This blog has become a sort of personal-cum-public diary. As for its contents, some are meant for me and my friends and relatives; others are for the public. This blog will have only positive, ennobling, elevating, encouraging and uplifting thoughts/ideas/materials. Whoever visits should feel happy and should be able to pick up some good ideas/thoughts/links. In short, "NOTHING NEGATIVE" is my motto.(Grateful thanks to Jon Sullivan and Public-Domain-Photos.com for the background photo)
Happy New Year 2021
WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY, HEALTHY,
PROSPEROUS AND PURPOSEFUL
NEW YEAR 2020
5 most
incredible science discoveries already made in 2020. Today, we take a look at
these 5 incredible science discoveries that's been made in 2020.
The year
2020 has ushered in some revolutionary advances and discoveries, some of which
sound like they are just out of a science fiction book, though they are very
real and likely to immensely change the world.
Researchers
have made remarkable steps towards understanding the planet, human physiology,
medicine, geography, and surroundings.
Grateful
thanks to UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES and YouTube and all the others who made this
video possible
National
Geographic VR takes you flying in 360° to the rim of a spectacular erupting
volcano. Over 15,500 feet tall, Klyuchevskoy is one of the tallest and most
active volcanoes on the planet.
Grateful
thanks to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and YouTube and all the others who made this
video possible
"Even
near the highest peak in the world, life manages to thrive. Follow a global
team of scientists on the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet
Everest Expedition as they measure the biodiversity in Nepal’s Khumbu Valley
and investigate how high alpine species are adapting to global climate
change."
Grateful
thanks to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and YouTube and all the others who made this
video possible
Dam collapse
in China could point to a 'black swan' disaster.
The dam at a
small reservoir in China’s Guangxi region gave way last month after days of
heavy rain in a collapse that could be a harbinger of sterner tests for many of
the country’s 94,000 aging dams as the weather gets more extreme.
Located in
Yangshuo county, famed for its otherworldly karst landscape, the dam collapsed
at around midday on June 7, inundating roads, orchards and fields in Shazixi
village, residents told Reuters.
“I’ve never
seen such flooding,” said villager Luo Qiyuan, 81, who helped build the dam
decades ago.
“The water
levels were never so high in previous years, and the dam had never collapsed.”
Completed in
1965, the dam, made of compacted earth, was designed to hold 195,000 cubic
metres of water, enough to fill 78 Olympic-size swimming pools and meet the
irrigation needs of Shazixi’s farmers.
On a visit
to the reservoir in mid-July, Reuters found the length of the dam, of about 100
metres, had largely vanished. It was reinforced 25 years ago.
The water
went over the dam, which then collapsed, said a member of a survey crew at the
reservoir, declining to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to
media.
Shazixi
residents said there were no deaths.
But the
collapse, which was not reported by domestic media, suggests big storms might
be enough to overwhelm reservoirs, especially if the design is inferior and
maintenance has been patchy.
That raises
the prospect of disaster in river valleys and flood plains that are much more
densely populated than they were when the dams were built.
Environmental
groups say climate change is bringing heavier and more frequent rain. Massive
flooding could trigger unforeseen “black swan” events, the government says,
with extreme consequences.
EXTREME
EVENTS.
Thousands of
dams were built in the 1950s and 1960s in a rush led by Mao Zedong to fend off
drought in a largely agrarian China.
In 2006, the
Ministry of Water Resources said, between 1954 and 2005, dykes had collapsed at
3,486 reservoirs due to sub-standard quality and poor management.
It was
unclear if record-breaking rains were to blame for the Shazixi collapse or if
the dam’s emergency spillway had been blocked by silt or if it was a design
problem.
The water
resources department in the area declined to comment. The county government did
not respond to a request for comment.
In Guangxi,
in southwestern China, rainfall and temperatures were on average significantly
higher in 1990-2018 compared with the previous 29 years, official data shows.
It’s the
extreme events that put dams at risk, said David Shankman, a geographer at the
University of Alabama who studies Chinese floods.
“But a dam
should be able to withstand extreme events even if they become regular, and
when the flood is over, it should be exactly of the same quality as before the
event, if the dam was properly designed and built,” Shankman said.
According to
a notice at the Shazixi reservoir’s monitoring station, the 151.2 metre-tall
dam was built with a once-every-two-century worst-case scenario in mind in
which water was expected to reach 149.48 metres. Last month, it overflowed.
In the
county seat of Yangshuo in June, more rain fell in three hours than usually
falls in two months.
The Ministry
of Water Resources did not respond to a request for comment.
In what
could be another sign of trouble to come, water behind a dam on a tributary of
the Yangtze river rose so sharply that authorities on Sunday were forced to
blow up part of the dam to lower the level.
The final
part of Professor Jim Al-Khalili's documentary series about the basic building
block of our universe, the atom.
Al-Khalili
explores how studying the atom forced us to rethink the nature of reality
itself, encountering ideas that seem like they are from science fiction but in
fact are a central part of modern science. He discovers that there might be
parallel universes in which different versions of us exist and finds out that
empty space is not empty at all, but seething with activity.
The world we
think we know - the solid, reassuring world of our senses - turns out to be a
tiny sliver of an infinitely weirder and more wonderful universe than we had
ever conceived in our wildest fantasies.
The story of
the discovery that everything is made from atoms, one of the greatest
scientific breakthroughs in history, and the brilliant minds behind it.
For more awe
inspiring documentaries, subscribe to our channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZSE...
Welcome to
ReelTruth.Science the home of inspiring documentaries from the scientific and
medical world. Here you can find full length documentaries to discover and
explore.
#atom
#atomdocumentary #reeltruthscience
Grateful
thanks to REEL TRUTH SCIENCE DOCUMENTARIES and YouTube
Clutching
his 1899 Appleton's Guidebook to Alaska, Michael Portillo reaches the State's
remote interior and the end of the Alaska Railroad. Less than 200 miles from
the Arctic Circle, at Fairbanks, he discovers how gold prospectors liberated
the precious metal from the soil.
At Poker
Flat, Michael reaches for the skies with the scientists who study the Northern
Lights. Volunteers on the Tanana Valley Railroad offer him the chance to light
the boiler of their 1899 Porter locomotive - a first for Britain's premier rail
fan. In Alaska's railwayless state capital, Juneau, Michael researches the life
of the remarkable author of his Appleton's, Eliza Scidmore, before heading to
the railhead for his next Alaskan journey. He discovers her role in encouraging
tourists to visit Alaska and finds out how salmon propelled the region to
statehood.
