#Chemistry in Focus

[pixlokita]

Aight 😔

[offonaherosjourney]

A WHOLE SEASON OF RUBY SUNDAY AND THE 15TH DOCTOR? YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME I'M BISEXUAL

[localguy2]

I find it highly amusing how in situations where the ninja are separated/it's just the OG four, Kai and Zane immediately assume control/start spearheading the team because apparently no one else is sane enough or in the right mind to do so.

Your honour, they literally have one of the best dynamics in the show, with how they're probably the most protective people in the team. And it makes me mad how this is overlooked by the fandom and the show.

[chemblrish]

11 March 2024

I was surprised that my solutions didn't crystallize over the past week to which my thesis supervisor said lightheartedly that it's normal and that he once waited for something to crystallize for THREE YEARS. I hope my solutions know I need to graduate some day.

[army-in-the-stars]

Bloodhounds... bts... 🫰🫰

[crispywizardtale]

[whowebber]

I'm not even kidding guys, yesterday night I had a dream that Logan and Oscar is on paddock with a baby on Logan's arm and he is smiling and saying something to the baby that is carbon copy of Oscar with Logan's hair and eyes and Oscar is behind them smiling shyly.

I woke up immediately because what was that and saw it was dawn. IN OUR CULTURE THERE'S A LORE THAT IF YOU DREAM SOMETHING DURING DAWN IT BECOMES REAL.

Now 1☝️ question! How many years Do I have to wait to witness that in real life.??

And what is this loscar obsession of mine!! Like I am genuinely scared for them because of my weird Behaviour!

[jcmarchi]

Scientists pin down the origins of the moon’s tenuous atmosphere

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/scientists-pin-down-the-origins-of-the-moons-tenuous-atmosphere/

Scientists pin down the origins of the moon’s tenuous atmosphere

While the moon lacks any breathable air, it does host a barely-there atmosphere. Since the 1980s, astronomers have observed a very thin layer of atoms bouncing over the moon’s surface. This delicate atmosphere — technically known as an “exosphere” — is likely a product of some kind of space weathering. But exactly what those processes might be has been difficult to pin down with any certainty.

Now, scientists at MIT and the University of Chicago say they have identified the main process that formed the moon’s atmosphere and continues to sustain it today. In a study appearing today in Science Advances, the team reports that the lunar atmosphere is primarily a product of “impact vaporization.”

In their study, the researchers analyzed samples of lunar soil collected by astronauts during NASA’s Apollo missions. Their analysis suggests that over the moon’s 4.5-billion-year history its surface has been continuously bombarded, first by massive meteorites, then more recently, by smaller, dust-sized “micrometeoroids.” These constant impacts have kicked up the lunar soil, vaporizing certain atoms on contact and lofting the particles into the air. Some atoms are ejected into space, while others remain suspended over the moon, forming a tenuous atmosphere that is constantly replenished as meteorites continue to pelt the surface.

The researchers found that impact vaporization is the main process by which the moon has generated and sustained its extremely thin atmosphere over billions of years.

“We give a definitive answer that meteorite impact vaporization is the dominant process that creates the lunar atmosphere,” says the study’s lead author, Nicole Nie, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “The moon is close to 4.5 billion years old, and through that time the surface has been continuously bombarded by meteorites. We show that eventually, a thin atmosphere reaches a steady state because it’s being continuously replenished by small impacts all over the moon.”

Nie’s co-authors are Nicolas Dauphas, Zhe Zhang, and Timo Hopp at the University of Chicago, and Menelaos Sarantos at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Weathering’s roles

In 2013, NASA sent an orbiter around the moon to do some detailed atmospheric reconnaissance. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE, pronounced “laddie”) was tasked with remotely gathering information about the moon’s thin atmosphere, surface conditions, and any environmental influences on the lunar dust.

LADEE’s mission was designed to determine the origins of the moon’s atmosphere. Scientists hoped that the probe’s remote measurements of soil and atmospheric composition might correlate with certain space weathering processes that could then explain how the moon’s atmosphere came to be.

Researchers suspect that two space weathering processes play a role in shaping the lunar atmosphere: impact vaporization and “ion sputtering” — a phenomenon involving solar wind, which carries energetic charged particles from the sun through space. When these particles hit the moon’s surface, they can transfer their energy to the atoms in the soil and send those atoms sputtering and flying into the air. 

“Based on LADEE’s data, it seemed both processes are playing a role,” Nie says. “For instance, it showed that during meteorite showers, you see more atoms in the atmosphere, meaning impacts have an effect. But it also showed that when the moon is shielded from the sun, such as during an eclipse, there are also changes in the atmosphere’s atoms, meaning the sun also has an impact. So, the results were not clear or quantitative.”

