Month: April 2017

Video game consoles are prone to a number of misfortunes, like Xbox 360’s “red ring of death” or more recently the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con and warping issues. But none have the gross-out factor of one of the PlayStation 4’s most unique issues: roach infestation.

In an article on Kotaku, writer Cecilia D’Anastasio visited Patrick Che, the co-owner of an independent console repair shop in Manhattan, who pointed out a pile of filled black garbage bags in the corner of his store. “You see those bags?” Che asked D’Anastasio. “Those are bags full of roaches. Those are all dead by now.” Though roaches can burrow into any system on the market, it’s Sony’s latest console that seems to be their ideal destination.

The problem has become so common with PS4s that Che’s shop, XCubicle, charges a $25 “roach fee” to clean the little critters out of the system’s vents and circuit boards. So what makes the PlayStation 4 such an attractive home to roaches (outside of the fact that it kinda looks like a swanky skyscraper from the right angle)? Apparently the PS4’s vents are wider than other consoles, and since they’re placed right at the bottom of the machine, it makes it easier for roaches to crawl right in if the system is placed on the floor.

When the roaches go into the system, they nest on the circuit boards, pop out babies, and, well, melt into the console’s innards. With a system that gets as hot as a PS4, melted roaches and their feces (shudder) will likely turn your console into an expensive paperweight before long. And chances are that you’ll never even know a roach was inside unless you bring it in for repair.

At XCubicle, they see at least one roach-infested PS4 per week, with other repairmen estimating that around half of all PS4 consoles they deal with have some sort of roach issue. The fix for this isn’t so simple: A repairman will have to replace the power supply, clean the system of any roach remnants, and sterilize the whole thing before getting it back to you. There’s no one way to prevent roaches from entering your system, other than keeping a clean home, putting your console high up and inaccessible, and placing it away from easy entry points. If that fails, you’ll be stuck either buying a new PlayStation 4 or bringing the system to an independent repair shop, as Sony won’t accept bug-ridden systems for repair.

[h/t Kotaku]

When David Kring of the University of Arizona gave a presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in 1991, he didn’t expect a packed crowd for his talk on the petrology of the Chicxulub Structure in the Yucatan, Mexico. Normally, Kring knew, impact-cratering sessions were presented in the smallest room—the miserable Room D, a shoebox on the second floor. But the magnitude of his announcement attracted scientists across fields and disciplines, so he was bumped up to the main room.

Kring had been investigating a place called the Yucatán-6 borehole, and he and his team had discovered shock quartz and impact melt fragments in two thumb-sized bits of rock that were over half a mile beneath the surface of the Earth. This was evidence that the hole, thought for a very long time to be a volcanic center, was actually an impact structure. And not just any “impact structure,” and not just any crater―but the crater of all craters on Earth. The one behind the death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Last year, Kring was part of an expedition in which scientists drilled into Chicxulub to investigate how the disastrous collision of fireball and Earth that killed the dinosaurs also created the conditions for life to begin anew. Last month, Kring and his colleagues returned to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference to present their findings from the new core samples they took on that expedition. The results provide new clues about how life may have begun on Earth about 4 billion years ago—and point us towards how and where we can look for life across the universe.

THE SMOKING CANNON

Back in the early 1990s, Kring knew what he was looking for—a crater of the size and magnitude that would provide evidence of catastrophic extinction—but he didn’t know where to look. “It was a race to find the impact site,” Kring tells mental_floss, “and we had made a discovery of this very thick impact ejecta deposit in Haiti, which pointed us to [the Yucatan].”

Impact ejecta is what’s blasted from the Earth or other body when a meteor crashes into it. In this case, a giant chunk of the Earth was blown a thousand miles away. Until the Haiti discovery, people were looking all over the planet for the crater. But now they had a target region. Meanwhile, Petroleos Mexicanos, an oil company, had drilled down into what they thought was a “geophysical anomaly” in the Yucatan―a salt dome, maybe, where there might be oil. That’s when Kring and his colleagues re-examined samples collected from the site and realized there were features consistent with an impact.

That the Yucatan site was still intact to be found wasn’t a given. In the last 65 million years, half of the seafloor has been subducted, where one tectonic plate slides beneath another—which would have prevented scientists from discovering samples. When Kring and his team looked at the samples they were able to take, there was shock quartz in one of the layers. “The minute you see shock quartz, that is absolutely, categorically diagnostic of impact,” says Kring. “You know that’s not a buried volcano. It’s an impact crater, and that’s your eureka moment.”

