[ozswede]

Where did the koala cross the road? Ironman Australia, of course

Sam Appleton set a new course record, while first year pro Regan Hollioake took the women's race ... but a koala almost stole the show.

Leave it to the koala to try and steal the show! With a new course record and a rookie win highlighting the pro races, a local koala bear managed to garner lots of attention at this weekend’s Ironman Australia race.

Runners in this year's Ironman Australia triathlon at Port Macquarie got a surprise as they made their way through the challenging final leg on the New South Wales Mid North Coast.

During the race, a koala known in the area as “Big Boy” decided that he needed to cross the run course at one point to get to a gum tree for a snack.



The moment was captured on camera by local resident Jason Hannah, who lives near the triathlon course.

He said Big Boy, was familiar to him.

"He lives behind our place, so we see him every day, he goes over there every couple of days and sits in the gum trees on the riverside," he said.

"He walks around like he owns the joint.

"Everybody leaves him alone, they let him do his own thing … he's one of the residents, really."


Local resident Jason Hannah has dubbed the koala "Big Boy".

Mr Hannah posted a video of the koala on social media and said he received thousands of responses. (Video can be seen here)

Cheyne Flanagan, an advisor with Koala Conservation Australia, said she had seen the video and the koala appeared to be in good health.

"It looked to me to be a young male and looked to be in excellent condition, which was great to see," she said.

"It was on a mission, heading straight across the road to a forest red gum on the riverbank.

"Urban koalas are well and truly conditioned to humans … you wouldn't have that happen with wild koalas in the bush, no way in the world would they come anywhere near, but urban koalas know what people are."



Koalas face habitat loss pressure

Ms Flanagan said while it was encouraging to see a healthy male koala, it reflected the struggles koalas faced in urban areas.

"Urban koalas and ones in rural areas are not doing so well, they are continuing to decline at an alarming rate.

"The number of koalas being hit by cars recently has been concerning … it's also the rise in disease and disease tends to get manifested in areas where habitat has been disturbed."

Ms Flanagan said the NSW government, under the NSW Koala Strategy, was trying to restore as much habitat as possible.

"People can also play a part, by slowing down when driving in known koala areas, and calling wildlife carers if they see an injured animal," she said.

Why Americans Are Craving Outdoor Time More Than Ever



SWNS / Talker Research

On average, people need to spend 67 minutes outside every day in order to feel refreshed, according to a new poll conducted for Mental Health Awareness Month in May.

The survey of 2,000 adults in the U.S. revealed that over half of Americans (57%) say they are craving time spent outdoors more today than ever before.

Results found 68% of those who spent time outside saying it relaxes them, puts them in a better mood, and helps them clear their heads.

Likewise, spending too much time indoors has led to feelings of depression for 38%, anxiousness for 33%, and loneliness for 32% of those polled, according to the research.

Six in 10 said they get stir-crazy after spending too much time inside—with negative emotions resulting from outdoor plans getting derailed by cancellations or bad weather.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, 16% of respondents have experienced a shift in their travel preferences, favoring places in nature, according to the poll conducted by Talker Research on behalf of RVshare.

“From enhanced mood to feelings of relaxation and wellbeing, there are so many physical and mental benefits that come from breaking through the four walls and exploring open-air adventures and activities,” said RVshare’s CEO Jon Gray.

“During Mental Health Awareness Month, we are encouraged to be mindful of how we’re spending our time and factor outdoor experiences into our everyday lives, including our travel plans.”

Respondents also shared their favorite outdoor activities, with a majority saying they enjoy these because they can benefit both mental and physical health. Some of these included walking, grilling, hiking, bicycling, and sports.

Findings showed that 67% of Americans view travel as a method of self-care and four in 10 (42%) said they need to book a trip to “escape” at least once every six months.

Those who vacation in the great outdoors are seeing benefits to their mental health through reduced stress (36%), mental recharging (33%), and becoming more grateful for the things they have (23%).

One-third of respondents regularly choose vacations centered around outdoor activities, with 44% most excited about trips to the beach, 29% choosing national parks, and 12% preferring cross-country road trips.

Over half (57%) preferred driving to their destination, compared to flying (25%). This could be due to the belief that the journey to a destination is part of the vacation itself, which is felt by the majority of respondents (83%).