Answers in the soil

To more precisely pin down the lunar atmosphere’s origins, Nie looked to samples of lunar soil collected by astronauts throughout NASA’s Apollo missions. She and her colleagues at the University of Chicago acquired 10 samples of lunar soil, each measuring about 100 milligrams — a tiny amount that she estimates would fit into a single raindrop.

Nie sought to first isolate two elements from each sample: potassium and rubidium. Both elements are “volatile,” meaning that they are easily vaporized by impacts and ion sputtering. Each element exists in the form of several isotopes. An isotope is a variation of the same element, that consists of the same number of protons but a slightly different number of neutrons. For instance, potassium can exist as one of three isotopes, each one having one more neutron, and there being slightly heavier than the last. Similarly, there are two isotopes of rubidium.

The team reasoned that if the moon’s atmosphere consists of atoms that have been vaporized and suspended in the air, lighter isotopes of those atoms should be more easily lofted, while heavier isotopes would be more likely to settle back in the soil. Furthermore, scientists predict that impact vaporization, and ion sputtering, should result in very different isotopic proportions in the soil. The specific ratio of light to heavy isotopes that remain in the soil, for both potassium and rubidium, should then reveal the main process contributing to the lunar atmosphere’s origins.

With all that in mind, Nie analyzed the Apollo samples by first crushing the soils into a fine powder, then dissolving the powders in acids to purify and isolate solutions containing potassium and rubidium. She then passed these solutions through a mass spectrometer to measure the various isotopes of both potassium and rubidium in each sample.

In the end, the team found that the soils contained mostly heavy isotopes of both potassium and rubidium. The researchers were able to quantify the ratio of heavy to light isotopes of both potassium and rubidium, and by comparing both elements, they found that impact vaporization was most likely the dominant process by which atoms are vaporized and lofted to form the moon’s atmosphere.

“With impact vaporization, most of the atoms would stay in the lunar atmosphere, whereas with ion sputtering, a lot of atoms would be ejected into space,” Nie says. “From our study, we now can quantify the role of both processes, to say that the relative contribution of impact vaporization versus ion sputtering is about 70:30 or larger.” In other words, 70 percent or more of the moon’s atmosphere is a product of meteorite impacts, whereas the remaining 30 percent is a consequence of the solar wind.

“The discovery of such a subtle effect is remarkable, thanks to the innovative idea of combining potassium and rubidium isotope measurements along with careful, quantitative modeling,” says Justin Hu, a postdoc who studies lunar soils at Cambridge University, who was not involved in the study. “This discovery goes beyond understanding the moon’s history, as such processes could occur and might be more significant on other moons and asteroids, which are the focus of many planned return missions.”

“Without these Apollo samples, we would not be able to get precise data and measure quantitatively to understand things in more detail,” Nie says. “It’s important for us to bring samples back from the moon and other planetary bodies, so we can draw clearer pictures of the solar system’s formation and evolution.”

This work was supported, in part, by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

[sillysnack]

saiki kusuke age 14 trying out poetry but everytime he holds a pen, trying to put his emotions into words, he ends up angrily scribbling all over the page 🩷 hes so eldest daughter coded

[nuka-rockit]

I do try hard to be brave about being an adult but just when I think I may get the hang of it at last I get one mildly not great phone call that makes me so anxious I want to throw up so perhaps I should reconsider becoming a strange hermit in the woods that gives unsolicited advice to travellers

[happyk44]

So this post I tagged w/ npd!Annabeth just popped out of the queue and as I'm rereading it, I'm laughing to myself because wasn't there some official post from Annabeth's POV being shocked and annoyed that Percy has better grades than her. Even though Percy has gone to school every year consistently (save for that gap year he was in a coma) and also has a teacher for a step-father, while she was presumably being "homeschooled" at camp where she would be able to prioritize her interests (architecture and mythology) over stuff she could care less about, like biology.

[firespirited]

Femme 2023 is described as a queer erotic thriller, a violent sexy revenge story. It's rated 18 in the UK and absolutely deserves the age rating for sex, violence, violent sex and plenty of blurry lines between. Definitely look up doesthedogdie or unconsenting media first.

The problem with comparing it to the 90s erotic thrillers like Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct is you don't know if the reviewer's going from the mainstream understanding of those films or the queer or feminist reading of those messy relationships, those complex women.

[ side note: the string of sex scenes was a LOT even by eurotrash/netflix-cut-to-thrusting standards, I mean that in a "Dude, that's an awful lot of thrills mistaken for exhilaration without realizing this might not be great" way. But it had been a while since i've seen an erotic thriller and that framing might be par for the course. I'm not watching 50 Shades to compare any time soon.

