Cabbage

Green leaves are good for you, full of vitamins and minerals…. Don’t over cook them. Cabbages are lovely but they do smell. My hubby says they have mercaptans, a compound with a hydrogen and sulphur compound in them and Di methyl and tri methyl sulphide compounds. Sulphur is one of the essential elements in DNA and RNA, I’m not sure which amino acid it is in but they include Adenine, Guanine, Cytosene, Thiamine in DNA and Urasyl in RNA. (I learned this from my O level biology).

Thinking of school reminds me of school dinners and the cabbage smell from the kitchens! The cabbage was cooked till it was a wet soggy mess… Not hard to chew, but not nice.

Some plants and animals actually live on Sulphur compounds deep in caves and deep in the oceans because there is no light for photosynthesis. They can have anaerobic metabolisms if there is a lack of oxygen. Then the caves they are in can become acidic.

This was part of a discussion with my hubby, he’s the scientist, it’s interesting to talk things through. I do find things fascinating. (if any of this is wrong please tell me in the comments, I am not a scientist).

An art and book shop

Where would you go on a shopping spree?

Down to the Arts and Book shop. I’d buy lots of acrylic paints, some watercolours, gouache, oil paints, felt pens, pastels, charcoal, conte crayons, pencils. Then I’d get canvases, large and small in white and black. Cartridge paper, watercolour paper, sketch pads. Glitter, metallic paper, ink, lino to cut for printing.

Science and technology books, sci-fi books, novels, biographies, autobiographical books, historic books, books about galleries, about the renaissance, about astronomy.

Then I would donate half of it to a local school or college, because I would not have space for it all, or time to use it.

Galaxy

Light pollution is destroying our view of the night sky. In cities and towns only a few stars are visible at night, but if you get out away from them the sky can be full of thousands of faint stars including our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Our Galaxy is one of Billions or Trillions in the known Universe. It might look a bit like this if we were outside it, but as we are about a third of the way into a spiral arm of the Milky Way, it’s impossible to see that. Plus we are surrounded by dust lanes that obscure the view. Our galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its centre, and is made up not only of normal matter but dark matter and dark energy as well according to Astronomers and Astrophysical scientists.

The image is a digital drawing I did several years ago. You can only see something like this through a telescope though.

Oily sheen

Iridescence caused by a single layer of oil spread out over water. I used to see this when I was a child on the school playground, I don’t know what had been spilt. I also remember seeing this sheen on the tarmac on roads when I was young. But now cars are less polluting the phenomenon has reduced. But obviously some cars still leak oil. Will this happen when all cars are electric? Doubtful, but who knows when that will be.

can anyone tell me?

As an experiment I cooked a portion of meatballs alfornio in the oven ( gas mark 7, 35 minutes) and king prawn linguini (5 minutes in the microwave). Both were cooked at the same time but I put the microwave food in when the oven food was almost cooked, so they were both piping hot.

My question to the scientific minded out there is, which used the most energy? My guess is the gas oven cooked meal. But I don’t know? What is the ratio between the two? If I want to save money, which is the best? Answers please…..

Where have all the clouds gone?

Parts of Britain and France are turning brown, fires are burning in France. Its happening across Europe. Its happening in America. Where has the rain gone? Crops are withering in places where the monthly rainfall has dwindled to almost nothing. Will the climate recover? Will rainfall be abundant again? The weather has only been overheated for a short time, but the damage is being done. What will happen in the future if we don’t reduce Carbon emissions and slow the increase in temperature we are currently experiencing? We are such a destructive species and we have started to overwhelm Earth. We only have one planet. Let’s try and take care of it.

Universes…?

I was just reading a discussion on Instagram (a mistake) which said that if gravity was a bit stronger the universe would collapse (yes) or a bit weaker it would expand and fly apart forever (again yes). It then goes on to say, since gravity is so precise God MUST exist! I took umbridge at this I said :

Huh? There were possibly other universes that collapsed or expanded.. We are just lucky to be in this one. Its not precision its just that we are able to observe it. Its like saying I’m five foot three tall, therefore my short trousers fit!

In any case the Universe IS expanding, There is a considerable red shift and we can see Galaxies are moving apart. There is no sign that its slowing down… Has God forgotten and left the Universe on too low a gravity? I know – I’m cynical.

Virga

Image from Wikipedia, Virga clouds

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virga

I was discussing weather with a friend and recalled seeing clouds that seemed to drop rain but it evaporates before it reaches the ground. I love clouds and I know I knew the name for then at one time but had forgotten it so I looked it up on Wikipedia (see link).

What I saw was what appeared to be snow falling from shower clouds, but it never landed on the ground. It was one winter day a few years ago when I was out visiting friends. I guess it’s very bad for gardeners or farmers who need water for their plants.

Masked

I was just stopped in the street by a woman who said ‘you know there’s no one around?’ I looked about me and said ‘yes I can see that’. Then she said ‘so you don’t need a mask’ I looked at her. Why tell me this when I had just forgotten to take it off, but why did it matter to her? Then she said ‘it might make it difficult for you to breathe with carbon Dioxide building up behind it.’

Oh I really wanted to say something, like ‘oh dear, so many people collapsing after wearing a mask for more than five minutes!’ or ‘ they are permiable to air, they just stop viruses’. But I bit my lip under my mask and said ‘no I’m OK. I’m used to wearing a mask at night, I have sleep aponea’. ‘Oh that OK then’ she said. I said ‘goodnight’ and walked off. But then called back ‘I’m still cautious about covid’. Perhaps people belive it’s over? But it’s my choice to wear a mask.

The Lyrids 2022

From the explaining science blog on WordPress. I love watching meteor showers so decided to share.

The night of  22/23 April will be the peak of the Lyrids, one of the most famous prolific meteor showers. Meteors (also known as shooting stars) are bright streaks of light caused by small lumps of rock or metal called meteoroids hitting the Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed. As they pass through the atmosphere they get heated […]

The Lyrids 2022