This graph shows the progress in telecommunications bit rates over the last two centuries, and a future extrapolation to the 22nd century.

A primitive form of telecommunications emerged in the late 18th century, when French inventor Claude Chappe demonstrated a practical semaphore system that delivered messages between Paris and Lille. Known as the optical telegraph, it had a transmission rate of two to three symbols (196 different types) each minute, or about 0.4 b/s.

The electrical telegraph, popularised in the 1840s, used a coding system developed by American inventor Samuel Morse, which encoded text characters as sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes. It achieved a rate of approximately 100 b/s.

Shinobu Sakamoto was just 15 when she left her home in the southern Japanese fishing village of Minamata to go to Stockholm and tell the world of the horrors of mercury poisoning.

Circa 2018 😀

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Fully enclosed, controlled-environment growth chambers can accelerate plant development. Such ‘speed breeding’ reduces generation times to accelerate crop breeding and research programmes, and can integrate with other modern crop breeding technologies.

There have been almost no capabilities of processing graphite outside of China to date, but this new Michigan factory will change that.

Tesla was the victim of a theft that resulted in having to shut down a brand new Supercharger station, as all the cables on the eight stalls were cut off.

The automaker is currently working to triple the size of its Supercharger network over the next two years.

It is currently growing at a record pace.

The rock, found in the Sahara, likely comes from a long-lost baby protoplanet.

Genevieve Klien and I may be traveling in those states in the future.

Oh, and if you live in Northern Nevada or plan to visit Reno, let us know!

Update: It looks like we will be relocating a bit north of Austin!

According to Einstein’s theories of relativity, no matter can travel faster than light. So how did the early Universe expand at a rate faster than light?

La Niña conditions of 2021 cooled the global average surface temperature. Parts of Australia, southern Africa and northwestern North America saw cooler temperatures during the year.

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The La Niña conditions of 2021 took the edge off the global average surface temperature. Parts of Australia, southern Africa and northwestern North America saw cooler temperatures during 2021 compared to recent years as the effects of La Niña kicked in.

Unless we have another strong La Niña very soon, we’re going to keep seeing even hotter years than 2021 for the foreseeable future until net global greenhouse gas emissions cease.