Sure. And it’s unfortunate that this was Pirelli’s first-ever car race where those things were a factor, and so it was their engineer’s first stab at getting a tire-life estimate right.

If Pirelli was advising on lap count, then the fact Pirelli was saying absolute 40 laps maximum pre-race should mean that a 28-lap stint is possible. All the handwaving about “oh no, race conditions change things” shouldn’t mean a thing, since this wasn’t the first F1 race they’ve supplied for. If they’re saying 40…

Pirelli indicated the wear life was 40 laps. Vettel was on the medium, which was the harder of the tires available. Source: http://www.crash.net/f1/news/222272…

This is a good point. I suppose in their contract FOM/FIA might have a clause saying something like “tires must produce 80% of maximal lap speed after 50 miles”, but it’s not like FOM or the FIA is going to go to court to enforce their “shitty tire clause”, as that’d be even worse PR than the somewhat boring-er races…

How were they pushing to the limit? Vettel’s laptimes were completely flat until the blowout. There was no indication the tire was going off, so it seems to have blown while still having grip (and thus rubber) remaining.

If they get their factor-of-ten reduction in mass efficiency and aim for 500kW, That’ll be 1500kg of laser apparatus, requiring about 700hp of electrical power to run it. Then you need:

It’s very hard to believe that the condos wouldn’t have found tenants or been built elsewhere if the arena didn’t exist.

It is difficult to think of how one could ever think this was a good idea.

I’m guessing (very much a guess) that the fuel-efficient cruise speeds of both the 707 and the fighters are similar, so they probably just go together as a group rather than have the fighters go supersonic.

Chelyabinsk meteor too - people were looking at the bizarre smoke trails in the sky, then a few minutes later the blast wave blew their window into their faces.

NASA has done a great job making movie-style posters for shuttle and ISS missions since the mid-2000s. Story is an graphic artist made one as a joke (instead of the drab “look stoic” ones you usually get), and they said “that’s way better, let’s do stuff like that instead”.

If you click on the 2nd image, it turns into a video. There’s no play button or anything though, it’s like a stealth video.

CO2 concentrations are currently nearly double their long-term average over the last several thousand years. The plants will do fine if we get that back down to the long term average.

With modern engines, there’s not really a huge problem with burning fossil fuels if you can recapture the CO2. Most of the particulate pollution is dealt with by catalytic converters and cleaner-burning engines.

Interestingly, one theory for why CEO salaries exploded in the 90s was BECAUSE of a mandated reporting thing like this. Once all the CEO salaries/compensation packages came out, all the CEOs (who all think they’re better than average) started demanding better-than-average compensation packages. This created a feedback…

The cyclist they pass at 1:04 must have just crapped his pants. Rotorwash plus a helicopter 10ft above you, I’m surprised he didn’t get blown off the road.

You wouldn’t even have to try that hard to select for this. Assuming you’re taking the egg to an incubator or other safe place and that the incubated chicks are fed more and are thus more likely to become mothers themselves, the eggs that get taken to be made into new chickens will tend to be the ones that the mothers…

Thank you, this was very well-explained (though I already knew torque/hp and why they mattered).

Eventually Voyager 1, 2, and New Horizons won’t have the electricity to power their radios. They’re all powered by the decay heat of plutonium, and once the plutonium sufficiently decays, there won’t be enough electricity left to talk to Earth.

Many fans thought that telling a driver where to brake, how much fuel to save, etc, meant the drivers weren’t driving. So now instead of having interesting and informative radio messages to let viewers and commentators know how a driver is doing, the teams will just send the data via the dashboard or some other way.