Can Old Mattresses Be Used To Grow Food?

It may sound so unbelievable at first, but are old mattresses the secret to growing food-crops in the most challenging of environments?

By: Ringo Bones

Until recently, the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about old mattresses is our looming solid waste landfill problem, but a team of scientists from the University of Sheffield are turning old discarded mattresses into “foam soils” that allows any prospective farmer to grow food-crops in the most challenging of environmental conditions. The team of scientists managed to successfully grow tomatoes and other vegetables in a Syrian refugee camp located in the Jordanian desert – an environment that’s so challenging when it comes to growing food-crops – using disused mattresses formerly owned by the refugees themselves. The idea first came to one of the scientists witnessing a few tomato plants managing to grow in the Syrian refugee camps’ discarded mattress dump despite only receiving scant desert level rainfall during the past few years.

The chopped-up mattress material is put into waste containers along with a nutrient mix. Seedlings are planted straight into the foam, which supports the plant’s roots as it grows. This method of growing crops uses up to 80-percent less water than planting into soil, the scientists claimed, and does not require the use of pesticides. It looks like a version of low-cost hydroponics was discovered by accident in a Syrian refugee camp in the middle of the Jordanian desert.

If it works in other challenging environmental conditions, “foam-soils” based hydroponics could not only alleviate the problem of disposal of old and disused mattresses, but also could minimize the food logistics of humanitarian relief organizations. Imagine if most of the food requirements of a refugee camp are grown in situ via foam soils hydroponic – as opposed to being either flown in or shipped in.

Sulfur Hexafluoride: Clean Power Generation’s Dirty Little Secret?

Often used in science shows to lower the pitch of the human voice, is sulfur hexafluoride the clean power industry’s “dirty little secret” because it is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide?

By: Ringo Bones

Ever seen those science shows on TV – now mostly on You Tube – where the presenter uses a gas called sulfur hexafluoride to lower the pitch of their voices like the opposite of what helium does? Well, unfortunately, sulfur hexafluoride unbeknown to many of us, is a very dangerous greenhouse gas – as in it possesses 23,500 times the atmospheric warming power of carbon dioxide and could exacerbate the effects of global warming. Atmospheric scientists had found out that concentrations of sulfur hexafluoride in our atmosphere had been increasing during the past five years. But given it is a very potent greenhouse gas, why is sulfur hexafluoride relatively widely available that science show presenters can casually use it in a demonstration to lower the pitch of their voices?

Due to the recent rush to wean our reliance on fossil fuels in industrial electrical power generation – namely wind turbines, sulfur hexafluoride is a necessity when it comes as fire suppressant in large-scale electrical distribution systems – i.e. high capacity circuit breakers and relays. Given that the alternatives are more damaging to the ozone layer – like the chlorofluorocarbon based Halon –or prohibitively expensive when use in the scale we currently use – i.e. the inert gas argon, it seems that the electrical power industry must now find ways to minimize the leaking of large amounts of sulfur hexafluoride into the atmosphere. Worst still, like most petrochemical derived plastics, sulfur hexafluoride doesn’t break down easily in nature.

Given that the electrical power industry now has notice on the potential problems posed by unnecessary leaking into the atmosphere of sulfur hexafluoride, the due diligence doesn’t solely fall on them. Back in the 1990s, sulfur hexafluoride was used to fill the cushioning bubbles of running shoes and who knows what other consumer products, making a renewed regulation of sulfur hexafluoride throughout the various industries somewhat of an uphill battle. Maybe science show presenters must now find other more earth-friendly alternative gas to be used in demonstrations to lower the pitch of their voices. Maybe the argon gas production industry could pitch in?

The Chain Melted State: A New State Of Matter?

Does the discovery of a new physical state of matter eventually prove to be useful for our day-to-day lives?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though the newly discovered physical state of matter was jokingly called “gushers” when it first hit the press back in April 8, 2019, but the study itself was supported by the European Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the work was carried out in collaboration with scientists from Xi’an Jiantong University in China, the discovery of a new physical state of matter now holds the promise of improving our daily lives. Some say it could prove useful in designing more reliable folding-screen smart-phones, etc. But what actually is this new state of matter?

This new state of physical matter allows atoms to exist as both solid and liquid at the same time. In the past, atoms in physical materials have been typically thought to be in one of the three physical states – as either solid liquid or a gas. But researchers have discovered that some elements can take on properties of two different states at once that pose a complication to that view. Previously, scientists have not been sure whether those intermediate states were their own distinct state of matter or if they just represented a transition between the two.

