When the astronauts from Apollo 11 returned to Earth, could they bring with them a microorganism that could sweep across the earth, killing an Earth population biologically unprepared for it? That was a major fear leading up to the moon launch and return. Aeon describes the extraordinary precautions that NASA engineers and scientists took to ensure that there were no breaches in the quarantine around the astronauts, machines, and lunar samples:

It was now clear that NASA would need to design a facility that could not only protect Moon rocks from terrestrial contamination but also protect Earth from contamination by those rocks – all while conducting complex experiments using the rocks and maintaining a strict quarantine of everything else that had returned from the Moon, astronauts included. Nothing like the facility they would need had ever been imagined, let alone built.

After more than a year of bureaucratic squabbling, NASA planners settled on a design for an 86,000 sq ft laboratory. It would cost nearly $75 million to build, $60 million to equip, and more than $13 million annually to operate (all in 2020 US dollars). It would consist of three parts, each with a different function: a quarantine facility to isolate returned astronauts and spacecraft behind a biological barrier; a sample operations area to run experiments on Moon rocks and Earthly biota behind another barrier; and an administrative area.

Despite these expensive and carefully-arranged procedures, there were several breaks in the quarantine system. Fortunately, the astronauts did not return to Earth with a plague (such as space herpes).

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: NASA

Over the past few months, gamers have been subjected to the 60fps (frames per second), 4K resolution with ray-tracing promises from Microsoft and Sony. Did they actually deliver? Well, sort of. The 60fps at 4K with ray tracing pitch was a mirage, as not a single game on the market lives up to that pledge. New games such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales lets the player choose between better framerates or improved resolution and ray tracing. They can’t have both: 

The outlet cited Eurogamer's Digital Foundry article that tested the game's performance, and according to that study, Miles Morales' quality mode delivers ray tracing and 4K resolution but caps at 30 fps, while its performance mode removes ray tracing and shifts between 1512p and sub-4K resolutions to squeeze out 60 fps. Meanwhile, Digital Foundry also discovered Assassin's Creed Valhalla can't reach above 1728p, no matter what.

Tom's Guide's conclusion is clear: Despite the graphical horsepower sported by the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, the consoles can't currently deliver on their promises. However, the solution to this problem lies in one of two possibilities.

The first potential solution is obvious: If current-gen consoles can't hit 4K and 60 fps at the same time, then console manufacturers may have to brute force games with even more powerful hardware. This could mean that gamers have to ironically wait for yet another new generation of consoles, or at least until Microsoft and Sony release the inevitable Xbox Series X Plus and PlayStation 5 Pro. Judging by the time it took the companies to release the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, Tom's Guide predicted these hypothetical improved iterations will launch around 2023.

The other solution, meanwhile, is to wait for developers to get better acquainted with the current generation's system suites. 

Image via SVG 

Wait, we already have a hottest colors list? The year has barely started! Apartment Therapy consults professionals on what colors will make it big this new year. The choice is yours, of course, if you’d want to incorporate these colors into your home. If you’re just curious as to what colors will be popular this year, check the full piece here. 

Image via Apartment Therapy

What Youtube videos do you watch to relax? Mine are a mix of cooking videos and people building things. If you’re looking for videos that can either make you feel relaxed or creatively inspired, this one might fit the bill! YouTuber Hanabira工房 shares their step by step process for  building a lovely Animal Crossing dollhouse by customizing a generic kit. Not only do they repaint and alter some of the materials provided in the kit, they also add more details, such as a whole yard to accompany this greenhouse kit. 

South Korea’s ‘artificial sun,’ a machine that generates and holds plasma at high temperatures, was able to set a new world record by maintaining a temperature over 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. Their machine was able to maintain such a high temperature for 20 seconds. 

(via Flipboard) 

Image screenshot via Flipboard 

Ah, catnip. The seemingly-innocent plant that drives felines wild. Did you know that it isn’t even a drug (technically)? The power of catnip on cats is very strong, but we haven’t actually properly understood why cats go head over heels for a sniff. A study published in Science Advances has finally explained why catnip has such an effect on felines: 

The plant's powers are thanks to an evolutionary trick that puts cats into a tizzy whenever they sniff this innocent-looking form of mint.

Catnip's pungent odor comes from a chemical called nepetalactone. It helps the plant repel insects.