Then again, there are an awful lot of straight movies/shows with lots of banging and not much crackle. Especially for me: if there's no character development in an intimate scene it's really obvious to us aces. ]

If we are taking those women as far more interesting than simple villains, if we are interested in revenge as a motivation and not necessarily a resolution, then this film fits the genre. It's quite the addition.

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Let's just say that for me, this film wasn't about two protags, it was about one man's journey to reclaim his sense of self and that path was as messy and uncontrollable and hard to understand as real life often gets after a traumatic event.

Sometimes the beginning of healing is as much about reclaiming the narrative on a social level and on a personal level as it is about reclaiming your own self from your internal multiverse of 'what if's and 'if only's.

Jules tries on many personas and desires for size, fumbles the classic hollywood revenge plots, but the open ending is very much The End... and also the beginning of Jules, who now knows who he is and what he wants.

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Absolute white-knuckle ride of a film, disturbing and relatable, great examination of the performances of masculinity and how men relate to other men. I really appreciate that the film didn't try to 'both side' it and gave us some layering to the characters.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is electrifying and if you don't know his work that well, assume Jules/Aphrodite is in his late 20s.

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Further reading: erotic thrillers the genre

[navigatorwriting]

23

"They haven't... breathed in six hours," the lieutenant whispered earnestly.

The captain raised an eyebrow. "I don't think I follow."

"I'm serious," they hissed back. "They aren't breathing. It's freaking me out. Please talk to them about it?"

They stared at the lieutenant for a few more moments, mostly trying to understand the bizarre request. At last they agreed, and the lieutenant left their office looking slightly less perturbed than when they'd entered a few moments before. The door had barely swung shut when the alien breezed into the room, looking... oddly translucent.

The captain stifled a confused cough and sat up straight. "So," they began, shaking off the eerie feeling of the alien's eyes on him. They struggled with this species; something about the shallow placement of their eyes made for off-putting eye contact. "One of our crewmates has informed me that you have stopped breathing and they are concerned for you." When the alien made no attempt to reply, the captain reluctantly continued. "Would you care to tell me why that is?"

The alien blinked with an audible smack of their eyelids. "Why is neglecting to breathe a point of concern?"

The captain didn't see that one coming. "Uh, what?"

"Why does my crew want me to breathe?"

"Breathing is important," the captain responded, utterly perplexed by this situation. "We are concerned you are trying to harm yourself by not breathing. Already you look... thinner?"

"Hum. Does it hurt you if you don't breathe?" the alien asked. They seemed to be thinking.

"Yes, of course it does," the captain said. "Does it not hurt you?"

"Not at all. It is natural."

"It's natural not to breathe?"

"Yes."

The captain remembered the labored sounds the alien usually made while breathing. It had not been long since they'd joined their crew, but they always exhaled with a great sigh as if they were clearing their throat every second. "Then why do you breathe sometimes?"

Now the captain was even more confused. "What does that mean?"

"To stay solid."

"I wished to sublime. It will be easier to access the caverns when we arrive tomorrow. I will deposit again once we are inside."

"You... what?"

"We are on a reconnaissance mission, correct?"

"Well yes, but—"

"And the embassy requires we destroy as little of the natural landscape as possible?"

The captain was starting to understand, they thought. "Yes..."

"Then my gaseous state will prove most efficient in this situation. The caverns are mostly sealed, as you know. I will fit through smaller spaces than I could in my solid state."

"... I see..."

"Is there still a problem, sir?" the alien asked.

"I—" The captain paused, shook their head to think. "No, there's no problem. Just... nothing I've seen before."

"Hum."

"Do, uh, let me know the next time you decide to sublime, though. Many of your crewmembers have no experience with your species and did not understand why you stopped breathing."

"I see," the alien responded. "Perhaps I may assemble a presentation on biophysical sciences?"

"For... what?"

"My crewmembers, to understand sublimation and the biological process of expelling heat. I will organize it for our 1800 debrief."

"...Sure. That's fine." The captain waved a weary hand to dismiss the alien, who walked out the door with a faint cloud trailing behind them. They let out a sigh and turned back to their paperwork, certain their hair would be turning grey after that conversation.

[elliott-the-creature]

school is kicking our collective asses time to sleep for 10 hours and be lazy and regret not doing schoolwork wheeeeee

(more context in tags cuz we feel like it lol)

-K (📺📚, 🍁☮️)

[firebirdsdaughter]

Have I mentioned today…

… how much I love Nate and Eliot?

[c28hunter]

How the fuck am I supposed to go to school tomorrow if the only three things I'm thinking about now are:

1. Crazy Finnish guy and his upcoming porn music video

2. Slovenian one direction

3. Swords fighting