Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 12/10/2026To prepare for DAVINCI’s mission to Venus, NASA put a model of the descent probe through a series of furnace tests at Rex Heat Treat in Bedford, Pennsylvania (in Aug/Sept). The tests mimicked the rapid, extreme heating DAVINCI will experience as it descends through Venus’ atmosphere. 100
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Cheyenne water officials reportedly traced the Cupriavidus gilardii detection to wastewater discharged by Goat Systems LLC, an industrial user involved with construction and “fill-and-flush” operations at the data-center site. Why's that a problem? 211
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Perseverance captured this striking rock formation with dark, branching layers spreading across the Martian surface. Its unusual shape resembles a giant spider, but it is a natural geological feature rather than an actual creature. 000
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 23/09/20265,000 days on Mars, and the nuclear-powered Curiosity rover is still out there sending postcards. NASA just dropped a fresh view of the Red Planet, shot by the rover to mark its 5,000th Martian day on the job. 200
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Mrmbb333 STRONGEST STORM ON THE PLANET: POLO SOARS TO CATEGORY 5 Polo just reached the top of the scale. After being a tropical storm with winds of just 40 mph roughly a day and a half ago, Polo has strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 160 mph. 410
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 23/09/2026A whale in the Sacramento River! "A group of salmon anglers near Rio Vista were expecting a bite... What they got... was a humpback whale rising next to their 21-foot boat... 60 miles inland from the Pacific. One thought he was looking at a submarine. Video hit every NorCal feed within hours. 100
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 13/09/2026This infuriates me! "A Colorado DNA analyst deleted male DNA in 32 sexual assault cases, then reported none was found. She was just sentenced to 10 years... as Yvonne "Missy" Woods was handcuffed and led out, people whose cases ran through her lab shouted, "LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!" 110
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 06/09/2026www.livescience.com/planet-earth... - It's a longish read but yes, we absolutely need to focus on these 3 things: food security, climate impacts, and civilizational resilience. The Big Bad will happen, sooner or later, and we aren't ready. Nowhere near it. 000
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 05/09/2026Can't help it. I AM excited! This is the first time any kind of detector has picked up something that might really be dark matter and deeply woven into the fabric of the freakin' UNIVERSE! From Quarks to Quasars, Source: "World’s biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle." Science 030
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 05/09/2026Canadian engineers have built a flywheel that stabilizes grid frequency in milliseconds...at a wind farm in Alberta. The flywheel rotor spins at supersonic speeds inside a vacuum chamber, storing kinetic energy that can be released almost instantly when grid frequency deviates from normal levels. 618664
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 03/09/2026From: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: · "When looking at this map I can't help but feel very small... one hurricane projected to pass to the South of the Big Island, one to the North, and another one on the way.. busy hurricane season this year." And let's not forget Marie, headed toward SoCal... 010
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 01/09/2026The Culture Collective says: "The United Kingdom just deployed the world's first tidal lagoon energy storage system..." This is not quite true. They haven't built it as yet, but it looks pretty definite at this point. 121
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Australia is floating a wild but practical idea: let a 420 km coastal seawall double as a battery. Not chemical. Water. When solar and wind oversupply the grid, pumps would move seawater using height or pressure differences. When demand rises, that stored head would drive turbines, send power back. 130
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Sounds like progress to me... and I had not realized how large the tidal flow in the Severn is. THE largest is the Bay of Fundy, which has had a tidal power plant operating for several years already. 000
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 10/07/2026secretsofthegreengarden.com/floating-gar... - What are chinampas? The Floating Gardens of Mexico City, destroyed by the Conquistadores, but not entirely gone. Their revival is key to reviving both the communities and the prosperity they create by simply existing. 000
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 07/07/2026We need more kidneys? Here's one solution to the shortage... 211
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 05/07/2026High time! "Switzerland has returned 18 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, marking another major step in the long fight to bring stolen African history back home." Hoping they will also publish the truth about how these items ever got to Switzerland in the first place. 010
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 05/07/2026Oh, my! International politics are certainly taking on a personal flavor! Giving the orders is supposed to be a cushy job, right? And other people do the bleeding? 110
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 05/07/2026Earliest melt out on record in the Barents Sea. Oopsies! Dan Satterfield says Before some bozo tells me “duh, like we are just cumming out a da ice ages” The peak warmth of the Holocene before greenhouse gases started rising was a thousand years before Cheops built the first pyramid in Egypt. 000
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 05/07/2026Dan Satterfield Yesterday at 1:15 AM · The heat is on: "This ridge will push extreme heat all the way north of 60 in western Canada 🇨🇦. BC and Alberta will also see extreme fire danger and Idaho and the Pacific NW will also...but it will get much worse in under two weeks." 000
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 03/07/2026StormWall is a proposed chain of 6 satellites in orbit around Earth...when the next solar "superstorm" arrives, they'd release "reactive" gas into space that would form a protective plasma wall in front of our planet. Um. Lithium? Barium? The word is TOXIC! Image credit: M Archer/E Masongsong/NASA 100
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 03/07/2026www.livescience.com/archaeology/... - What if the infamous Medici murders weren't? Murders, I mean. The loss off FIVE major family members did in their dominance of Florence and much of the Renaissance itself. So what if it wasn't arsenic? What might, say, a time traveler do about this situation? 020
Pat MacEwen @patmac53.bsky.social · 12/06/2026www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm9A... - The Discovery of a Sperm Whale Phonetic Alphabet: which apparently resembles... Chinese? 000