All in all, outdoor trips are having a positive impact on American lives, as indicated by 83% of survey respondents.

“A key takeaway here is that spending time in nature and on the open road while traveling has both physical and mental benefits,” said Gray. “Whether soaking up the sun, hiking a new trail or gazing up at the starry sky, we’ve all experienced the invaluable renewal, mental clarity and freeness that comes from being outdoors.”

[Alessa9]

Rare cosmic event may reveal Stonehenge’s mysterious link to moon


Scientists believe a rare lunar movement may have been noticed in the early phase of Stonehenge’s construction and it influenced the monument’s later design.

Ancient monument’s station stones may have been placed to align with moon’s extreme positions during ‘major lunar standstill’, which occurs every 18.6 years

A rare ongoing cosmic event may help scientists understand whether Stonehenge aligns with certain positions of the moon.

Stonehenge is well known for its solar alignment. Tens of thousands of people gather at the monument every midsummer night to witness the rising sun in alignment with the structure’s Heel stone standing outside the circle.

There is a hypothesis that Stonehenge also aligns with moonrise and moonset during a rare astronomical event.

Archaeologists and astronomers are testing the theory now during “major lunar standstill”, a rare phenomenon that takes place every 18.6 years.

It occurs when the moon rises and sets at a more northerly and southerly place along the horizon than usual, reaching altitudes higher in the sky than the summer sun and lower than the winter sun.

Scientists suspect Stonehenge’s builders noticed this cosmic event in the initial phase of its construction and that it influenced the monument’s later design.

The iconic mega structure includes several smaller elements such as 56 pits arranged in a circle and four station stones.

These station stones appear to have been carefully placed to form an almost exact rectangle encompassing the stone circle, archaeologists said.

The shorter sides of the rectangle are parallel to the main axis of the stone circle and the longer sides skirt the outside.

The longer sides of the rectangle are thought to align with the moon’s positions during a major lunar standstill.

“Stonehenge’s architectural connection to the sun is well known, but its link with the moon is less well understood,” Clive Ruggles, professor of archaeoastronomy at Leicester University, said.

“The four station stones align with the moon’s extreme positions, and researchers have debated for years whether this was deliberate, and - if so - how this was achieved and what might have been its purpose,” Dr Ruggles added.

The rare event would allow astronomers to further investigate the ancient monument’s mysteries and its relationship with celestial phenomena.

Scientists hope to understand what it may have been like for the ancient people living near Stonehenge to experience these extreme moonrises and moonsets and to witness their visual effects on the stones.

“Observing this connection firsthand in 2024 and 2025 is crucial. Unlike the sun, tracking the moon’s extremes isn’t straightforward, requiring specific timing and weather conditions,” archaeologist Amanda Chadburn from the University of Oxford said.

Over the year, researchers hope to document moonrises and moonsets at key moments in the year when the moon will align with the station stones.

[midgemental]

My wedding was upstaged by a creepy woman who identifies as a cat
The bride didn’t find it hiss-terical.



A woman pretending to be a cat dramatically interrupted a wedding ceremony.

A woman had her outdoor wedding nearly ruined when an uninvited woman pretending to be a cat — with a “kitty mask,” ears, fake tail and all — crawled on her hands and knees behind the lakefront altar.

At first, bride Mistique Morris of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, thought the odd human-cat “creature” was just a cow in the distance. But as the 24-year-old walked down the aisle, things took a turn fur the worse.

“The one thing that was frustrating was that a lot of people were paying more attention to her than me!” Morris told Kennedy News. “I’m only getting married once!”

https://nypost.com/2024/05/09/lifestyle ... -as-a-cat/

[DaveLDaveL]

Lottery winner celebrates with Blackpool holiday


A man who won £500,000 on the lottery celebrated with a trip to his beloved Blackpool.

Raymond Young, from Edinburgh, won the Thunderball jackpot prize - with numbers he had used since the game launched nearly 25 years ago.

The 63-year-old said he wanted to go to the Lancashire seaside town - his regular childhood holiday spot - describing it as his "home from home".

"I've been going there my whole life, from playing on the beach as a kid to staying with friends over the last decade, so it just had to be the place I chose to celebrate my win," he said.

