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Kind of expensive, but way cool

The thing on the left is actually the thing on the right. They reclaimed the image using a freaking particle accelerator.

It’s a daguerrotype and it sounds this particular technique (or variant of the technique) only works with daguerrotypes, because the images were developed using a mercury vapor. The machine finds and maps the mercury. Though I don’t see why it couldn’t be done with silver or platinum or any other photographic emulsion. On the other hand, I’m not a partical physicist.

It is, as you might expect, REALLY EXPENSIVE to rent a particle accelerator and it took eight hours per square centimeter. So, you know, don’t go digging out grandma’s daguerrotypes just yet.

Here’s the item in Science News. And here is a heavier, boringer version in Nature.

I used to subscribe to Science News. I loved that rag. It was a tiny weekly — a dozen pages, maybe? — with short, interesting but not dumbed-down science items. Then they disappeared up their own assholes with globular warming and gender studies.

SJW’s — is there no wholesome thing they cannot pervert?

Have a good weekend, y’all!

Comments


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 13, 2018, 10:23 pm

Looks like they’re bi-weekly now. Or maybe they always were. Anyway, their back catalogue is online.

Fun read. Try it.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 13, 2018, 10:43 pm

Somebody was just horribly murdered in the field next door. It sounded like a pig, though I don’t suppose we have any here.

I say that guardedly. There *are* wild pigs in the woods two villages over.


Comment from ea in ga
Time: July 13, 2018, 11:03 pm

Do you have wild critters big enough to take out a pig?
Maybe stray dogs?


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: July 13, 2018, 11:27 pm

You might like reading at the hysterics-free American Council on Science and Health. https://www.acsh.org


Comment from Monty James
Time: July 14, 2018, 12:02 am

Smithsonian and National Geographic used to be enjoyable, and now they’re not. NatGeo apologized for pretty much its’ entire print run to date right here:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/from-the-editor-race-racism-history/


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: July 14, 2018, 12:25 am

SJW’s — is there no wholesome thing they cannot pervert?

Not even the FBI is immune… although FIB may not ever have been “wholesome,” just, uh… as you were.


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: July 14, 2018, 1:38 am

Anybody hear that Trump met with Lady May? At that same cHecquers place. And apparently convinced her to go Brexit despite everybody resigning in disgust at her negotiating ability.

The balloon was a joke, very small, and very unimpressive. Most people talked about the too high slit in the back of Mays dress. Or the crappy wood gate in the background. Churchill was born there – the gates should be iron, 10 feet tall, and majestic. Not something from Home Depot.

Don’t know how to post photos, sorry.


Comment from Ben
Time: July 14, 2018, 5:13 am

Also check out American Scientist magazine, non-stupid science reporting. Articles by the wonderful Henry Petroski.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: July 14, 2018, 11:34 am

This is because, as we have progressed, we have become smarter, wiser,
And amazingly stupid.

Full of feelz about things the 15 words in the headline, the 20 words on the chryon (cry-on!), or maybe the meme, gave us absolutely complete and accurate details on. Things we didn’t even know about 5 minutes ago, and won’t remember next week.

OMG!!!! Volcano!!! (eh? what volcano?),
World to be destroyed by super nova black hole (in 52 million years)
World can be destroyed by mega volcano at Yellowstone exploding WHILE it is sucked into a super nova black hole!
Chinese have super duper new thing that will destroy everybody else’s super duper new things!
Supreme Court pick will reverse Brown vs Board of ‘Educashun’!
Trump will turn back time!
GLOBAL WORMINGS! ICE AGE! RUNNING OUT OF OIL! Germans bomb pearl harbors!

Half our “news” is gossip, poorly done and thoroughly bogus paid for ‘studies’ and the other half is Kim Karcrashian taking her clothes off, again, today.

We might as well be sitting in a medieval tavern getting our news from itinerant minstrels, travelers, and local farmers who’s cow Boggie predicts the weather and various other man made or natural disasters.
“She shat right on that old church cornerstone in my field! And did you know, that very day in Rome, the Pope died! Omens it is, I tells ya!”

and rants from loonies.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: July 14, 2018, 12:30 pm

I will say – sorry about our President walking in front of your Queen. Complete, though really not surprising, breach of protocol.

Now…someone please apologize for your queen “shooing” our President.

Which, on the whole, is why I really really like Queen Elizabeth the second. I hope she keeps her health, and her throne, for many more years.
God save, and bless, your Queen.


Comment from OldFert
Time: July 15, 2018, 7:09 pm

I think there’s a good chance both The Donald and The Elizabeth worked at “common” physical labor in their younger days.
I’m just wondering if the President was able to give an Ipod of his speeches to her maj.
And, given that Trump owns a bit of property in the UK, he’s in the unusual position of a yank politician paying taxes to the crown.


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: July 15, 2018, 8:05 pm

Feeling a bit bored and/or voyeuristic, check out #GuGate on twitter. The notorious Eugene Gu crashed and burned big time. First he got fired half way thru his residency and then his ex came out with proven allegations of the numerous sock puppet accounts he uses including one to stalk her. Last, she claims sexual misconduct by him. I can see why Vanderbilt canned him. Besides trashing Vanderbilt patient care online numerous times, they hint that he is not quite the great doc he claims to be. They of course can not discuss it without Gu’s permission. LOL

He’s crazy and a liar. When his past DV case was revealed, he told someone that the Republicans had hacked into the computers of the courthouse and planted that false information.


Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: July 16, 2018, 1:50 pm

Comment from ea in ga
Time: July 13, 2018, 11:03 pm

Do you have wild critters big enough to take out a pig?
Maybe stray dogs?

*
*
Try wild jaguars! Well, wild as in the Audubon Zoo — but this young jaguar got loose this weekend and went on a slaughter spree: https://tinyurl.com/yahgk4fy He killed 4 alpacas (bet they wish they’d stayed in South America), an emu, and a fox! So it wasn’t that he was hungry, it was that he freakin’ wanted to kill something. The zoo people say there was a hole in the fencing that wasn’t there last week.

Personally I think there are going to be some jaguar keepers posting their resumes on Indeed [dot] com.

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