When Kring found the Chicxulub Crater, it finally provided scientific evidence for the Impact Mass Extinction Hypothesis. Developed by physicist Luis Alvarez, the theory proposes that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a catastrophic asteroid impact with the Earth. The theory made a lot of sense. An impact of such magnitude would certainly leave a mark, after all. The dominant alternative hypothesis was that overdrive volcanic activity caused catastrophic climate change, leaving the dinosaurs in a bad spot. Finding an impact crater of this magnitude, scientist Gene Shoemaker would later tell Time magazine, was “the smoking cannon.”

The discovery that impact cratering is not only a geological process but a biological one caused a major shift in scientific thinking during the 20th century. The idea that you could have catastrophic events completely change the evolutionary path of the planet was staggering in its implication. Impact Mass Extinction Hypothesis, and the subsequent discovery of Chicxulub Crater, were argued by some as fundamentally more important, and bigger shifts in the tenets of geology, than learning about continental drift.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH

When a fireball hit the Earth 66 million years ago, the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Reptiles) ended and the Cenozoic―the Age of Mammals―began. One second before the strike, in the part of the sea that must have had a dark shadow pooling rapidly outward as the asteroid approached, 50-foot sea monsters called mosasaurs swarmed and devoured fish and mollusks. One second after the asteroid hit, those mosasaurs were gone, and chunks of the planet were blown thousands of miles in every direction. Every continent on Earth was devastated in the blink of a geologic eye. A 300-foot tsunami washed across North and South America. The Sun was blotted out. Plants relying on photosynthesis declined or went extinct. If you were a dinosaur who couldn’t fly, you were done for. Seventy-five percent of all species of life were obliterated.

But bad as that sounds, approximately 4 billion years ago, an impact likely larger even than Chicxulub would have vaporized the sea and created a rock vapor atmosphere for thousands of years. The impacts would have produced vast subsurface hydrothermal (hot water) systems that were perfect crucibles for prebiotic chemistry. The new core samples taken from deep in Chicxulub provide physical evidence of this theory. The samples are fractured and permeable—perfect for the circulation of hot fluid. Moreover, they also have signatures of hot fluids and altered rock and hydrothermal minerals.

The hydrothermal systems caused by an asteroid collision may have lasted for as long as 2.3 million years. This is critical, because life needs time to establish itself and evolve. Those systems would have evolved into perfect habitats for the evolution of life.

Kring’s Chicxulub research suggests that these are the types of places life evolved in early Earth history. Further research will look at the analysis of rock samples for radiometric signatures, to try to determine how long that system persisted. It’s also given rise to a new theory: the Impact Origin of Life Hypothesis.

This impact origin of life theory is not necessarily limited to Earth, as research from Susanne Schwenzer, Oleg Abramov, and others suggest. “It is generically translatable,” says Kring. “Impact cratering, as it turns out, is an important heat engine for planetary bodies. Impact events on icy satellites can melt icy shells and produce seeds. You need liquid water for life. That may have had a role of life in our outer system.” This also applies to extrasolar planetary systems.

Whether life originated anywhere beyond Earth is still to be determined, but this is a big step toward understanding what conditions to look for. You can be sure when it’s announced, that scientist will certainly play to a standing-room-only crowd yet again.

If you’re an animal lover who has ever fantasized about owning a zoo—or a fan of Cameron Crowe movies with a 66 percent Rotten Tomatoes score—we’ve got good news: your wildest dream could be about to come true. The Ocala Star Banner reports that the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge Zoological Park, a private zoo in Crestview, Florida, is looking to sell its property, including its nearly 100 exotic animals. The strange part? They’re selling it via Craigslist.

Scroll past the $10 pair of artificial trees and a $75 hat commemorating the Atlanta Braves’s ’95 World Series championship and you’ll see that, for $350,000, you can become the proud owner of a “ten acre, well maintained USDA Compliant Zoo … with over 90 happy and healthy animals including White Tiger, Bengal Tiger, African Lion, Patas monkeys, bob cats, baboons, wolves, otters, black bear, Fennec foxes, sloth, lemurs, llamas and more.” Haven’t a clue what Fennec foxes eat, or even what one looks like? No worries—the property’s current staff of zookeepers is coming along for the ride (though one assumes that their salaries won’t come out of the $350K you just forked over).

There’s also a gift shop (with inventory), a Stuff-a-Plush machine, a commissary, storage barns, and a half-acre of undeveloped property, in case you want to expand the animals’ current living quarters or even build your own home right in the zoo.

While the ad notes that this is a “Great business opportunity for someone who loves animals with a professional staff in place to care for them,” it’s worth noting that the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge only took over the property in 2013.