Raymond Young celebrated with a glass of bubbly outside Blackpool tower
The recently retired British Gas worker said he had initially checked his ticket while half-asleep.

The next morning he assumed he had dreamt that his numbers had come up - but realised he had indeed won the top prize after checking the ticket with a fresh pair of eyes.

He has already bought a new car and a holiday home since pocketing his winnings in the 23 March draw.

He said: "I had woken up in the middle of the night and randomly decided to check my numbers, which led me to see that I had won the top prize.

"I must have still been half-asleep though as in the morning I genuinely thought it was all a dream.

"So when I decided to have another check in the morning, this time fully awake, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that I was still a winner."

[Fatima99]

Teacher Finds ‘Amazing’ Stone Carved With Ancient Celtic Script While Digging in His Garden



A teacher was left stunned after digging up a stone carved with an ancient Celtic script dating back to the 4th Century while weeding in his garden.

Now, the 4-inch stone (11cm) has gone on display at a museum while experts continue to figure out the full meaning of the mysterious relic.

During the lockdowns of May 2020, many of us found ourselves digging in gardens like Graham Senior. The 55-year-old was clearing out his overgrown flowerbed in Coventry, England when he made the incredible discovery .

It has since emerged the sandstone rock bears an early form of Ogham script from Ireland, dating back around 1,600 years.

The rectangular block features a series of lines inscribed on three sides in a script primarily used in early medieval Ireland.

Scottish historian Professor Katherine Forsyth, from the University of Glasgow, has partially translated the words to reveal a name, “Mael Dumcail”—and the geography teacher who found it believes it was the name of a lover.

“My house sits about 100 yards away from a Roman fort called Lunt which is a visitor attraction and sits downstream of the River Sowe.

“We think a Roman soldier must have been walking away from there when he dropped it.

“It was possibly a keepsake from a sweetheart who he had been left behind in Ireland—but its still obviously quite a mystery.

“It’s a very tactile thing. When you have it in your hand, it just feels right, as if it was meant to be held.

When the married father-of-two found it in the dirt, he immediately became curious.

“I just saw this thing sticking out of the flowerbed after digging about four or five inches down and thought, ‘that’s not normal’.

“I could tell they were not scratchings from an animal or anything like that and decided to investigate a little further.

“My wife has a friend who is an archeologist and we told her about it, expecting her to not be very impressed.

“But she began getting very excited about it and before we knew it, we were in touch with the local finds officer and various museums from up and down the country.

“I never knew it at the time but it turned out to be quite a remarkable thing to find while weeding out the flowerbed.”

[rflash8]

'Portal' connects New York and Dublin via live stream


https://twitter.com/i/status/1788234546560872536

May 9 (UPI) -- An art installation in New York and Dublin takes the form of a "portal" that allows viewers to visually connect across 3,000 miles.

The Portal, an installation designed by artist Benediktas Gylys, live streams silent video between New York's Flatiron South Public Plaza and North Earl Street in Dublin.

The installation, sponsored by the Flatiron NoMad Partnership, the New York City Department of Transportation's Art Program and the Simons Foundation, allows people in the two cities to look at each other in real-time across the 3,000-mile distance.

"We provide an unfiltered meeting above all borders, all labels, and that would invite us humans to reconnect," Gylys told WABC-TV.

Interactions witnessed through the Portal since it went live on Wednesday include the expected exchanges of rude gestures as well as at least one caught-on-camera attempt to flirtatiously exchange contact information.

Another exchange in a photo shared by the University College Dublin featured a native New Yorker who attends the school using the Portal to connect with her mother back home.

Aww! Native New Yorker and UCD student Dakota Taylor reaches out and touches her mum through...

The Portal forms an unprecedented visual bridge between New York and Dublin.

Each sculpture features a 24/7 visual live stream from the Portal in the other... pic.twitter.com/ODfmLPRfWx— University College Dublin (@ucddublin) May 9, 2024

"We think just simple communication, whether it's a wave, a hi, a sign, a dance, that's what people are about," said James Mettham of the Flatiron NoMad Partnership.

The Portal will continue to connect the two cities 24 hours a day for the next six months.

