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I bet you didnt know that
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Even being wrong is fun here!
So to summarise the last page -
The new sarcophagus put on Chernobyl is 36000 tonnes, not 32000 as I said.
The International Space Station is 420 tonnes. So the Chernobyl sarcophagus is almost 100 times heavier - and of course they both have to shield from radiation.
That is one hell of a ship, and I'm glad to have been wrong to have learned about it!
I believe radiation sinks 1cm/year in Chernobyl, not 6cm/year as earlier stated - so it's now about a foot underground (a bit less as it would have to sink to the ground first). Safe for us - but means farming and construction are completely out of the question of course.
But - this is Radar Duga-1 -
It's one part of the USSR's old early warning system. This array was intended to detect signs that the US had fired a nuke at Moscow, who would then have maybe 30 minutes to return fire before being obliterated. This is just the receiver; there were two others elsewhere in Ukraine; a transmitter and a triangulator.
It's massive; about 500 yards long and 500 feet high.
It's about two miles from Chernobyl (which I think is in the background of the photo)
Like everything in the exclusion zone - the power plant and inhabited dwellings aside - it's not really being maintained, and is just rusting away.
If it falls, the crater it creates will be much more than 12 inches deep, and all the old buried radiation will be brought to the surface again...
The only reason it still exists is because, unlike the transmitter and triangulator, the receiver can't be blown up because of the same radiation issue.
(To conclude my bits on Chernobyl, it is very much worth a visit. You can even do multi-day tours, staying overnight in the Chernobyl town hotel)0 -
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The nautical references above reminded me of a topic I found very interesting when on holiday in Stockholm last year.
We are familiar in today’s wold of tales of officials seeking grandeur and symbols of power and also of cases where, when something goes wrong, the finger is pointed in a direction where it might not be fair to those in that direction. This was evident in the story of the Titanic which was part of a trio of ships aimed to showcase the prowess of the White Star shipping company which ultimately sank with blame being apportioned to various parties. This might be the most famous case of a ship sinking on its maiden voyage but is not the only time it happened to a ship designed with such pomp and purpose.
In 1625, the Swedish king, Gustav II ordered the Dutch shipwright Henrik Hybertsson to build 4 new ships, one of which the Vasa was expected to be one of the most powerful warships in the world. Hybertsson designed the ship but due to illness (which resulted in his death before the ship was constructed) he was unable to supervise the construction of the ship. When completed, the ship is 69 meters long, 50 metres tall, and when fully outfitted with guns, ballast and sculptures weighed 1200 tonnes.
There were warning signs that something was amiss with the captain supervising the construction noticing that the ship was liable to roll excessively while it was still being built. The King put pressure on to proceed as he wanted his ship and some months later it set out on its maiden voyage.
Having travelled just 1300 Metres (less than 19 times the length of the ship :eek:) a gust of wind caused the ship to heel to its port side and the gun ports which were all open to showcase its armaments allowed water to rush in. The ship sank to the bottom of the harbour with thousands of Stockholm residents, ambassadors and dignitaries watching on. Thankfully the death toll was limited as many were able to swim to the shore although between 30 and 50 still lost their lives.
An inquest is launched. The King is said to have had signed off on all measurements which the ship was built to but understandably he was not found responsible. Blame ultimately landed on the shoulders of Hybertsson who was unable to defend himself (understandably due to him being dead
).
However, the misfortune of that time resulted in future generations being able to observe the design and skills of those involved in the shipping industry in a way which is rarely possible. The ship was raised in 1961 which led to massive operation to preserve it including the use of polyethylene glycol, PEG, to replace the water in the wood.
In 1990, the ship is moved to its new and current, home of the Vasa Museum. This museum, is a wonderful example of the entire purpose of a building aimed to allow visitors to fully appreciate and educate themselves on its centre piece of attraction. Speaking from personal experience, when you walk in to the centre of the museum to see the prow of Vasa towering over you is jaw dropping. All available wooden sculptors have been returned to their original position, although they have not been painted in the manner in which they originally would have been done. All elements associated with the ship are showcased throughout the museums from the shipyard, the personnel who would have been working on the ship, representation of the bowels of the ship showing how tight for space and busy it would have been. Different floors of the museum built up around the ship allow visitors to observe it from virtually every angle and a scaled model of how the ship looked on the day it launched is shows just how complete the salvage operation of the ship was.
If the ship had survived to function as it was intended in 1628, we would not have such a stunning example of a practice which no longer exists.
