Category: Science

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People Talk About the Question: How Are We Supposed to Save The Planet When It’s Cheaper to Trash It?

Reddit has a forum called “No Stupid Question,” and this one is pretty great.

The OP (original poster) points out that even if a person wants to do the right thing for the environment and the planet and such, the fact that it’s literally cheaper to like, throw out your entire printer instead of buying a new ink cartridge make it hard.

How are you supposed to do what’s best for the environment when it’s cheaper to purchase a whole new printer than it is to buy ink cartridges? from NoStupidQuestions

That’s just one example of course.

Let’s see what these 16 folks had to say in reply to his not-a-stupid question, shall we?

16. Be the bigger person.

Same way you expect governments and corporations to spend money to protect environment – you do what you know is best even if it costs more or is less convenient.

Also last I heard you can refill the cartridges instead of buying new ones

15. You might just have to work harder.

Assuming you’re using printers and cartridges as an example, that’s the point. Environmental damage exists because it is in general easier and cheaper to do things that are worse for the environment.

This ranges from throwing recyclables away instead of recycling, to chemical plants throwing unprocessed waste away directly into rivers.

At some point, you have to evaluate whether the damage to the environment of some action is “worth” the alternative.

In your case, this would be the cost of buying ink cartridges rather than new printers (buy a laser printer).

14. Make a choice.

If you’re concerned about the environment, you do the thing that’s better for the environment… If and when you can.

You’re not compelled to do the cheapest thing possible all the time, to the detriment of your values.

13. A fair alternative, at least in this case.

I guess the best you can do is recycle the old printer, but even then, you can’t guarantee that any of the components will actually be put to use.

12. They’re trying…sort of.

Fortunately, manufacturers have started bringing refillable ink tanks to their printers. Canon G2000 for example, comes with a full tank of ink that should last a home user a couple of years.

And refilling it is quite reasonable. 40$ gets you all the colors you need and lasts another couple of years.

It has it’s drawbacks though. For example if you don’t print that much, air can get into the ink tubes which is easily fixed by a printer cleaning but it’s troublesome.

11. The more you know.

Here. From PC World:

Costco inkjet refills ($8 to $10, plus sales tax where applicable; HP 60 refill for black or tricolor cartridge, $8) Vendor URL: Costco Inkjet Refill Service

10. You’re probably wrong.

I simply stopped using a printer. I have “needed” to print something exactly 4 times at home since 1999.

When I need to print, I go to Staples/FedEx/whatever is nearby somewhere I will already be anyway.

You may think “that’s ridiculous, I cant stop printing?!?”… Well tbh, you’re probably wrong, and if you think about it very little of what you’ve printed has needed to be printed, or at least been printed immediately at home, on demand.

9. If you want to get technical about it.

The best thing you can do for the environment is elect a government that will enact systemic reforms forcing corporations to pay the cost of repairing the damage they do to the environment.

The printer isn’t particularly relevant.

8. Yeah, man. Totally.

Planned obsolescence is the enemy of the environment.

7. Damn the man.

You’re not. The idea that any individual person can significantly impact the environment—by reusing bags, by buying a Prius, by turning down the AC in the summer, by buying organic—is a myth propagated by large corporations to shirk responsibility for modern climate change.

Within the current dominant economic system (i.e., capitalism), not only is it completely impossible to live in an eco-friendly way, but even if you could do that, you’re only 1 person out of 7.5 billion (and counting). You have no power to help the planet except by fighting capitalism. Capitalism’s only way to exist is to grow, extract, grow, extract, grow, extract, ad infinitum, which is not sustainable. Capitalism can never coexist with widespread, genuine care for nature.

Also, capitalism is inherently both racist and imperialist (look up “mlk three evils”).

We gotta change this sh%t up.

6. Invest in quality.

As people point out there are better lasting printers out there, but a lot of people think affordable rather than long term.