[PennySerenade]

Northern Ont. woman makes 'eggstraordinary' find



A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an ‘eggstraordinary’ find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.

Melinda Groen’s husband was checking in on the 60 chickens the couple has in their hen house when he discovered the large egg.

“I knew there was something up when I saw the scale on the counter,” Groen said.

The egg weighed 152 grams. To put that into perspective, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said a normal large egg weighs around 56 grams.

Groen ‘cracked’ the case on Tuesday morning. Inside, she found a second egg fully intact along with the yolk.

“I haven't even eaten it yet. The first egg I'm going to give to the dog because it looks like a dog egg,” Groen said.

“He said ‘I've got a big egg.’ When I saw it, I was like, ‘Holy.’”



“It's still a nice yolk and everything, but it's a little bit cloudy. The second egg is clear. That one I would eat. I'm sure it will be delicious.”



This rare phenomenon is known as counter-peristalsis contraction. It occurs when a formed egg travels backward in a hen's oviduct and becomes embedded inside a second egg early on in the egg’s development.

“It’s quite a rarity and it’s exciting,” she said.

Groen, a former dairy farmer for 20 years, once had an egg that weighed 121 grams. She recalled the story of a chicken farmer friend who would often brag about his large eggs, including one that weighed 119 grams and won him prizes at fairs.

“So we’re sort of in a competition now for the largest egg,” Groen said.

She also remembers reading a story of a Leamington, Ont., family that opened a 175-gram egg on their farm last January.

“We don’t have the Ontario record, but we might be second,” she said.

As for which hen laid the egg, she’s narrowed it down to one of 40 of her hens.

[Misstee]

SUV-sized Radio Flyer red wagon up for auction
By Ben Hooper










May 8 (UPI) -- An SUV-sized Radio Flyer red wagon with a top speed of 60 mph and about 57,000 miles on the odometer is up for auction.

Judy Foster said she decided to sell the unique vehicle after the death of her husband, Fred Keller, who used the chassis of a 1976 Mazda pickup truck to create the Radio Flyer car about 14 years ago.

"I'll miss it and I'll miss the fun of driving it. It's just so much fun to take somebody for a ride and seeing peoples' reaction to you," Foster told CNN.

The wagon car is now being auctioned online by Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals as part of its Mother's Day Classic Car Auction. Bidding is open through Sunday.

The listing states the vehicle is "fully road-legal."

"This one-of-a-kind vehicle turns more heads than anything we have ever seen," the auction house said. "Invoking childhood memories that nearly everyone can relate to, this rig is good old-fashioned fun, and the smiles follow."

Tiny rubber spheres used to make a programmable fluid

The spheres collapse under pressure, giving the fluid very unusual properties.


At critical pressures, the fluid's spheres become a mixture of different states.

Building a robot that could pick up delicate objects like eggs or blueberries without crushing them took lots of control algorithms that process feeds from advanced vision systems or sensors that emulate the human sense of touch. The other way was to take a plunge into the realm of soft robotics, which usually means a robot with limited strength and durability.

Now, a team of researchers at Harvard University published a study where they used a simple hydraulic gripper with no sensors and no control systems at all. All they needed was silicon oil and lots of tiny rubber balls. In the process, they’ve developed a metafluid with a programmable response to pressure.

Swimming rubber spheres

“I did my PhD in France on making a spherical shell swim. To make it swim, we were making it collapse. It moved like a [inverted] jellyfish,” says Adel Djellouli, a researcher at Bertoldi Group, Harvard University, and the lead author of the study. “I told my boss, 'hey, what if I put this sphere in a syringe and increase the pressure?' He said it was not an interesting idea and that this wouldn’t do anything,” Djellouli claims. But a few years and a couple of rejections later, Djellouli met Benjamin Gorissen, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Leuven, Belgium, who shared his interests. “I could do the experiments, he could do the simulations, so we thought we could propose something together,” Djellouli says. Thus, Djellouli’s rubber sphere finally got into the syringe. And results were quite unexpected.