Bill Andersen, president and chairman of the Refuge’s board of directors, explained that they took over the property because it had fallen into a state of disrepair. The group has spent the past four years making massive improvements to the grounds and outbuildings. “While rescuing the animals initially was in keeping with their mission,” writes the Ocala Star Banner, “continuing to run a zoo is not.”

“We’ve spent an awful lot of time getting those critters happy and healthy, updating habitats, and providing them with a quality place to live,” Andersen said. “I think our zoo is in the best shape it’s ever been.”

Though Andersen has hopes that the City of Crestview and Okaloosa County might be interested in taking over the zoo, he believes the next best option would be a passionate animal lover who has the desire, and financial means, to keep the zoo running and the animals happy.

“It’s got to be a buyer who shares our concern for the welfare of these critters,” Andersen said.

Are you listening, Matt Damon?

For a resident of Weirton, going to work in Pennsylvania, picking up groceries in Ohio, and coming back home to West Virginia wouldn’t be as exhausting as it sounds. That’s because the small town is one of a handful in the United States that is bordered by two different states.

According to Atlas Obscura, Weirton is located at the tip of West Virginia’s northern panhandle. To the east, Weirton shares a border with Paris, Pennsylvania; five miles to the west, the town touches Steubenville, Ohio. Only a few U.S. cities share this distinction, namely Dubuque, Iowa and Memphis, Tennessee.

In its heyday in the early 20th century, Weirton was the country’s fifth largest producer of steel. Today the town’s economy looks quite different. One big driver of growth comes from its unusual location: After finding jobs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania many workers settle down across the border in Weirton where the cost of living is more affordable.

[h/t Atlas Obscura]

Wedding photographers are by your side nearly every moment of your wedding day. They’re snapping away at your most intimate moments: your first glance at the person you plan to be with forever, your smile as you’re finally wed, and your initial step onto that dance floor. But how much do you really know about how they work—and why they’re so expensive?

1. THEY WISH YOU’D ASK FOR THEIR HELP.

Especially when it comes to the timeline for the big day. “I’d add in more time for photos,” says Gina Cristine, owner and photographer with Gina Cristine photography in the Chicago area. Many times, the bride and groom assume the photographers just need 15 minutes for family photos, she says. But those family photos could easily take 30 minutes, because a family member is always missing. “We need to make sure we have enough time, and that we’re not rushed and hectic,” Cristine explains.

2. THEY ALSO WISH YOU ACTUALLY ASKED ABOUT EXPERIENCE …

This sets apart the amateurs from the professionals, Eva Ho, owner and photographer for Eva Ho Photography in Chicago, says. Her perfect question: “How do you deal with XX situation?” Ho explains that since every wedding is unique, you need to find a photographer that’s perfect for you—and asking about experience will help you make that decision. It will also help you understand the reason you’re hiring a professional wedding photographer, rather than someone who just dabbles in photography, for your big day.

3. … AND ABOUT THEIR STYLE.

Jason Brown, owner and photographer of J. Brown Photography in Chicago, says couples always ask about his price and his availability. But he loves it when the conversation turns to his overall style and approach, and they get to know him as an artist. “Then we can understand if we’re a good match,” Brown says. “Not a lot of clients go there, and I wish more clients would ask me about my approach.”

4. FEEL FREE TO ASK WHY THEY CHARGE AS MUCH AS THEY DO.

Sure, wedding photographers may charge a few thousand dollars for what seems like eight hours of work. But they also met with you countless times before the wedding. And do you realize how many times you emailed? Then there’s the editing process. Those photographers put many more hours of work into those pictures than you ever imagined. Also, that camera equipment wasn’t free (and it needs to be upgraded every couple of years). Stacy Able, an Indianapolis-based wedding photographer with Stacy Able Photography, says she loves it when couples ask why she charges so much, because it offers her the opportunity to really explain everything that goes into shooting a wedding.

5. THEY’RE WATCHING YOUR CHEMISTRY.

When the couple first sees each other at their wedding and they relax instantly, it’s a sign that they’re going to last, Cristine says. “They really enjoy the day together.”

“I shoot 20 to 30 weddings a year, and I can tell when a couple has really great chemistry,” Brown says. “It’s when they’re in sync with each other and when they’re fun-loving with each other.” Once in a while, though, there’s the bride and groom who aren’t really into each other, and don’t really hang out at the wedding. That’s a red flag—as is the couple who are worrying incessantly about everything being perfect during their wedding instead of simply relaxing and enjoying their big day, Cristine notes.

6. THEY LOVE THE PHOTO BOOTHS JUST AS MUCH AS YOU DO.

Sure, the quality of the pictures in there may not be totally amazing, but those photo booths are so much fun. And they even help the photographers do their jobs. “During the reception, we go around and take candid shots, but it’s hard for us to get a group shot because people are dancing,” Cristine says. “We like to know that the photo booths are there.”