In terms of printers, i’ve rarely needed one so buying a new one has literally been every 7 or 8 years.

But its the same for a lot of things people buy. Why is it cheaper to buy a heap of junk food instead of eating healthy? Because junk food tastes nice and people will buy more of it than health food.

I once bought shoes from Kmart for $30 and in a month became so uncomfortable, they were torture to stand/walk in. Saved my pennies and bought them from a proper shoe shop for $180 and 6 years later they are still going strong.

Those who make cheap things with shoddy quality dont care about the environment.

5. Well maybe you can make a difference?

This isn’t entirely true, I’m actually studying sustainability and climate change and thought it is true that an individual’s chooses have less of an impact that that of a large company it can still have a significant effect. People indirectly control the industry if 10% of people stop buying beef that’s a 10% drop in profit for beef producers. That can have a serious effect on how a company operates so while it is important to change the policy regulating large corporations it is still important for individuals to live more sustainability especially since the implementation of new policy is painfully slow.

If anyone wants advice on some minor changes you can make to live more sustainability here are some of the best things you can do.

fly only when absolutely necessary. Flying is one of the most environmentally damaging things an individual can do if possible drive or take a train/bus.
reduce your consumption of beef and dairy products. Cows are responsible for a significant amount of global warming due to their emission of methane which is a much better greenhouse gases than CO2. Cows are the biggest offender but generally meat is the worst offender the least environmentally damaging meat that is available is chicken.

try to repair devices and applications whey they have broken and simply buy less stuff especially if it is single use this reduces your impact as you will consume less and will cause you to produce less waste.

4. I think it’s the walking that’s the key.

Personally, I walk to the library or the UPS store.

This is one of the reasons cities are a pretty eco way to live—strangers can share instead of buying their own shit.

3. Just wait for evolution to catch up.

We need to evolve as a people. It has to do with consumer demand. We need to demand longer lasting or products.

Maybe have our government s subsidize the good stuff. And tax the single use type crap.

2. Even that’s a scam.

Recycling has so much better of a reputation than it deserves. It’s just one small step above throwing stuff straight in the garbage.

“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is in priority order. Recycling is a last ditch option before throwing stuff away. The best option is to just use less stuff.

1. We can only do so much one person at a time.

Doing what’s best for the environment isn’t really about what you and I do day to day. On an individual level, we could be vegan as fuck and be completely carbon neutral without making a dent on the vast, global environment. Even that #TeamTrees thing on YouTube will do next to nothing, as great as that was.

What needs to happen is companies and governments need to take immediate, drastic action. That’s the only way we can save the planet. If you still want to do something yourself, then the best thing to do is get involved in politics and campaigns, and make sure to vote for people who genuinely want to tackle the climate crisis.

Of course consumers are gonna pick the cheapest options that are worse for the environment. Especially if they have to pick between the environment or feeding their kids. It’s up to companies and those in charge to make the more environmentally friendly options more accessible.

It’s kind of depressing when you lay it all out like that, don’t you think?

What are your thoughts on companies making it harder than it should be to do the right thing?

Let’s talk about it in the comments!

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What Are Dimensions, and How Many Do We Know About?

You’ve probably heard countless sci-fi flicks wax poetic about entering the ninth dimension, but what does that even mean?

What even are dimensions, and how do we exist in them? Are there really nine and counting?

Well, it all depends on how you look at it.

At our most basic understanding, we exist in a world that’s defined by four dimensions: length, width, height, and time.

Image Credit: Hyperspace

Any of these four coordinates can help us determine where exactly we are at any given time. By including time as one of the core dimensions, we can understand that a dimension does not have to be physical or spatial to exist. It can also be a theoretical, unseen concept. As such, plenty of scientists have speculated about the existence of multiple other dimensions. Some have even suggested that there might be as many as 10 or 11 of them.

Now, that sounds like a world of bizarre polygons.