But this research takes us further into the evolution of nepetalactone using genetic analysis. According to study co-author Benjamin Lichman, a plant biologist at the University of York, his team discovered "a suite of unusual enzymes" were responsible for nepetalactone's kitty arousing properties.

"These enzymes are not found in any related plant species and have evolved uniquely in catmint," Lichman says.

Nepetalactone uses a double-whammy — literally — to stupefy cats. Lichman and his colleagues discovered that while other types of mint form chemicals using only one enzyme, nepetalactone instead activates one enzyme, which sets off a chain reaction to activate a second enzyme.

This double whammy gives nepetalactone its potent powers, the study suggests, but it's not the only unique thing about the chemical.

Image via Inverse 

Ah, if I had only known how much my Pokemon Cards would sell for in the future, I would have kept them! Caleb King has managed to earn $80,000 for selling his Pokemon card collection. King is saving up to go to medical school, and this venture is a good one to earn more money for medical school: 

What's even better is that King, who's saving up to go to medical school to be an orthopaedic surgeon, hasn't even sold his most valuable cards. He has a first edition Red Cheeks Pikachu, which he estimates will net him $20,000 (~£14,680) and another 21 cards that he estimates selling for upwards of $50,000 (~£36,700).

The "Red Cheeks Pikachu", for reference, is that super-chunky piece of art in which Pikachu looks like he's had one too many Poké Puffs, and you can, indeed, find a few pricey ones on eBay.

Now that his hobby is making huge stacks of Pokédough, his parents seem to have come around to the idea, saying that they're "proud of his character [and] his drive". 

Image via NintendoLife 

IKEA has produced a tiny house on wheels that could (and hopefully, will) inspired environmental and climate-friendly changes in the housing industry. The tiny house, a collaboration between IKEA, Vox Creative, and tiny home builder Escape, is a 187-square-foot model filled with IKEA furniture, topped with solar panels and stocked with an on-demand RV water heater, as EcoWatch details: 

According to NBC, it runs on electric and allows for off-the-grid living. The tiny building also emits zero pollution, including carbon. In fact, the only emissions come from the trailer being towed.

Manufactured structures are usually less wasteful than on-site constructions, according to Pebble Magazine. The interior's whitewashed panels are made from sustainably grown pine, reported Travel + Leisure, while the kitchen cupboards are made from recycled bottle tops. There is also a compostable toilet and a collapsible desk/kitchen table, Lonely Planet shared.

Abbey Stark, IKEA senior interior design leader, told Lonely Planet that she prioritized renewable, reusable and recycled materials to make the space "functional as well as beautiful." Stark designed the space as an IKEA show home with sustainable, multifunctional, space-saving and energy-efficient products, Lonely Planet reported.

Image via EcoWatch 

The photo looks too good to be true, alright. That doesn’t mean it was Photoshopped, though. Photographer gm_astrphotography posted a photo of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that sparked discourse about its authenticity. The image contains ‘spikes’ seen around the two planets, which looks too good to be true. It is true, as PetaPixel confirms: 

“Diffraction spikes in astrophotography are “artifacts” that show on images of brighter stars where beams of light run through an obstacle on the camera lens and are bent, causing the light to spread out to capture a better image of the sky, according to Photographing Space. Said another way, in an image of a star or planet, they are the straight beams of light that point out in four directions from the object.”

Garret explains that he made those prominent spikes by using tape and rubber bands that he stretched across the front of the refractor in a cross pattern as a kind of practical effect. So while the image is enhanced by the photographer, it was not done in post-production: what is seen is really how the camera captured the photos.

“If you’re into telescopes as much as I am, you’re probably asking yourself how did I capture these spikes with a refractor?” Garret writes. “The best way I found to do this is with tape and rubber bands stretched across the front of your refractor in a symmetrical pattern (I did a plain cross). I feel like it adds something a little extra to the image!”

USA Today accepts his explanation and has rated this viral image as “true.”

Image via PetaPixel

You’ve heard about the revolutionary MRNA technology that makes the COVID vaccines different from traditional vaccines. However, if you’re like me, you’ve never had someone explain it to you in terms that only require a high school understanding of science. The guys from AsapSCIENCE are quite good at doing just that. -via Digg

When Charles Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped and killed in 1932, news media covered the story extensively. Newspapers, radio, and newsreels gave us details from the crime to the ransom to the arrest and conviction of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. While many books have been written about the kidnapping, Tom Doherty focuses on the journalism around it in his book Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century. Doherty gives us an overview of the ways the kidnapping changed how news outlets cover crimes and how we consume those stories.  

