They say this seaweed mess is twice as long as the length of the United States.
The seaweed mess/media sensation is called "sargassum," emphasis on gas. It's always been a part of the ocean, and like many things in nature, it changes from year to year depending on many factors. Right now, wafting toward Florida, is a mass stretching from Africa well into the Atlantic. And it's coming to a beach near your vacation destination this summer.
The papers tell us that sargassum is important as a nursery in the ocean and for protection for small species. But once it washes ashore, it stinks up the beach with a smell like rotten eggs. The gas it puts off can be dangerous in certain quantities. Officials in Barbados are using 1,600 dump-truck trips a day to rid their beaches of the stuff.
This particular year, it's washing up on the islands at up to six feet in stinky depth.
Thought about Branson this summer?
We've often said that mankind will find the key to climate change, just as he found the key to space flight, the boll weevil and covid-19. When batteries get (a lot) more efficient, renewables will replace more of the fossil fuels. But improving the carbon "sinks" will be a part of the solution, too.
We read last week that scientists have found a way to suck carbon out of the atmosphere in what CNN calls "direct air capture," which means "sucking carbon pollution directly out of the atmosphere and then storing it, often by injecting it into the ground."
Once carbon dioxide is captured in this way, it is turned into sodium bicarbonate, which can be stored easily.
Why can it be stored easily? Sodium bicarbonate has another name: Baking soda.
Amazing what mankind can do. And will do tomorrow.
The Webb Telescope keeps finding cool stuff up there. In the Sagittarius constellation, they've found a "Wolf-Rayet" star, a massively hot, massively bright kind of star. But before we can see most of them, they explode in supernovas.
But this one we've got on camera. So expect an explosion. And maybe some cool pictures soon. Maybe as soon as a few hundred thousand years.
Hey, that's quick in the universe's timeframe.
Don't believe your lyin' eyes.
Axiom rolled out its new spacesuit the other day, the new suit of space armor that astronauts will wear when humans next land on the moon. (Which should be sometime in 2025!)
You have probably seen the pictures. The thing looks like it was designed by the Denver Broncos. It featured a neat dark-blue color and some orange. But don't let that fool you. What you saw was just for Earth show. The actual suits will be white to reflect the heat away from human flesh. (It can get hot in the sun even on the moon.)
So why not show the real suits down here?
According to the papers, "to protect the suit's proprietary design."
Dream about space all you want. But Earth's concerns are real.
Recently, NASA announced that it had found two Earth-size, if not Earth-like, rocky planets orbiting a star in the neighborhood, which you realize is relative. CNN says the poets on this planet named the "new" planet "TOI 700 e" which is not to be confused with the one discovered earlier, "TOI 700 d." Both get their titles from the aptly named TOI 700 star they are close to. (No word what the inhabitants of those planets call their homes.)
Both of these planets are said to be in the Goldilocks Zone, which is to say far enough from the nearest star not to be barren necessarily, but close enough not to be ice necessarily.
"The potential for liquid water suggests that the planets themselves could be, or might once have been, habitable for life," the network says.
And we might should plan a visit. As soon as we humans learn how to travel at the speed of light, it will only take us about a century to get there. So pack for a long trip.