Remember that time a giant cylindrical aquarium in a Berlin hotel bar catastrophically failed and left thousands of fish homeless? We sure do, and further recall that at the time, we were very curious about the engineering details of how this structure failed so spectacularly. At the time, we were sure there’d be plenty of follow-up on that score, but life happened and we forgot all about the story. Luckily, a faithful reader named Craig didn’t, and he helpfully ran down a few follow-up articles that came out last year that are worth looking at.
The first is from prosecutors in Berlin with a report offering three possibilities: that the adhesive holding together the acrylic panels of the aquarium failed; that the base of the tank was dented during recent refurbishment; or that the aquarium was refilled too soon after the repairs, leading to the acrylic panels drying out. We’re a little confused by that last one just from an intuitive standpoint, but each of these possibilities seems hand-wavy enough that the report’s executive summary could have been “Meh, Scheiße happens.”
The conclusions reached in the prosecutor’s report come from a forensic analysis conducted by Professor Christian Bonten, who the building owners commissioned to get to the bottom of things. The work began soon after the accident with an on-site analysis of the debris field, followed by laboratory studies of 90 tonnes of recovered shards. They put over 1,100 hours into the effort, examining evidence down to the molecular level via chemical analysis of the polymer chains in the acrylic. Still, the best they could come up with was that the collapse was “sudden and unexpected,” a sentiment the fish would no doubt agree with, and that there was no way anyone could have predicted it. That’s a bit frightening; while the world isn’t exactly littered with giant aquaria like this, they aren’t unknown either, and the idea that any of these structures could fail without warning is chilling. Especially if you’re a fish.
The Covid pandemic lockdowns were difficult for a lot of people, but they did provide a (hopefully) unique opportunity to observe just how much the activity of 8 billion people has on our planet. We recall a ton of non-intuitive results such as decreased background noise in seismic observations, pollution maps that suddenly cleared up, and even changes in the behavior of wildlife. But one impact we really didn’t see coming during “The Anthropause” was a decrease in the surface temperature on the Moon. Researchers looked at data from six sites on the near side of the Moon during lunar nights from 2017 to 2023, and found a subtle but unmistakable dip in temperatures during April and May of 2020, the peak of the lockdowns. They explain that the decrease was due to lower longwave IR emissions from the Earth’s surface thanks to decreased greenhouse gas emissions during the period, which we find pretty fascinating.
One of the benefits of writing for Hackaday is the crazy random rabbit holes that we get to go down, especially when we’re doing research for an article. Such a thing happened this week with a random thought that popped up while reading something about the International Space Station: What would they do if someone died up there? Thankfully, we’ve had precious few space fatalities in the last 70 years, and those have mostly been restricted to launch and reentry, and hence have been — ahem — extremely energetic deaths.
But with two space stations in orbit hosting long-duration crews in an inhospitable environment, eventually the law of averages is going to catch up to us and someone is just going to die up there. Then what? We found an article from 2021 that attempts to answer this with the help of the indispensable Commander Chris Hadfield, who offers insights that suggest his tours on the ISS have given him plenty of time to mull it over. But the real treat in the article is the idea of adapting an idea known as “promession,” which would involve freezing a corpse in liquid nitrogen and then rapidly vibrating it to break it into tiny bits, suitable for rapid composting. The on-orbit version would skip the liquid nitrogen and use the cold of space, with a robotic arm used to vibrate the astronautsicle and pulverize him or her. The article takes some weird turns — Martian cannibals? — which is understandable given that at the time it was written, NASA didn’t really have a plan for what to do with dead astronauts. But fear not, because they seem to be working on it now.
And finally, we stumbled across a video looking into the mysterious inner workings of vintage elevator controls that we found strangely compelling. The elevator in question is a Schindler lift with an odd design; rather than sliding doors on both the car and the landings, this one just has the doors on the landings, and those are swing-type doors. It’s fascinating to watch the doors glide by as the elevator goes up and down the cleanest elevator shaft we’ve ever seen. Even tidier is the hoist room, which is filled with the snappiest relays and coolest old controls you’ll ever see.
So, maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but the greenhouse effect doesn’t make sense to me as an explanation for the moon thing. I thought the greenhouse effect stopped heat from radiating out to space as much, and that’s why it’s causing global warming. If the pandemic brought carbon emissions down, and the greenhouse effect lessened, wouldn’t that mean that the earth would cool a little, and heat would radiate out to space easier? If heat is radiating out to space easier, how would that make the moon cool down? Wouldn’t we see the opposite effect?
Greenhouse gases reflect heat, so some heat emitted inside the atmosphere can’t leave (creating the greenhouse effect), and some heat from outside the atmosphere is reflected away.
What about a modern viking funeral? The Soyuz capsule burns at reentry anyway.
Or do a Star Trek one and fill the Universe with flying coffins. Number them and the aliens will start a strange collection of unique items. This ideea comes from an old SF novel
having a giant funeral ship where all the galaxy dead people were shrunked to 10cm/4in height or smaller and kept nicely ordered (by the war they died or so), but the ship crashes and the next generation of kids on the ship start playing with the dead not knowing what they are (and the funeral business also stops with the crash).
Woops, no idea how this became a reply to an existing comment, it should be a new comment.
Should be a new thread but on the viking fueral just wanted to let you know about the show Fringe, they had a nighttime beach funeral. I found out it’s legal in Vermont. I told my family about the plan I got probably not vibes. A wood Pyre boat shot with a flaming arrow in the middle of the lake with a torch lit Irish pub catering with a mandatory singing of come on Eileen or you are written out of the will after one week of me being gone. Not enforceable but no reason to be sad at a party.
@ゴム said: “So, maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but the greenhouse effect doesn’t make sense to me as an explanation for the moon thing. I thought the greenhouse effect stopped heat from radiating out to space as much, and that’s why it’s causing global warming.”
Modern human-made climate change is a religion, not an evidence-based science. You are obviously not a true believer.
It’s like changing the grade of window tinting from darker to lighter, less reflection.
The Sun emits visible & IR light, the visible goes straight thru the “greenhouse layer”, the IR is say 50/50 whether it gets thru or reflected. Some of that reflected IR hits & warms the Moon.
The visible light get absorbed by the Earth and radiates back as IR, again the greenhouse layer lets some thru and keeps some trapped (aka global warming). A tiny bit of that will hit the Moon.
So if you make the greenhouse layer thinner the odds of the IR being reflected back (some towards the Moon) goes down so Moon gets colder. Earth gets cooler as well because it traps less of the radiated IR. That extra radiated IR hitting the Moon doesn’t make up for the initial losses though.
Just be quite and by your Lunar Warming tax!
“Especially if you’re a fish”
Or if you’re a human in a plastic observation tunnel at the bottom of a huge aquarium tank.
“You can tune a file system, but you can’t tune a human in a plastic observation tunnel at the bottom of a huge aquarium tank.”
Wooooo!
Shaking a deceased astronaut to pieces with a robotic arm… new type of space debris if something detaches before completion…
“Sure wish Joe was still around to give us a hand.”
I’m guessing it won’t be broadcast live.
I’m reminded of Avenue 5 and the poop shield orbiting around the space-cruise ship.
Only with freeze-dried astronaut bits orbiting the ISS or whatever instead of poop.
Needs a musical accompaniment, oh I got it…
“Shake, shake, shake. Shake, shake, shake. Shake your body, shake your body!”
It will be broadcast, they just won’t show it on tv.
I’d be amazed if NASA hasn’t considered and planned what to do in such an eventuality, and am surprised they haven’t been shared with someone who has done a stints on the ISS. I bet there’s a body bag stashed away up there.
Possibly n-1 body bags where n is the max number of people up there at any one time!
Ahh! A mathematician has entered the chat!
Dan, read the article again about the aquarium failure. The third possibility (while still doesn’t make much sense to me) listed is that maybe the thing was filled too late, not too soon, after the modernization…. Thus perhaps letting the plastic dry out too much.
Elevator controls fascinate me! As a kid I added an elevator to my treehouse, with help and encouragement from my engineer dad of course. He let me figure out and design the controls on my own first, then made suggestions and corrections. This was in the days of relays mind you. Proud to say I got it nearly right to begin with!
You had electricity in your treehouse? Or was it a human-powered system? If it had controls, I’m guessing you had electricity.
My appartment building had shaft-only doors up until 2008. It had safety switches when something got pinched, that stopped the lift VERY quickly, which felt very unpleasant , and you could feel the thunk throughout the building.