How could more than four dimensions exist? The answer, to some theorists, it simple: all additional dimensions are simply “rolled up” – or hidden to the human eye.

Image Credit: Unsplash

There are certain limits to what we can and cannot see in terms of multi-dimensional planes:

  • One-dimensional spaces exist on a never-ending line, like an x- or y-axis.
  • Two-dimensional spaces exist on a flat plane, like a sheet of paper or a chess board.
  • Three-dimensional spaces exist pretty much how we see the world around us.
  • And a four dimensional spaces would just factor in time.

But five, six, seven, eight, and all other dimensional spaces of increasing value are a little trickier.

It takes a slightly more complicated explanation to justify the idea of more than four dimensions. Can you imagine that there’s a rolled up, six-dimensional tape hidden within each four-dimensional world? Well, that’s basically the super short way of explaining how ten dimensions could exist, even if they’re not seen.

The long explanation accounts for atoms, particle theory, and a lot more complicated stuff.

Image Credit: iStock

That doesn’t necessarily mean that these theories don’t hold weight, though. Almost anything is possible when it comes to string theory. After all, there’s a lot of empty space between nuclei and electrons in an atom.

What’s going on in that emptiness is still unknown to us. That leaves a lot of possibilities for other dimensions that we just don’t know about yet. There could be 20, 30, even 40 dimensions that exist and effect the world around us. We just can’t see them. That doesn’t make them any less real, though. If all these dimensions do happen to exist, maybe we can find some comfort in the vastness of it all.

What do you think about these possible dimensions? Are they totally bogus, or might they actually be real?

Let us know what you think in the comments!

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Crazy Facts 2020-12-10 15:04:51

After losing her position in her university’s anatomy department in 1938, Rita Levi-Montalcini set up a laboratory in her bedroom and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. This work led to her discovery of nerve growth factor, for which she was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1986.

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This is How to Tell the Difference Between an Asteroid, a Meteorite, and a Comet

I’m not advising that any of us get up close and personal with any of these things. We’ve all seen the movies (so many movies!) and obviously, close encounters with burning hot rock from outer space never goes well for the inhabitants of planet Earth.

That said, wouldn’t you like to sound (even) smarter the next time you engage in a game of Trivial Pursuit, or run into an ex with his new girlfriend?

Of course you would!

So, let’s take a look at the differences between asteroids, meteorites, comets, and for extra fun, meteors, too!

Asteroids

Image Credit: iStock

These rocky objects are smaller than planets, and are left over from the formation of our solar system. Basically, when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed to form our fun, the big chunks of remaining material turned into planets. The smaller fragments of dust are what’s left behind, just floating around waiting to kill us all.

There are millions of known asteroids. the largest, Ceres, is nearly 600 miles wide – big enough to be classified as a dwarf planet, technically. NASA tracks the asteroids that are nearest to Earth (Ceres is not one of them, thank goodness), and plots their trajectories to make sure they’re not coming too close.

Most of them are irregular in shape and sometimes orbit each other and the sun in small groups. Their compositions vary based on how far away they were from the sun when they formed.

The space between Marys and Jupiter is known as the asteroid belt, and that’s where most of them good-sized rocks reside.

Comets

Image Credit: iStock

Comets are also composed of leftover materials, and they formed around the same time as the asteroids. While asteroids formed toward the inner, hotter regions of the solar system, though, comets formed further out – beyond the frost (or snow) lines, where water can freeze.

That means that, instead of being comprised of only rock or other metals solid enough not to melt, comets are formed from frozen gas, rock, ice, and dust. Some scientists call them “dirty snowballs,” and are easily identifiable by their trailing jets of gas and dust that melt away as they fly too close to the sun.

Meteors

Image Credit: iStock

A meteor is an asteroid that is vaporized when it hits Earth’s atmosphere.

We sometimes see the glowing hot air left behind, and call them “shooting stars.”

We also see meteor showers, when more than one enters our atmosphere at the same time.