The sphere has a radius of 10 mm, and its 2-mm-thick silicone rubber walls surround a pocket of air. It was placed in a container with 300 ml of water. When the pressure in the container started to increase, the sphere, at 120 kPa, started to buckle. Once it started to buckle, pressure remained relatively steady for a while, even though the volume occupied by the fluid continued dropping. The liquid with a sphere in it did not behave like water anymore—it had a pronounced plateau in its pressure/volume curve. “Metafluids—liquids with tunable properties that do not exist in nature—were theorized by Federico Capasso and colleagues, who wanted to achieve a liquid with negative refractive index. They started with optics back then, but looking at the behavior of water with this rubber sphere in it, we knew what we had was a metafluid,” says Djellouli.

Mixing programmable fluids

Putting a single rubber sphere in the water was just a starting point. “I always had this idea in the back of my head: Like, what would happen if I put in a lot of them?” Djellouli told Ars. So, his team started to experiment with different sizes and numbers of the spheres in the medium and using different mediums like silicon oil. “You can tune pressure at which the spheres activate by changing their radius and thickness of their walls. When you make the spheres thicker, you need more energy to make them buckle and thus the activation pressure will be higher,” explains Djellouli.

There are other parameters that can be changed to program desired properties in the metafluid. These include the volume fraction—basically how much of the total fluid’s volume is taken by the spheres—and the structure of the spheres, as the fluid behaves differently when you put spheres with different sizes and thickness in it. You can also tune this by using mixtures of spheres with different properties. “If the variation in size and thickness of the spheres is very tight, you are going to have a very flat plateau of pressure when they activate. If you have a wider distribution, the transition from all unbuckled to all buckled will be smoother,” says Djellouli. Using different mixtures of spheres also enables multiple plateaus at different pressures in one fluid. “This way you can precisely tune the pressure/volume curve,” Djellouli adds.

By tuning those curves, his team managed to build a smart hydraulic gripper that works without the need for sensors or control systems.

Self-controlled robots

The goal for the gripper was to grab and hold three objects—a water bottle, an egg, and a blueberry—without crushing them. The basic design was very simple: one static finger and a second that opened and closed the grip based on the motion of a hydraulic piston. “Let’s say I want to give this actuator control but without me doing any control, and I want it to grab many different objects that vary in size, weight, and fragility,” says Djellouli.

His team started by doing this experiment with plain water and air acting as the hydraulic fluids driving the piston. It turned out there was no single volume of hydraulic material that would allow the device to grab all of them. Too little and it wouldn’t close on small objects.

“In this scenario you need to spend some fluid volume to reach the object first,” Djellouli explained. This reach volume was the highest for the blueberry, the smallest object, and the lowest for the bottle, the largest of the three. “When the gripper gets in contact with the object, it stops moving, and adding more fluid to the system starts to increase pressure to the point your object is crushed,” Djellouli said. “But with the metafluid we could do this. We tuned it to reach and hold all the objects without crushing them,” says Djellouli. His team introduced two plateaus in the metafluid that enabled the gripper to reach and hold the blueberry but kept the pressure in the safe range while grabbing the bottle and the egg.

The same trick can be used to introduce some degree of intelligence to otherwise crude and simple robots. “We can make hydraulic actuators soft and self-controlled. The fluid itself is doing all the control for us, so we don’t have to control the robot from the outside,” he adds.

Smartening up hydraulic grippers is just one of the talents of Djellouli’s metafluid. Many more came to light when the team started to make the spheres smaller, taking their size down to micrometer scale.

Optics and smart shock absorbers

“On the face of it, you could argue we didn’t need to make the spheres small. One of the professors told me miniaturizing them was not necessary because it would take lots of time and bring little added value,” Djellouli claims.

But it turned out there was added value. “In one of the experiments we noticed that when the pressure was low, the fluid was opaque, but when you activated the shells, it turned transparent,” Djellouli explains. This effect was discovered when the team put micrometer-scale spheres made with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a transparent elastomer, in PDMS oil. “In an unbuckled state there was a high volume of air in the fluid. It was opaque because air and PDMS have different refractive indexes. But when the spheres buckled, the volume of air became very low, and the buckled spheres took a shape similar to what you find in contact lenses, which made the fluid transparent,” explains Djellouli.

But miniaturizing the spheres led to even more profound discovery. “We could tune the fluid’s rheology,” Djellouli said, referring to how smoothly it flowed. The team noticed that a fluid with compressed spheres flowed faster than one with non-activated spheres, even when driven by the same pressure difference between the input and outlet.

