We’re always a wee bit suspicious about articles that announce some sort of “World’s first” accomplishment. With a couple of hundred thousand years of history, most of which wasn’t recorded, over which something like 117 billion humans have lived, any claims of primacy have to be taken with a grain of salt. So when the story of the world’s first instance of a car being hit by a meteorite came across our feed, we had to check it out. The car in question, a Tesla, was being driven in South Australia by veterinarian Andrew Melville-Smith when something suddenly crashed into its windshield.
The Tesla, which was in Autopilot mode at the time, continued on its merry way, which likely means its cameras didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. While this potentially supports the claim that the impactor came from above, the fact that the windshield wasn’t fully penetrated kind of speaks against that hypothesis. Also arguing against a cosmogenic origin for the impactor is the inability to find anything on the roadway near the crash site. But Dr. Melville-Smith is adamant that it must have been a meteorite due to evidence of the windshield glass having melted slightly. Again, this raises a few red flags for us, as anything energetic enough to melt glass on impact surely would have gone straight through the windshield, the driver, the seat, the floor, the battery pack, and probably the roadway, too. Then again, we recently saw a legit meteorite impact caught on camera, and that was a surprisingly low-energy event. Oh, and the “first ever” claim? Maybe not, since it seems as if a moving car was struck by a meteorite back in 1950.
Well, that’s it, folks, we’re calling it: the New Space Race is over, and the Chinese have won. Have they landed on the Moon? Set foot on Mars? No, nothing boring like that — they served up the first barbecue in space! The seminal accomplishment came after the installation of a new oven on the Tiangong space station, which is apparently a souped-up microwave with some air-fryer-like features. The six taikonauts currently aboard the space station put the new appliance through its paces with chicken wings, which were sent up on a recent supply run. The linked article has a picture of the wings, which honestly look a little wimpy compared to Buffalo wings; then again, some of the — ahem — aftereffects of properly spiced hot wings might not go over so well in a closed environment. Regardless, we’re sure the meal was a welcome change from the usual space food fare, especially compared to the offerings aboard the ISS, which seem pretty meager. All we’ve ever seen there are tortillas smeared with peanut butter. Pretty sad.
If you’re of a certain vintage and want to feel old, check this out: it’s been 37 years since the “Morris Worm” made cybersecurity a thing. The Internet worm, which exploited a couple of vulnerabilities in Unix systems to propagate, was written by Robert Morris at Cornell University, who has always claimed that he did it just to see if it could be done. It could and it did, infecting 10% of the machines on the fledgling Internet within 24 hours and causing damage (in the form of post-infection mitigation effort) to the tune of $10,000,000. In an interesting twist, Morris was the son of cryptologist Robert Morris, who played a role in the events described in The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll.
And finally, there are more than a few ways to start a flame war in the comments section — Metric vs. Imperial, emacs vs. vi, ridiculously clunky and horrible UK power plugs vs. plugs from literally anywhere else in the world — but one sure way to set one off is to pit Wago lever-lock terminals against good old American wire nuts. Personally, we can see the case for each and make use of both types of connectors in our projects, but if you can’t bear to suffer the slings and arrows of using “those European things” in a proper American junction box, these Wago-disguising 3D prints might be right up your alley. Designed to slip over the two-circuit version of the lever-lock connector, these will hide your shame at not being willing or able to twist a couple of wires together with wire nuts. Have fun in the comments!
Wago connectors are better. Come at me bro!
i think wire nuts were replaced with push in connecors somewere around the eighties here in the Netherlands before the wagos became a thing about 10 years ago iirc. metal junction boxes and tubes have been outlawed even earlier. early seventies? but then again, we run double the voltage of those poor ‘umericans.
Jealous :(
an umerican
Our USSR-style planned corporate profits is what keeps us (in the US) solidly stuck some time in the late 1970s (standards-wise).
Just like during the bronze age, everything needed has already been invented, and all it took was a prolonged import of bactrian (ie, mined in ancient Afganistan) tin to collapse pretty much all of the Fertile Crescent economies – all except the ones that couldn’t afford bronze, and were busy figuring out how to make some crude iron alloy instead. I am afraid we are in the US are heading in that direction, and returning all kinds of other stupidities, oligarchies, private fiefdoms, etc.
UK power plugs may be clunky, but at least they’re safe. Many other plugs around the world are pretty bad, especially in the US.
