Thursday Throughput: Xenon Edition

Michael Siegel

Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.

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9 Responses

  1. Michael Cain says:

    ThTh4: I look at original teosinte and say that anyone who could even conceive of trying to breed something like corn from that is more clever than I am. That they succeeded makes them a whole lot more clever.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    ThTh7: He forgot the stage where a homeowner is out there hacking away at the canes, putting on plate mail gloves to try and pull them out by the root (them thorns probably violate some part of the Geneva Convention), finally giving up and buying a flamethrower to clear out the infestation (or hiring the guy with goats to come by and clear the land).

    That’s a very important part of the life cycle.Report

    • fillyjonk in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Can confirm. My garden got invaded by them a couple years ago, and late last summer (when I was distracted by other, horrible, things going on in my life) they totally took over and smothered most of the perennials I had growing. One thing about lockdown? I’ve been gradually grubbing both the blackberry and the mulberries the birds “planted” by the roots. When I get too angry about what’s going on in the world, I go out and visit destruction on the various weeds.Report

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    ThTh8: Damn volcanoes! Didn’t they know that burning all that coal would be bad for the environment?Report

    • People forget (or never realize) that coal gets burnt naturally, although usually on a smaller scale. Here in Colorado we have more than one underground coal seam fire started by natural causes: either a direct lightning strike, or a lightning-caused forest fire that ignites the coal where the seam comes above ground. Works in the other direction, too. There’s been at least one forest fire in the time I’ve lived here that was started when a smoldering underground coal seam fire reached the surface.

      Extinguishing a coal seam fire is difficult. The Centralia fire in Pennsylvania is probably the best known in the US, and has been burning since 1962.Report