This opens a way to building things like intelligent shock absorbers that can change their characteristics. “Impacts and amplitude of the shock can be translated into pressure, and based on that you can tune the rheology depending on the impact that you are having. I think this can be done. If companies making shock absorbers think this could be a good system, we’d like to meet them and see if we can work with them,” says Djellouli. “But when it comes to rheology, now we are just scratching the surface,” he adds.

Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07163-z (paywalled)

[lush]

Frog Smaller Than a Human Fingernail May Be World’s Smallest Vertebrate
030124

The Brazilian flea frog (Brachycephalus pulex) measures only between 7 and 8 millimeters in length, which likely makes it the smallest vertebrate on Earth.

In 2011, Mirco Solé, a researcher at the State University of Santa Cruz in Brazil, discovered the tiny Brazilian flea frog, an amphibian so small that it could comfortably fit on a small coin. The discovery made news headlines in the scientific community, but because of a small available sample, there was simply no way to provide conclusive information regarding the frog’s size. Now, over a decade longer, a team led by the same Mirco Solé has published an extensive study on the elusive frog species that can only be found on two forested hillsides in Bahia, Southern Brazil. It shows that the flea frog is a very likely candidate for the title of ‘world’s smallest vertebrate’.


Photo: Renato Gaiga

For their new study, researchers ventured to the tiny frogs’ habitat once more to capture a greater number of specimens, 46. They measured them, checked their gonads to determine their sexual maturity, and checked for the presence of vocal slits, which only male frogs have. They found that males measured just over 7 mm in length, while females were a bit larger, at just over 8 mm.

Interestingly, the smallest adult specimen measured during the research was just 6.45 mm long, which makes it 30 percent smaller than the previous smallest frog ever observed. While there could be even smaller frogs out there, researchers point out that the smallest individuals usually suffer from deformities, such as fewer toes, or a complete lack of ears, which suggests that they would likely not be able to survive if they were even smaller.

One of the quirks of the Brazilian flea frog is that it struggles with something that frogs are usually great at – jumping. And it’s all because of their size! Because they are so small, they can’t control their vestibular system, which controls stability, so they tend to lose their balance when they leave the ground.

It’s worth pointing out that flea frogs are likely the tiniest vertebrates by linear measure, but by mass or volume, some fish species “would likely claim the title, as they are very narrow-bodied and slender, whereas the frogs are rather round,” according to Mark D. Scherz, curator of Herpetology at the Natural History Museum of Denmark

'Potatoes from heaven!' | Hutterites share 250 tons of free potatoes in Reardan
The Spokane Hutterite Brethren colony said a significant percent of their potato crop won't be purchased by buyers this year, so they're opting to give them away.
Source: KREM 2



The Spokane Hutterite Brethren colony is sharing 250 tons of free potatoes with their neighbors for free.

They started unloading the spuds on Friday, April 19, in Reardan at an open field located on West Sprague Road between Wood Road and Coulee Hite Road.

The Spokane Hutterite Brethren colony said a significant percent of their potato crop won't be purchased by buyers this year. They say it's due to inflation. And that many commercial restaurants already have an overabundance of potatoes.

"They could have just thrown it in a field to rot, but it was their intention to give back," Reardan resident Denise Bennett said.


— Amanda Roley (@KREMAmandaRoley) April 22, 2024

Bennett's Facebook post about the free spuds spread quickly over the weekend. It led hundreds of people to the field off Highway 2 with bags and buckets in tow.

Many families made multiple trips while others even took truckloads of potatoes home.

As of Monday (April 22) evening, there are still plenty of Russet and Yukon potatoes to go around.

Want to go grab a few spuds for yourself? You can find the potatoes on West Sprague Road between South Coulee Hite Road and Wood Road. For a more precise location, click here.

[Zbignieww]

World's Oldest Running Battery Has Been Chiming For Over 180 Years
My phone’s battery life is looking a bit embarrassing right now.



The gentle chime of the Oxford Electric Bell can barely be heard, but what it lacks in loudness, it more than makes up for in the durability of its battery. The bell has been ringing since 1840, making it one of the world’s longest running science experiments – though quite what’s kept it going for so long is something of a mystery.

