Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
That spooky blue glow from nuclear plants can help treat cancer patients
Cherenkov radiation is one of those obscure-seeming things that a lot of people know exist - we've seen pictures of the blue glow emitted by nuclear plant fuel stored in pools - but are vague on details. It's caused by charged particles passing through a medium at...
Dartmouth team finds a new solar system with a ‘teen-age’ sun
By David Hirsch, Dartmouth News Service: A newly discovered planetary system will provide researchers with the rare chance to study a group of growing planets, according to research co-led by Dartmouth. The new system, named TOI 451, is made up of at least three...
N.H. wrestled with “deepfake” pornography long before the tech existed
Technology is making it very easy to create "deepfake" videos that look real and, as you'd expect if you know anything about human behavior, there are growing cases online of people using it to create pornography that appears to involve real people, almost always...
Vermont towns stop pretending that recycling is a magic free solution
"It costs money to throw out the trash, but recycling, with its halo of virtue and the value of the materials in the marketplace, was a blessed reprieve. "That has long been a fiction, as the cost of dumping garbage subsidizes the cost of recycling. But the truth will...
N.H. firm plans to buy 12,600 electric vans
One of the state’s least-known billion-dollar companies, Merchants Fleet, has announced their intent to buy 12,600 electric vans from General Motors even though they don’t exist yet, putting it at the forefront of a huge change sweeping through transportation....
Batteries are becoming part of New England’s electricity planning – although still a very small part
UPDATE: Greentech Media (which is disappearing, by the way) has a story about these batteries here: "Plus Power now needs to build the plants: a 150-megawatt/300-megawatt-hour system near a cranberry bog south of Boston, Massachusetts and a...
Connecticut River dam debate shows that hydropower is more complex than just blocking a lot of water
Dams seem to be pretty straightforward objects – they’re big things that block water – but a re-licensing effort for three dams on the Connecticut River shows that it can get complicated when electricity is added to the mix. “This would be unique for us,” said John...
Vermont is the safest state as measured by COVID deaths
One out of every 3,436 people in Vermont had died of COVID-19 since data began being kept - the best per-capita figure of any state. The figure is 1 out of 2,100 in Maine, the fourth-best (Hawaii and Alaska do better) and 1 out of 1,236 in New Hampshire, the...
Tiny houses, fluoridation, right-to-repair and a Tolkien college degree – some possible N.H. laws
The enormous New Hampshire Legislature has begun meeting again and, as always, a slew of proposed bills are on the table. Hearings have begun and committees are chewing through them. Many proposals will get nowhere, or emerge in completely different form so don't get...
How far did Alan Shepard’s lunar golf shots go?
Hats off to whoever at the Union-Leader spotted this little bit of analysis about the distance traveled by the golf balls hit on the moon by New Hampshire's own Alan Shepard. The story is here. The conclusion: the first ball went 24 yards and the second 40 yards,...
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