Welcome to my weekly letter, where I share a few noteworthy articles and my own commentary. Without further ado…
Weekly Read
- What the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Reveals About Humankind (Wired) – TL;DR: nothing is conclusive, so keep on believing whatever you want to believe. But don’t expect any aliens to come and save us from destroying our own planet (will have to do this ourselves)
- In an ultraviolet glow, auroras on Mars spotted by UAE orbiter (NBC News) – a major finding by one of the 3 probes arrived at Mars earlier this year. Aside from the excellent reminder that NASA’s is not the only interesting Mars mission, UAE’s probe’s finding intrigues us with aurora, magnetic fields, and potentially a gravity well (OK, maybe that’s further down the line, just maybe)
- Why Utilities Want to Control Your Smart Thermostat Sometimes (Wired) – it’s an effort to help avoid crashing the power grid (and causing a widespread power outage) during a heat wave. But the root cause can only be solved by a major update to the outdated infrastructure. Two days after this article’s published day, the White House announced the support of the new infrastructure bill, which passed congress on August 10, and is still pending house approval (probably by October)… you’ve gotta love US politics 😉
- A Massive Water Recycling Proposal Could Help Ease Drought (Wired) – water recycling is probably a necessary step for sustaining future generations, and for the skeptics, it’s already been done in space by the astronauts, and seems like they also have a recent ‘infrastructure update‘ in space. Now for people in US, this is planned as part of the infrastructure bill mentioned earlier.
- Lakes Are Losing Oxygen—and Their Inhabitants Are in Danger (Wired) – compared with the issue above, this one could be even harder to solve. It will take a combination of global reduction on greenhouse gas emission, local effort to plant trees around lakes, and residents near water bodies to use fertilizer very cautiously. In a more recent news, not only the lakes and fishes are running out of oxygen, so are us humans (due to COVID19 surge)
- Space tourism sounds fun. But it could be terrible for the planet. (Mashable) – perfect segway from the above topic since a lot of oxygen is also used as propellant in a rocket. Perhaps we have already arrived at the point where we need to seriously assess the environmental impact of space tourism.
That’s it for this week! Have a nice weekend!
Stay Tuned…
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