Meteorites

Image Credit: iStock

Meteorites are what survives the dive through the atmosphere to land on Earth’s surface.

They’re usually made from iron or stone, a mix of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, and a smattering of other elements.

Studying these fragments has helped us understand the age and formation of our solar system, and how and when Earth came into existence.

Well, now you know!

This information will come in handy one day, I just know it!

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Swimming in Cold Water Might Help Ward Off Dementia

If you’re fast approaching middle age (like I am) or are staring down the later years of your life and hoping to spend most of them lucid and enjoying the fruits of your labor, then keeping your mind in tact is likely something that interests you.

Dementia is scary, and it affects so many of our family and friends – which is why there’s so much research that goes into finding ways to combat it.

Most recently, a team from Cambridge University found that people who regularly swim outdoors in the winter had elevated levels of a protein that plays a key role in forming brain connections.

Image Credit: iStock

The protein in question has been found to help protect the brain against other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, too.

Professor Giovanna Mallucci, the Associate Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute, talked about the results in an online lecture.

Researchers have known for some time that the process of forming new synapses declines over time, and also that this process can be influenced by temperature. Hibernating mammals, for example, experience a loss of synapses when they sleep through the winter, but they are restored upon awakening in the spring.

A previous paper, published in Nature, revealed that a “cold shock” protein in the brain – RBM3 – is responsible.

In mice, exposure to freezing temperatures caused a loss of synapses… but that their RBM3 levels skyrocketed as they warmed up, allowing them to form healthy new ones.

Image Credit: iStock

Researchers then measured RBM3 levels in a group of outdoor swimming enthusiasts, all of whom became hypothermic during their chilly dips.

When compared to a group of non-swimmers, the ones who swam in cold water had higher levels of RBM3 in their blood, leading to the belief that hypothermic conditions does trigger the release of this key protein in humans, too.

This foundation is exciting and strong, but without peer-reviewed research or other, similar findings, we can’t say for sure that taking winter dips in the water will keep your brain healthy for years to come.

Image Credit: iStock

Letting yourself get too cold, or wandering too far down the path to hypothermia, is also deadly – so don’t try this at home until the scientists are sure it’s something that works.

So… just don’t do it alone. Or do it at the gym if they have a cold dip pool. We just don’t want you to drown or get hurt.

The good news for those of us how HATE being cold? If the RBM3 protein is shown to help regenerate skills, we’ll likely see the development of drugs that can help stimulate the desired responses without having to go swimming in the freezing cold.

Three cheers for science!

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People Are Sharing Things They’ll Miss About Lockdowns

Guess what, everyone?

The pandemic isn’t over yet! Not even close, in fact…

And, while we’re seeing a lot of people out there ACTING like things have improved, we all need to be smart about wearing a mask, keeping our distance from people, and washing our hands.

Regardless of all those pesky FACTS, people have been tweeting out what they’re going to miss about lockdown…whenever that happens. It’s good to dream, I guess…let’s take a look at what people had to say! Stay safe out there!

1. That’s a good thing.

Trust me, you’ll be able to hibernate this whole winter.

2. Awwwwww. Keep on enjoying that.

Looks like a good companion.

3. That is definitely a positive thing.

Let’s all keep ’em clean when this is over, okay?

4. The perfect excuse…

What’s YOURS?

5. They’re always there for you.

You gotta love that!

6. All kinds of experiments going on.

That can be good or bad…just ask your pets.

7. All kinds of good stuff.

You still have a good amount of time to enjoy all of this.

8. Pretty steady where I’m at.

That’s cheap!

9. Livin’ the life.

Like I said, lockdown ain’t going anywhere, so keep on enjoying it.

10. Guest appearance!

You know your co-workers love it!

11. Family is everything.

I’m sure they love having you there!

12. Oh come on, lighten up…

Give people a chance! It’s worth it!