This latest research finally managed to clear up that dispute and point to the fact that it is a distinct state of matter now known as “the chain melted state”. And now researchers hope that it can be further examined to find more uses for the unexpected discovery. By subjecting the element potassium to extreme environments – such as pushing it up against high temperatures and pressures – were combined with powerful computer simulations to allow scientists to study the unusual state of matter.

The potassium specimen showed parts of both liquid and solid states. When subjected to those conditions, most of the elements formed into a lattice structure of the kind that would be expected in a solid – but there was also a second set of atoms that were in a liquid arrangement. The University of Edinburgh scientists in the study found that more than half a dozen other elements, including sodium and bismuth, were able to reach this state if they were put in the right environments.

Dr. Andreas Hermann of the university’s School of Physics and Astronomy led the study which is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He said: “Potassium is one of the simplest metals that we know and yet if you squeeze it, it forms very complicated structures. We have shown that this unusual but stable state is part solid and part liquid. Recreating this unusual state in other materials could have all kinds of applications.” 

2019 – International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements

Did you know that 150 years ago Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev discovered and established the Periodic System for the benefit for all mankind?

By: Ringo Bones

2019 became the official International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements after the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed it during its 74^th Plenary Meeting back in December 20, 2017. And based on the 202 EX/Decision 43, the 2019 International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements – also known as the IYPT 2019 – was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference at its 39^th Session (39 C/decision 60). Back in April 1, 2018, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) joined in the planning and coordination to make the IYPT 2019 to be “more visible” to everyone concerned. Well, the IUPAC succeeded in making the 2011 International Year of Chemistry more or less visible to everyone concerned back then.

1869 is considered as the year of the discovery of the Periodic System by the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev. The IYPT 2019 also commemorates the 150^th anniversary of the establishment of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The International Year aims to recognize the importance of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements as one of the most important and influential achievements in modern science reflecting the essence not only of chemistry, but also of physics, biology and other basic sciences disciplines. The IYPT 2019 is also an opportunity to reflect upon many aspects of the periodic table, including its history, the role of women in research, global trends and perspectives on science for sustainable development and the social and economic impacts of this field.  

Said to be inspired by the card game solitaire, Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical elements is based on the Russian chemist’s discovery that a natural order existed among the elements. Mendeleev arranged the chemical elements according to their atomic weight and then pointed out that elements side by side in adjacent columns – i.e. vanadium, niobium and tantalum – behaved in the same way chemically. Mendeleev’s newly discovered periodic table of chemical elements was so accurate that it allowed him to accurately predict the chemical properties of elements not yet discovered during his lifetime. By the way, Dmitri Mendeleev was born in 1834 in Siberia and passed away in 1934.

Did John G. Trump Send Nikola Tesla To The Obscurity Dustbin of History?

Given that President Trump had recently managed to drag his rather obscure scientist uncle with his latest climate change denying Tweet, did John G. Trump played his part in sending Nikola Tesla to the obscurity dustbin of history?

By: Ringo Bones

Despite of being praised by Albert Einstein as the smartest scientist who ever lived, it wasn’t until the mid to late 1980 – primarily through the Californian heavy metal band Tesla and sometimes not even so – where non scientists and non engineers became familiar again with the life and work of Nikola Tesla. Fast forward to 2018 where President Trump mentioned his MIT trained scientist paternal uncle named John G. Trump as the reason why he is “genetically qualified” to declare that climate change is a hoax. Politicking aside, did John G. Trump was really responsible for sending Nikola Tesla to obscurity?

John George Trump was a physicist who got his PhD from MIT in 1933. In 1942 he became Secretary of the Microwave Committee – a sub-committee of the National Defense Research Committee. When Nikola Tesla passed away in 1943 in the New York Hotel, Trump was one of the top experts who declared that Tesla’s papers were not of strategic significance despite after declassification of some of them in May 2018 that there’s a plausibility that Tesla’s famed “Death Ray” might have worked.

Before he passed away in February 21, 1985, the then US President Ronald Reagan has awarded John G. Trump the National Medal of Science in 1983. I think this was probably the last of the general public had heard of him after being recently mentioned in President Trump’s “crazy climate change denial Tweets” in the autumn of 2018. Given his sway of authority in America’s wartime department during World War II, is it fair to say that John G. Trump really possessed the power and authority to send the Croatian émigré and inventor way ahead of his time Nikola Tesla to the obscurity dustbin of history?

Professor Stephen Hawking’s Untimely Passing: An Unfinished Cosmic Business?

Since his untimely passing back in March 14, does humanity’s quest to know the cosmos in its entirety died with Prof. Hawking?

