Petrol is something like CnH2n+2 so can range from C1H4 to about C10H22, most being C8H18. Oil from the ground has been used for over 2000 years, petrol coming from the French word petroleum. They average about 85% Carbon (Atomic weight about 12), so if there is perfect combustion you would need to replace the […]

Coronaviruses in the past have been responsible for about 14% of the cases of the common cold. The rest are rhinoviruses, influenza, adenoviruses, syncyctial viruses, enderoviruses, parainfluenza and metapneumoviruses. Usually, because of the numbers you catch more than one at a time, so they overlap, perm any small quantity from a big quantity. They are […]

The so called ring of fire which Alaska sits on the edge of is not unknown for it’s activity. Normally you get a volcano a year erupting it some form over year. Three volcanoes have now erupted in a short time, plus a 6.9 earthquake hit off the coast of Alaska this morning, and by […]

One thing that struck me with the history of Smallpox is that a similar virus that infects cattle, cowpox, was used to give an effective immunity to smallpox, basically because it was from a very similar family. With Covid-19, SARS and MERS we have a betacoronavirus that infects humans, and the fact that there is […]

There has been a lot of talk about eradicating Covid-19 in the news using a 17 option or key variable scoring system to judge what will be required. The problem is that a lot of the research and modelling is performed on what are limited scope viruses, smallpox and Polio. Smallpox was eradicated due to […]

A curious thing happened on the way to collecting rock samples, Perseverance drilled out a rock sample and it disappeared. You might be thinking of aliens stealing the stuff, or as NASA thinks, the rock had a chemical reaction in a way that made it disappear. It was a hard solid core that needed a […]

This is tricky, as there are various views on the subject, but have settled down to a consensus. The traditional layered view may not be accurate though as when you get down close to the earth’s centre a lot of the force is not just downwards, but outwards too. At the very centre of the […]