Sorry, folks, but we still have quite a ways to go before we can get back to normal again…

Now we want to hear from you!

How are you spending your time during the lockdown?

Talk to us in the comments! And stay safe out there!

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People Share the Scientific Facts They Really Wish Weren’t True

Believing in science is important, and when a fact is irrefutable, researched, and peer-reviewed, we should all accept that it’s true.

That doesn’t mean we have to like it, though.

Here are 17 people who have a beef with one scientific fact or another, and their reasons are pretty darn good.

17. We have no idea what’s down there.

The fact that 80% of the ocean is unexplored.

All of that vast ocean… and we have no idea what’s in it.

16. Well that’s terrible.

Pandas often have twins, but usually the mother can only manage to care for one, so the other is abandoned.

Giant panda cubs can’t even open their eyes until they’re 6 weeks old, and can’t move around until they’re 3 months.

Poor little guys.

15. We won’t be around to see it either way.

The universe was theorized to either slam back together after many more billions of years and possibly create a new Big Bang, or just die by expanding away from everything else and getting colder and colder until atom basically stop moving.

I think its called the Big Chill. Guess which one sounds worse. You pick the Big Chill? Well thats the one scientists believe is the one thats gonna happen.

14. The face I am making right now.

Otters are not as nice as the look.

Male otters sometimes hold pups ransom to force their mothers to give up some of their food

They kill for fun, like a bunch of sociopaths,

One of them grabbed a baby harbor seal (with their fangs) and raped it to death.

11 percent of sea otters found dead on the California coast from 1998 to 2001 were killed, at least in part, by trauma associated with mating.

Also, they are necrophiles.

13. Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it.

Carbon fiber is extremely strong, but only when forces are applied in the direction of the fibers. If you apply the force perpendicular to the fibers, a carbon fiber will split easily.

So you either have to figure out where the forces will be and position the fibers of a carbon fiber part in that direction or settle for a sometimes weaker metal part, which can withstand forces in all directions.

12. Females always getting the short end of the stick.

Felines (and some other animals) have barbed penises which make intercourse extremely painful for females. Females will even try to escape because it causes so much pain.

Unfortunately the spikes are necessary to stimulate ovulation, so it’s unavoidable for reproduction.

11. It’s simple math.

Bigger people, be it taller or fatter are more likely to develop cancer than someone smaller. If anyone doesn’t know what cancer actually is it’s what happens when a cell divides incorrectly and it begins to reproduce at very high speeds.

The more cells someone has the more likely they are to develop cancer. This is not taking any exposure to a substance that can cause cancer into consideration.

10. I would very much never like to find out.

That you can get a blockage in your bowels and die crapping out of your mouth.

9. We so want it to be possible.

That nothing can go faster than the speed of light. I sucks because it make space exploration like in SciFi impossible. And yes I know that there might be ways around it or stuff like wormholes but right now they aren’t really possible.

There is tons of cool stuff we might be able to do in the future. Send seed ships to other solar system. Make generation ship to closer ones. Colonise and terraforming the solar system. Make drone exploration ship.

But actually go from system to system like in star wars, star trek and a million other show. Not an option and might very well never be.

8. We should be more careful.

Materials that are really useful, but extremely harmful.

Asbestos is an amazing material, if it didn’t cause cancer then freakin everything should be made of it. Lightweight, strong for its density, entirely fireproof, and extremely carcinogenic.

Lead paint and leaded gasoline is just plain better, real shame lead is so poisonous because otherwise you’d never want to use the lead-free versions of those things.

Carbon nanotubes, while not something that currently has practical application, probably never will because like asbestos they cause cancer. It is outstanding what that stuff is capable of, but breathing in broken material will absolutely give you cancer.

I’m sure there are some others I’m forgetting.

7. There are ways to deal with it.

Trauma stays with you for the rest of your life.

There are ways to help overcome it but it never truly leaves and will always keep affecting you to a degree.