7. HOWEVER, THEY DON’T LOVE THOSE TABLE SHOTS.

Going from table to table to interrupt your dinner and make you pose for a photo is the worst part of shooting a wedding, Ho says.

8. WHEN IT’S TIME TO POSE, LOOK AT THEM, NOT AT ANYONE ELSE.

At weddings these days, everyone is taking pictures with their phones, and it’s getting harder and harder to compete for the attention of the bride and groom. If wedding photographers don’t get those key shots, however, they’ve failed at their jobs. So look at them when they’ve got the cameras up, not at the phones.

9. ONCE THE WEDDING IS OVER, THEY AREN’T DONE.

Being a wedding photographer is a full-time job, and photographers work nearly every day of the week, writes photographer Lauren Lim on PhotographyConcentrate.com, a site dedicated to all things photography. When not actually shooting weddings, wedding photographers are editing photos, meeting with clients, creating photos, sending invoices, and marketing their business. And because it is a business, after all, they’re also dealing with the accounting end of things.

“You are now the bookkeeper, the accountant, the marketing department, the graphic designer, the customer service department, the secretary, and pretty much any other title you can think of,” Lim writes. “There’s a dangerous myth that floats around suggesting that [wedding photographers] only have to work one day of the week and they make tons of cash.”

In reality, wedding photographers work a normal five-day week, plus meetings and engagement shoots in the evenings, and weddings on weekends. They are some of the hardest working people you’ll ever meet.

10. PHOTOSHOPPING ISN’T EASY.

Many people will ask photographers to make them skinnier, taller, younger—and to add people into photos, Able says. But, she explains, “People do not realize what that entails.” Yes, she can do that. Just not for every photo.

11. FORGET TRYING TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT DOES ON PINTEREST.

Pinterest is getting really annoying to wedding photographers, and they’re sick of trying to re-create what you saw there. Spoiler alert: It never looks like the perfect shot you saw on there. Chances are, that was a once-in-a-lifetime shot or a freak of nature. That photographer got lucky because their groomsman happened to be an Olympic gymnast and could be flipped upside down, or something. Not going to happen at your wedding.

12. IT’S HARD TO PAY THE BILLS.

Since weddings are seasonal—most people get married between May and September— many wedding photographers find themselves out of work from October to April, according to PhotographyConcentrate.com. “No surprise that that makes it difficult to pay the bills,” Lim writes. “You can either try to make enough in the wedding season to get yourself through the rest of the year, or find ways to keep bringing in money when the weddings stop.” That may include shooting photos for holiday cards and taking pictures for birthday parties.

13. THEY USE A BLEND OF PHOTOGRAPHY STYLES.

Wedding photography is a blend of different types of photography—often used all at the same event. “We’re a blend of a product photographer, a documentary photographer, and fashion photographer,” Brown says. Able agrees, saying she might use landscape photography, portrait photography, and even macro photography to capture a wedding.

14. STAYING FOCUSED IS KEY.

Wedding photographers have to stay mentally and creatively sharp for a really long time, Brown says. Able notes that they also deal with a multitude of challenges, including weather that can change in an instant and drastically affect lighting. “You have to be skilled at adjusting quickly on the fly,” she notes. And, she adds, the pressure is heightened because you have limited time to capture countless moments.

15. SOMETIMES, THAT’S SCARY.

“Each wedding may have a completely different dynamic, and you do not know what you are walking into,” Able says. Sometimes, you can step into a very tense situation, and other times, the mood might be jovial revelry. You never know. “There is a certain level of stage fright as you have to be on your best game for 12 hours,” she says. “Every work day for us is someone’s biggest day of their lives.”

16. THEY DON’T LIKE COPYING OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS.

Lori Sapio, photographer with Lori K Sapio Photography in Chicago, hates hearing the dreaded question: “Can you make my pictures look like …” That’s because she has her own style and her own touch, she says. “They usually want images they like re-created exactly,” Sapio explains. “[But] each photographer has their own style and voice and most, like myself, tend to shy away from recent trends and approach each wedding in a unique manner.”

17. WHEN IT’S OVER, STOP BUGGING THEM FOR THE PICTURES.

Ask them once, and then wait for the process to happen. Your photographer should explain the process to you, and most will take about 4 to 6 weeks, Brown says. “Trust the process,” he says. Now that he’s married himself, Brown understands how emotional you are and how excited you are to see those photos. But the photographer needs time to edit them, and if you keep bugging him, it gets annoying.

All images via iStock.