US extension has no fuses either, you could use a cheap $3 Walmart cord rated for 3A and plug a 15A heater in it. Christmas light are safer as extension due to built in fuse but it’s largely useless if you’re trying to sleep at night with a heater by your bed
No, we’ve fixed all those problems by including a “do not use this device with an extension cord” warning label on practically everything. So now the few people who read warning labels are afraid of all extension cords.
Had this argument online over the past couple of days. Fuses in the UK plugs doesn’t make the system “better”, the rest of the UK system is worse, and fuses are the dodgy hack to prevent a fire if a short occurs. But there’s nothing stopping a user from sticking a nail or something similar in the fuse holder and bypassing that feature altogether, immediately creating a fire hazard.
If instead, wires weren’t deliberately undersized (both appliance and in-wall) and circuit breakers deliberately oversized, then a circuit couldn’t go into a fault condition that causes a cable to catch fire before the breaker trips in any circumstance, even if the user was doing something dumb (short of interfering directly with the electrical panel itself.)
As a Brit, who lived in the US for 6 years, I refute the claim that ‘rest of the UK system is worse’. ‘worse’ how exactly ?
I do however agree that the fused plug is vulnerable to user incompetence.
Rather than just saying ‘worse’, here’s a more considered breakdown of pros and cons:
120v USA outlets vs 240v in Europe – sure, US gets 240v for dedicated circuits, but Europe has one socket for all houshold appliances (up to 3kW) allowing you to freely place/move anything anywhere you like. It used to take 4 minutes to boil a kettle in the US vs <2min here in the UK – and we drink lots of tea, so this quickly becomes annoying.
32A (typically in UK) circuits @ 240v gives up to ~7kw power to each circuit, vs 15A @ 120v in US for just 1.8kw shared by all devices on the circuit. Though the US does have a 20A kitchen circuit for a ‘whopping’ 3kw shared by all devices.
Crappy 2 pin plugs that fall out of the wall if you fart anywhere in the vicinity of the outlet.
Fused plug is prone to abuse – 1 for US, but…
Fused plug (When not abused) isolates faults to one device, where US system takes out the whole circuit.
200A@240v=48kW typical USA supply easily beats UK’s 100A@240v=24kW total supply however. Though, in my nearly 60 years, I’m yet to reach this limit.
Just last week ordered a Wago selection kit to try them out.
Since then, I keep thinking “I could use one of those connectors right here”, and now I’ve got 3 projects waiting on them.
Would be nice to be able to attach them securely (to the project enclosure) though. I’ll have to 3d print some holding brackets.
Wago and various third parties make mounts. Plenty of 3D designs as well. There are also boxes for outdoor use.
I typically just use double-sided tape.
I’m sure anyone who knows anything about meteorites has already pointed this out in other fora, but meteorites small enough to survive having one hit your car do not hit the ground hot. They spend so long falling near terminal velocity through the frigid upper atmosphere that they’re quite cold by the time they reach the ground.
Anything big enough to reach the ground while still hot would not leave living witnesses at the impact site, nor would it leave any ambiguity about its origin (though there could be temporary confusion before satellites or ground inspections confirm that no, that wasn’t a nuclear weapon).
I believe that if the supreme shareholder vetoed the Elon proposed big pay, it would send a small moon against one of the factories.
Speaking of celestial events, are the chineese preparing to send their station on an upper orbit? It is a coincidece that there are 6 directions in space and 6 taikonauts? I’d say watch out for the next hot wings transport and corelate with orbit changes.
The impact energy of a meteorite can vary wildly.
There was a confirmed case of a lady being hit with a grapefruit sized iron meteorite while sleeping in bed. It penetrated her wooden roof and hit her in the abdomen. She survived with a broken rib(s?) and burns.
Conversely, a smaller fist sized one penetrated the engine bay of a car in the 60s, and road beneath it, burying itself almost 2 feet deep. The car was in a parking lot at the time.
Both meteorites were recovered.
Though, if I remember correctly, the one that hit he lady was stolen by someone at the scene by someone involved.
The angle of approach maters.
Air is pretty good at slowing down objects
“The angle of approach matters”. Quite. Consider the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which came out of the dawn sky at a very shallow angle and dumped its (huge) energy in the upper atmosphere. If it had come straight down at noon, it would have gone off like an atomic bomb (the estimate was some tens of kilotons) and Chelyabinsk would have been wiped off the map.
Wire nut can easily handle 100 amps, wago tend to melt and burn out at 20.
/thread
1992, an actual case of car vs. meteorite (the car lost, badly):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekskill_meteorite