A good chance that those grandmas were Rosie the Riveters in WWII.

 

As was pretty common back in the 70's (and before), at one point my science teach (8th grade) had a bowl of mercury (about a pint, give or take) that he floated nails, nuts, and bolts in and that we all had the opportunity to poke our fingers into and roll balls of it around in the palms of our hands.

Fast forward to the mid-90's and there was this huge breaking story about a hazmat incident in town and they showed more than half a dozen fire trucks on scene and city works crews all around. They kept breaking into scheduled programming to report on the status of this "ongoing incident" all night, but never said what the heck happened, just what was being done to deal with it. They cordoned off the entire residential block, brought in the hazmat teams (all suited up, of course), spent hours deciding on a plan of action, finally deciding to bring in an asphalt truck to pour asphalt over a 4' x 4' square, centered on the spill, and then brought in a crew to saw that square out, as well as an additional four feet on one side so that they could dig a hole deep enough next to it so that they could be sure that the excavator could scoop under it and lift it out without breaking it. Then they wrapped and sealed the whole thing in multiple layers of plastic and hauled it away to a hazmat processing center. But they never said what it was that happened, but you knew it just had to be ultra serious to warrant this level of extreme caution and measures, right?

Finally, the next day, we learn that a kid crossing the street dropped a baby thermometer and it broke, spilling a small amount of mercury, estimated at 10% of it's total contents, onto the street. These kinds of thermometers contain about 600 mg of mercury, so all of this was over about 60 mg of mercury (call it 100 mg).

Once, when a child, I broke a thermometer (glass with mercury) while in my mouth. Mom yelled "SPIT IT OUT! SPIT IT OUT!" I'm sure I didn't swallow any mercury or glass. And I, too, played with mercury in the palm of my hand.

Worked for a company that maintained emergency lighting equipment all over the eastern seaboard (USA). Many of the higher amperage systems had mercury relays. Each relay must have weighed about 10 pounds, that's how big they were. In earlier years to that job I messed with some {self censored} devices and discovered that mercury enhanced the {self censored}.

I've censored my comments because of the very real danger of mercury. Though we played with it - the manor I was using it constitutes a great danger to the user. That, and I'm sure NSA would have something to say about my applications as well. Today I don't mess with such things. Nor do I give out that recipe. Don't want to be responsible for injury and I don't want to go to jail.

 

Once, when a child, I broke a thermometer (glass with mercury) while in my mouth. Mom yelled "SPIT IT OUT! SPIT IT OUT!" I'm sure I didn't swallow any mercury or glass. And I, too, played with mercury in the palm of my hand.

Worked for a company that maintained emergency lighting equipment all over the eastern seaboard (USA). Many of the higher amperage systems had mercury relays. Each relay must have weighed about 10 pounds, that's how big they were. In earlier years to that job I messed with some {self censored} devices and discovered that mercury enhanced the {self censored}.

I've censored my comments because of the very real danger of mercury. Though we played with it - the manor I was using it constitutes a great danger to the user. That, and I'm sure NSA would have something to say about my applications as well. Today I don't mess with such things. Nor do I give out that recipe. Don't want to be responsible for injury and I don't want to go to jail.

We still use devices that contain mercury but not for CENSORED applications..
https://www.osram.com/ecat/HBO Merc...stry-Specialty Lighting/com/en/GPS01_1028555/

 

nsaspook I'm sure mercury is used in a lot of applications. CFL's, Fluorescent lamps, High Pressure Sodium lamps (I think).

 

Surprisingly, 100-million-year-old Saurapod tracks discovered in Chinese restaurant



“It turns out they are the 50-60 cm long fossilized footprints of the long-necked sauropod dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous period around 100 million years ago."​

 

The Great Seal Bug

 

 

China claims its Space Station has achieved 100% oxygen regeneration in orbit

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"At present, the six systems are in stable operation, with 100 percent of the oxygen resources regenerated and 95 percent of the water resources recycled," said Bian Qiang, director of the environmental control and life-support engineering office under the Astronaut Center of China.

 

China claims its Space Station has achieved 100% oxygen regeneration in orbit

View attachment 292244​

They must have transferred the team writing product descriptions for Amazon, Ebay, and AliExpress and now they are writing press releases for their space agency.

 

 

They must have transferred the team writing product descriptions for Amazon, Ebay, and AliExpress and now they are writing press releases for their space agency.

I bet one of the points they covered was "let's define among us what 100% actually means"

 

"let's define among us what 100% actually means"

100% of low expectations is still Low Expectations.

 

Physicists Create Microchip 100 Times Faster Than Conventional Ones

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What's great about the team's discovery is that there's no longer the need to add more and more foreign materials into a device to make it work faster. Instead, all they need to do is use this nano-origami method with materials such as graphene, and they have a greener and more sustainable technology that is also faster.

 

Physicists Create Microchip 100 Times Faster Than Conventional Ones
View attachment 292550​

It's a microchip in scale (the POP-SCI link text says 100X smaller, not 100x faster) but don't expect to see a computing device from this anytime soon (there is a huge amount of snake oil from the researches in that POP-SCI link above IMO).
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.0c06701

Strain engineering is used (various types of doping) today in conventional silicon chips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_engineering

 

​

 

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1650088349778993152

 

 

'Great Grandfather': Researchers may have found the world's oldest tree

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Barichivich told France24 that, "80 percent of the possible trajectories show the tree would be 5,000 years old."

 

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1650088349778993152

Indeed and Elon Musk seriously expects to have humans flying to/from mars regularly in the future.