life captions. Imagine reading a question instead of asking for it to be repeated or knowing what train conductors are actually yelling at you.
Dutch Floaties
Rising sea levels have some coastal communities thinking ahead. Floating Dutch houses sit on steel pillars and ride the waves of change as a proof of concept.
Connected to power grids and sewage systems on land
Capable of floating over turbulent storm conditions
Unfinished basement: concrete hull acts as a counterweight for stability
Maldivians currently face the grim reality that their country will become submerged during their lifetime. Figuring out how to build these floating communities now is necessary when the alternative is waiting until hundreds of millions of people are displaced.
Martian Water
Liquid water may have been found on Mars by the Trace Gas Orbiter. The joint ESA-Roscosmos orbiter used FREND to detect what could be large amounts of water in the Valles Marineris canyon region.
FREND = Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector
Measures hydrogen content via neutrons emitted from soil
Valles Marineris is 2,500 miles long and up to 4 miles deep
This potential reservoir is close enough to the surface to be useful on future missions to Mars. More research is needed to determine how much water may actually be there, but this is a significant step in our journey to Mars.
Thank you for reading!
Please share with other awesome people!
We're excited for you to join The Convo!
Missed last week’s Convo?
What would improve this email for you?
I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Reach out on Twitter @_steveburgess or reply to this email.
Reply