11 Comments

The concern with that graph is that what people purchase, with more money, is often, more energy - more air flights is a popular excess-money spend.

I can't think of a way to tease out energy needed to create wealth, from energy you're just tossing away with your wealth. After all, the extra vacations create wealth from the airline's point of view.

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Because I keep getting older and weird stuff keeps happening to my body as I do, I am always fascinated by the medical discoveries. Now, they have to hurry and offer everything to the public before it's too late for me. 😄

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I feel the same way a lot of the time. Get it out of the lab already!

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I'll be a test subject for many of the worst problems even. Just let me try it! 😄 🤣

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Same sometimes!

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Oxygen on Venus, or not:

There was apparently a detection last year of oxygen in a layer within the Venusian atmosphere. The first reported detection of oxygen in the Venus atmosphere was in the mid 1970s by the group of my doctoral advisor. Even thought the signal was weak, it was 5 sigma above the background (not sure about the 5 but something bigger than 3). The research team did not really believe the result and spent many months trying to understand what else might have caused it. Finding nothing, they announced the first detection of oxygen emission from another planet. That was a big deal.

Alas, a few months later the key research scientist woke up in the middle of the night with the realization that the detected OVI emission line was in the monochrometer slit (and thus detectable) just as one electronic stepper motor handed off to another. They got time on the satellite, closed off the instrument, and did tests. Once in awhile, the instrument produced a bogus blip at that handoff point. A retraction followed.

My advisor frequently said that anybody who tells you to believe a result because it is 3-sigma or 5 sigma does not understand systematic error.

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All the more reason to send spacecraft, multiple spacecraft, to Venus. We've really neglected it the last few decades, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming missions. But more would be better.

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Great read. Thank you!

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Glad you enjoyed it!

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another great piece! plenty of new rabbit holes for me to head down. thank you.

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You are most welcome, glad you enjoyed it. The more rabbit holes the better!

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