Vasa in position in museum
Scaled model with Vasa in background
Life in a Vasa type ship
To anybody spending some time in Stockholm, I would strongly recommend paying a visit.0 -
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Greybottle wrote: »There was a former professional footballer called Fitz Hall, he played for Crystal Palace, QPR and Newcastle Utd amongst others.
His nickname was 'One Size'.
As in "One Size Fitz Hall", or "One size fits all". :pac:
(That's my best fact about the name Fitz.)
I remember him at Palace when Ian Dowie had them in the Premiership.
Think he was capped for one of the Caribbean nations.0 -
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Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,802 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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Tell me how wrote: »An inquest is launched. The King is said to have had signed off on all measurements which the ship was built to but understandably he was not found responsible. Blame ultimately landed on the shoulders of Hybertsson who was unable to defend himself (understandably due to him being dead).
About the measurements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)The use of different measuring systems on either side of the vessel caused its mass to be distributed asymmetrically, heavier to port. During construction both Swedish feet and Amsterdam feet were in use by different teams. Archaeologists have found four rulers used by the workmen who built the ship. Two were calibrated in Swedish feet, which had 12 inches, while the other two measured Amsterdam feet, which had 11 inches.
It's one of the reasons why most of the world now uses metric. The Americans still have this sort of problem.0 -
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Methemoglobinemia is a rare disease that causes your skin to turn blue. The most famous sufferers of this condition were the Blue People of Kentucky or more commonly known as the "Blue Fugates."
Although born in France, Martin Fugate (orphaned as a child) settled in Hazard, Kentucky roughly around 1820. At this point in time there was quite a lot of intermarrying of blood relations in the immediate area. Both he and his wife Elizabeth Smith were carriers of methemoglobinemia. As the gene causing blue discolouration was recessive, there was a 25% chance with each pregnancy that the baby would be blue. Due to the isolated rural setting, Fugate descendants married other Fugate descendants and this concentrated the blue gene over decades. As a direct result of this, quite a lot of the Fugates descendants were born with methemoglobinemia.
Moving into the 20th century, descendants of the Fugates continued to live in the areas around Troublesome Creek and Ball Creek in Kentucky until their condition attracted the attention of Madison Cawein, a hematologist who made a detailed study of their condition and ancestry. Cawein treated the family with methylene blue to rid them of their blue skin. When injected at the correct dosage, methylene blue causes a reduces the heme group from methemoglobin to hemoglobin and it reduces the half life of methemoglobin from hours to minutes. The skin then starts to revert to its original colour. Interesting to note, when too much is injected, it reverses this process meaning a patient would turn blue (or bluer in the case of the Fugates descendants).
The last known descendant of the Fugates born with blue skin was called Benjamin Stacy in 1975, however as he aged he lost his blue skin tone.
There are theories that other suffers of methemoglobinemia may have been ancestors of the Fugates, however this has not been proven.
Below is a picture of Luna Fugate, the great-grandmother of Benjamin Stacy.
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joeguevara wrote: »He felt the establishment were condescending and attempts at trying to do the right things actually made disabled people more marginalized. Having a year for the disabled in his mind was absurd. And trying to get him to be the face of it was bizarre to him seeing as he would be someone that they normally abhor.
More interestingly tv and radio refused to play the song and it was withdrawn as they said it was in bad taste. They couldn’t see the whole point of the song and demonstrates how people get things wrong. You see the same today when awareness is usually pictured with soft or cute visuals but people are disgusted when real things appear.
Here is a great interview where Ian Drury explains.
https://youtu.be/LSo9OErEmM4
I strongly agree with his views.
But I think it's a bloody awful song - musically 0 -
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Are Am Eye wrote: »I strongly agree with his views.
But I think it's a bloody awful song - musically
There is something catchy about it and the bass is funky. As someone who suffers from epilepsy I love the expression on people’s faces when I break out singing this at parties.
But, it is no bohemian rhapsody!0 -
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That's reassuring at least!
FWIW, geiger counter levels about 200 yards from the sarcophagus were 0.8 micro sieverts/hour.
Background radiation outside the zone was 0.12 by comparison.
Hotspots in the ground could easily go up to 10-15 micro sieverts/hour.
Of course, that's only what tourists are allowed access to. The Red Forest is off limits due to contamination. And that's before you go digging naturally
There was no escape here either.
The sudden spike in the amount of one kind of radioactive material over Ireland is visible here.
The level of caesium found in lamb across Ireland between May and June 1986, measured in Bqkg(-1).
http://www.thejournal.ie/chernobyl-disaster-effects-ireland-2727840-Apr2016/Those who died in Chernobyl got - very roughly - 6 sieverts of radiation. That's a lifetime's worth at a hot-spot I think0 -
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