University of Oxford physics professor Reverend Robert Walker purchased the bell back in 1840 and it can now be found in the university’s Clarendon Laboratory, encased behind two layers of glass.

In part thanks to its location and the other, the type of batteries it’s thought to be running on, the bell is also known as the Clarendon Dry Pile – dry piles are an early type of battery made up of stacks of metal discs.

Why has it been running for so long?
At least part of the reason why the bell has been chiming away for so long is thought to be because it doesn’t require much power in the first place, nor does a lot of energy get lost.

“As it moves back and fore, what happens is the little lead bell touches the two bells either side. And it charges and discharges continuously,” Dr Robert Taylor explained to the BBC. “A small amount of charge trickles between the two ends and the only loss, basically, is the resistance of air.

It might also have something to do with the batteries’ composition, but therein lies the mystery – though scientists have some reasonable ideas, no one knows exactly what they’re made of. It’s called a “dry pile” because of its resemblance to those made by Italian priest and physicist Giuseppe Zamboni.

The Zamboni pile consisted of “about 2000 pairs of discs of tin foil glued to paper impregnated with zinc sulphate and coated on the other side with manganese dioxide.” The batteries in Oxford are also sealed with an outer coating believed to be sulfur, which ends up making them look more like candles.

They’re definitely not candles, otherwise the bell wouldn’t work, but unless someone cracks the batteries open – which would obviously ruin the experiment – we can’t know for sure what’s inside them and thus how that might contribute to their longevity.

When will it stop?
Another option is to simply wait until the batteries finally run out. The bell has had an impressive run, but that run might soon be coming to an end.

“It’ll keep going for about another five or 10 years possible, given the fact that it has slowed down noticeably in the last 40 years,” said Taylor. “The reason it’ll stop is that it’ll run out of energy.”

“All batteries eventually run out of energy.”

https://www.iflscience.com/worlds-oldes ... ears-74173

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
MONDAY MAY 13
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to find weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING

EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You can post as many stories as you like, but you will only get paid for One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can only earn WRZ$ once a day.
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -5)
3:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)
on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them short, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
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[ozswede]

ABBA avatars catch Eurovision viewers by surprise as contest marks 50 years since group's win


Eurovision's highly anticipated ABBA tribute featured ABBA-tars (digital ABBA avatars).

This year marks the 50th anniversary of ABBA earning Sweden its very first victory at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Back then, the group performed their smash-hit Waterloo.

With the contest returning to Sweden, home of last year's winner Loreen, half a century on, it makes sense that the organisers of Eurovision would want to mark that occasion.

Enter, the ABBA-tars.



ABBA didn't appear in person in Malmö.

Instead, their digital avatars were beamed to the studio from the ABBA Voyage stage show, allowing the Eurovision audience and everyone at home to see the group as they were at their peak.

This came as a surprise to many and drew some criticism online.



A trio of former Eurovision winners also performed Waterloo in tribute. They were Charlotte Perrelli, who won the contest for Sweden 25 years ago in 1999; Carola, who took the contest to Malmö for the very first time in 1992 after winning for Sweden the year before; and Conchita Wurst, who was victorious for Austria in 2014.

This is the seventh time Sweden has hosted the competition.

Ahead of the grand final, streaming giant Spotify released some statistics demonstrating ABBA's enduring popularity with Australians.

Sydneysiders stream ABBA more than people in the group's hometown of Stockholm.


The ABBA-tars caught viewers by surprise.

Winner Nemo praises queer representation

Switzerland's Nemo won this year's competition, with their operatic pop-rap song The Code.

Nemo is the first non-binary artist to win Eurovision and expressed pride and gratitude at the press conference afterwards.


Nemo won Eurovision for Switzerland.

"I'm mostly just really grateful for this experience and all the friends I've made along the way," Nemo said.

"This was one of the most queer representations we've seen at Eurovision, which was amazing. I want to shout out all the other queer artists this year."

It was a controversial Eurovision.

Hours before the grand final, Dutch contestant Joost Klein was eliminated from the competition over a backstage altercation.

And there was unrest over the European Broadcasting Union's decision to allow Israel to compete this year.