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Here’s a cool device: The Pek Wine Steward, which preserves a half-drunk bottle of wine by pumping argon gas into an airtight metal chamber. In his always-fun gadget column for the Sunday New York Times, Brendan Koerner wrote a terrific story about the guy who invented it:
He spent months fine-tuning a gas injection system. “We used computational fluid dynamics to model the gas flow,” Mr. Luzaich said, referring to a computer-analysis technique that measures how smoothly particles are flowing. The goal was to create an injector that could swap a bottle’s oxygen atoms for argon atoms; argon is an inert gas, and thus unlikely to harm a nice Chianti.
Indeed, argon is a particularly cool chemical — because it may become crucial in future attempts to colonize Mars. Argon, as it turns out, is pretty easy for humans to breathe without any ill effects. This is important because — as the Mars-exploration expert Penelope Boston has determined — any affordable attempt to terraform the Martian atmosphere is likely to retain a lot of argon in the mix. So she devised a little experiment to find out whether breathing argon is harmful or not: She sealed a bunch of mice in a little mouse Biosphere, with an atmosphere comprised of 20% oxygen, 40% nitrogen, and 40% argon. That’s way more argon than we breathe on Earth, where argon represents less than 1.6% of the mix. Yet the mice survived and thrived breathing that large amount of argon.
Okay, that’s probably enough Fun Argon Facts for today.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
The “Milky Way Transit Authority” map
Should automobile software be open-sourced?
My Bookforum review of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”
Molecular secrets of the “iron-plated snail”
» visit the Collision Detection archives
January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a misery, then, because an evil?
A. Certainly.
M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?
A. So it appears to me.
M. Then all are miserable?
A. Every one.
January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM
One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009
)
January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM
BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.
January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM
“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)
January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM
I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.
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