6. That sounds unpleasant for all involved.

Animals, like Hamsters, have more babies then their bodies (nipples) can feed.

In order to save the others from competing with each other, the mother will eat any additional young, alive.

5. Really? That’s the thing?

Friction does not depend on surface area but instead on normal force on that surface and friction coefficient.

Drives me mad. If I could ask god one thing it’d be to change this.

4. Not-so-fun facts.

“Increasing number of people are unknowingly spreading HIV because they don’t get regular STI check ups”

– Doctors when I get STI check ups.

3. That sounds terrible.

There have been only 3 people who had died out of the earth.

They were the crew of the Soyuz 11. There have been recorded details about the mission, mostly graphic.

You know something was very serious when even the USSR doesn’t even bother covering it.

Yep, even the USA learned about it the second they heard about it.

2. But only if you’re not blind.

That being blind is akin to trying to watch the back of your head, you simply can’t, blind people don’t see black, they literally see nothing.

It’s a terrifying thought.

1. This really is the worst.

Things that taste good are bad for you.

In 1948, the Framingham Heart Study enrolled more than 5,000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, to participate in a long-term study of risk factors for heart disease. (Very long term—the study is now enrolling the grandchildren of the original volunteers.)

It and subsequent ambitious and painstaking epidemiological studies have shown that one’s risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, certain kinds of cancer and other health problems increases in a dose-dependent manner upon exposure to delicious food.

Steak, salty French fries, eggs Benedict, triple-fudge brownies with whipped cream—turns out they’re killers. Sure, some tasty things are healthy—blueberries, snow peas, nuts and maybe even (oh, please) red wine.

But on balance, human taste preferences evolved during times of scarcity, when it made sense for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to gorge on as much salt and fat and sugar as possible. In the age of Hostess pies and sedentary lifestyles, those cravings aren’t so adaptive.

Me? Why can’t time travel actually work? I have things to do.

What would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments!

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This is How Scientists Figured Out the Age of the Earth

How old humanity is will remain a point of contention probably for as long as there are people around to argue.

When it comes to the age of this beauty, disastrous planet we all call home, though, scientists are pretty much in agreement as far as when she was born in a fury of explosions and creation.

Image Credit: iStock

What you’ll find if you Google this question (aside from my amazingly succinct and informative article), is that – since the 1950s – scientists have been secure in the belief that the earth is around 4.54 billion years old (plus or minus 50 million years).

People have been working on the answer to this question for a few hundred years, actually, all the way back to Greek philosopher Aristotle. He believed that time had no beginning and no end, and that the earth was infinitely old.

In ancient India, religious scholars envisioned a universe that perpetually exploded, expanded, and collapsed before beginning again – their calculations were that this had been happening for around 1.97 billion years.

Image Credit: iStock

In the Middle Ages, Christian scholars combed the Bible for clues, coming up with much shorter estimates, somewhere between 5471 and 7519 years.

From the Renaissance on, scientists looked at factors from the planet’s rate of cooling, the accumulation of sediment, and the chemical evolution but came up with such wide-ranging answers there couldn’t be a consensus.

Around the turn of the 20th century, scientists discovered they could calculate how old a rock was by measuring radioactive decay, from which we got carbon dating – a reliable method for measuring large swaths of time.

In the 1950s, a geochemist named Clair C. Patterson – who had worked on the Manhattan Project – measured the isotopic composition of lead from the Canyon Diablo meteorite and other space rock samples that correlated to the formation of the earth.

Image Credit: Public Domain

His estimate – 4.5 billion years.

That number has been revised only slightly in the decades since.

Patterson recalled later that “no one cared about it.”

Image Credit: Public Domain

He feels that remains true even today, and maybe even less so.

It’s pretty cool to think about, though – rocks from space can tell us how long our planet has been around.

It’s like alien but not, and if you take the time to ponder it for a few minutes more, I doubt you’ll be sorry!

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