One of the things that happens at the trial, which is sort of true forever on, is the forensic evidence becomes fascinating to people. You don't have shootouts or dramatic confrontations. There are no fingerprints, there's no gun. Nobody can really place Hauptmann at the crime scene.
 
So, you've got to follow the forensic trail. And what you have is this sort of relentless accumulation of forensic detail, which together leads unmistakably to Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Things like ransom money bank records, handwriting analysis, analysis of the wood grain of a ladder. People are obsessed with these details. They are reading three thousand words a day in The New York Times on the case.
 
This is something you see in the true crime genre today with these 15-part series that lead you through every little nook and cranny of the investigation. Some of that starts with the Lindbergh case.

There are other ways the Lindbergh case changed news media, which you can read at BrandeisNOW. -via Strange Company

Alex the African grey parrot was the subject of Dr. Irene Pepperberg’s research into animal psychology. With the help of Alex, Dr. Pepperberg has shown the capabilities of birds through various exercises in cognition. Alex is also the first ever animal to have an ‘existential crisis’ or alternatively, the first to ask an existential question, as My Modern Met details: 

By the time of his death in 2007, Alex had amassed a variety of skills generally thought beyond animal reasoning. He had proven that some birds’ intelligence is even on par with that of dolphins and primates—typically considered to be some of the world’s smartest animals.

[...]

One of Alex’s most impressive moments was when he asked an existential question about his own appearance. He had been presented with a mirror, and—after observing himself for a moment—he asked, “What color?” He then learned the word “gray”—the color of his feathers—after having it taught to him six times.

Image via My Modern Met 

Orchestra conductors all over the world present the music of Beethoven, but even when they are trying hard to reproduce his original work, they almost always slow down the tempo of his written directions. Why did Beethoven want his music played so fast?

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was one of the first composers to start using a metronome, a device patented by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel in 1815. At that time, he started to edit his works with numerical marks with metronome indications. Doubts about the validity of these marks date back to the 19th century and during the 20th century many musicological analyses were carried out, some of which already pointed to the hypothesis that the metronome was broken, an assumption that could never be verified. In any case, most orchestra conductors have omitted these marks as they consider them to be too fast (Romanticism), whereas since the 1980s, other conductors (Historicism) have used them to play Beethoven. However, music critics and the public described these concerts as frantic and even unpleasant.

A few years ago, scientists posited the theory that Beethoven's metronome might have been broken -or even sabotaged. However, new research says it's possible that the composer suffered from early adopter syndrome, before usage standards were commonly agreed upon. Read about the research into Beethoven's metronome use, and the conclusions so far at EurekAlert! -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Mutatis mutandis)

Belgian animator Soetkin Verstegenused ice for her experimental stop-motion film Freeze Frame. There's ice cubes, ice spheres, ice sculpture, ice as background, ice as water, and melting ice. You can imagine she had to work quickly to take stills of each scene! The result is hypnotic, and kind of cold. -via Nag on the Lake

Astronomers scanning the skies for signals at the Parkes telescope in Australia picked up an unusual radio beam last spring. They've been analyzing it since then, and have not yet found a terrestrial source to attribute it to. The Guardian has more.

The latest “signal” is likely to have a mundane explanation too, but the direction of the narrow beam, around 980MHz, and an apparent shift in its frequency said to be consistent with the movement of a planet have added to the tantalising nature of the finding. Scientists are now preparing a paper on the beam, named BLC1, for Breakthrough Listen, the project to search for evidence of life in space, the Guardian understands.

The beam that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star 4.2 light years from Earth, has not been spotted since the initial observation, according to an individual in the astronomy community who requested anonymity because the work is ongoing. “It is the first serious candidate since the ‘Wow! signal’,” they said.

The “Wow! signal” was a short-lived narrowband radio signal picked up during a search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or Seti, by the Big Ear Radio Observatory in Ohio in 1977. The unusual signal, which gained its name after astronomer Jerry Ehman wrote “Wow!” next to the data, unleashed a wave of excitement, though Ehman cautioned about drawing “vast conclusions from half-vast data”.

Cute. The search for the source of the radio wave continues, and before you consider it proof of intelligent alien life, Phil Plait has a broader explanation and some cautionary words at Bad Astronomy.  -via Metafilter


(Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/CC BY 4.0)