By Ringo Bones 

Science pundits say that the untimely passing of Professor Stephen Hawking back in March 14, 2018 – which is coincidentally the 139^th birth anniversary of Albert Einstein – has left the world of cosmology with shoes that are might be too big to fill in. Although the top five contenders – namely Michio Kaku, Michael Greene, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Lisa Randall and Roger Penrose - might seem very able to do this, it leaves without a doubt that what Professor Stephen Hawking had worked with regards to cosmology and theoretical physics serve only merely to confirm Albert Einstein’s Theories of General and Special Relativity. But Prof. Hawking managed to achieve a bit more than Einstein’s so-called unfinished cosmic business that unfortunately ended back in 1955. 

Born in January 8, 1942 – exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo – Stephen Hawking grew up in relatively good health until he was struck with ALS during his early 20s that eventually deprived him the ability to speak normally and hence the computer voice synthesizer that goes with his wheelchair that became an integral part of him and despite of this, Hawking through his academic achievements managed to become a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. As a proponent of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, Hawking managed to further Albert Einstein’s unfinished work of unifying quantum mechanics with general relativity. 

Given the advancement of atom smashers since the 1960s and the advent of string theory which later aggregated into a complex but useful mathematics known as M-Theory, Prof. Hawking’s attempt to provide a so-called Theory of Everything, which is a differential equation that describes the inner workings of our entire cosmos from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest galactic cluster seems almost at hand since the late 1980s. Although still needs further refinement, Prof. Hawking only proved that Einstein’s previous work is not that far from the more complete contemporary picture of the cosmos that Hawking recently established. 

As a “science communicator”, Prof. Hawking managed to drag out the rather esoteric concepts of quantum mechanics and cosmology out of the cloistered world of academia into the general public via his 1989 bestseller A Brief History of Time and subsequent publications and TV documentary specials. With guest appearances on The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation just to name a few, it seems that Prof. Hawking managed to demystify the world of theoretical physics, cosmology and string theory to the general public and made cutting edge science now accessible even to grade-school kids.

Should The Standard Kilogram Be Redefined?

Although the platinum-iridium alloy standard kilogram had served us very accurately since 1879, is there a need for a more accurate kilogram standard? 

By: Ringo Bones 

The egg-sized platinum-iridium alloy cylinder that has officially defined the mass of a kilogram may soon be set aside in favor of a measurement that not only is more accurate – but one that is actually defined by fundamental constants of nature in order to make it several magnitudes more accurate than anything that is used before. The platinum-iridium alloy defining the standard kilogram known as “Le Grand K”, has sat inside a hermetically sealed room in Paris since 1879 and has served as the benchmark against which all other kilograms are compared. 

Sadly, the metric system’s “Le Grand K” has its failings. For one, it must be housed inside three glass bell jars in a climate-controlled room, under multiple locks and keys. The slightest fleck of dust or smudge of sweat or residue could alter its weight or corrode its surface, changing its mass. The hunk of metal is only taken out once every 40 years to be compared against similar replicas from around the world. Stephan Schlamminger, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland says:”The problem with the kilogram in Paris is that it’s so precious that people don’t want to use it.” 

So for years, physicists have chased an elusive dream: replacing the standard physical kilogram with a standard inherent in properties of nature such as the speed of light, the wavelength of photons and the Planck Constant (also called h-bar), which links the energy a wave carries with its frequency of oscillation. Well, physicists had managed to replace the x-shaped platinum- iridium bar which has served as the standard meter since 1890 with the 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of radiation from the krypton-86 atom back in 1960.

Scientists could use the Planck Constant to compare the energy of a wave with Albert Einstein’s iconic E=mc² equation; in that way, they would determine mass solely through the physical constants. Unfortunately, no one has yet been able to measure the Planck Constant to a level of precision that could rival what has been achieved using the Le Grand K as the benchmark. 

But researchers are making strides, and at the current pace, believe they can redefine the standard kilogram as soon as 2018. In the new study published in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, NIST physicist Stephan Schlamminger and his colleagues managed to measure the Planck Constant to a high level of precision using the NIST-4 watt balance, a sophisticated scale that measures a weight by the electromagnetic force that counterbalances it. The electromagnetic force can then be used to calculate the Planck Constant. With this method, the NIST team calculated the Planck Constant down to an uncertainty of 34 parts per billion. That result lines up well with what other teams have calculated. A separate experiment measuring the atoms in a silicon sphere has calculated the Planck Constant down to an uncertainty of 20 parts per billion, while the best watt measurement has achieved an uncertainty of just 19 parts per billion. All of this spells good news to increase the accuracy of the standard kilogram and could eventually be used to determine the exact number of platinum and iridium atoms that have rubbed off the Le Grand K since we started using it in 1879.