Today's global round up of good news nuggets to help get the weekend off to a sunny start.
Cloud Waves
The most astonishing display of atmospheric variability came as giant ocean waves of clouds drifted over the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming last week. The incredible scene was captured by photographer Rachel Gordon, who shared them on the 'Wyoming Through The Lens' Facebook group, and is a textbook example of Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability. KHI results from differences in air density between the various layers of the sky - in this case probably from sun heating pockets of air between mountain saddles which rose rapidly into both colder air and strong winds.
Noctilucent Clouds: The observation of Comet Neowise in conjunction with intense Noctilucent Clouds - filmed from the Bavarian Alps in 2020 - is a stunning achievement. Enjoy!
Acronym Trivia
Lawmakers have unveiled a bipartisan bill to ban TikTok in the US called The ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act, which is actually an acronym for “Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party.” In a desperate attempt to be relevant, lawmakers have been increasingly using acronyms to name bills. Quick quiz: we give you the names of four bills that were allegedly introduced. But one of them is fake - can you spot it?
Getting Adults More Exercise (GAME) Act
Robo Calls Off Phones (Robo COP) Act
Build America Bonds Extension for Rural and Urban Transportation and Highways (BABE RUTH) Act
Arsenic Prevention and Protection from Lead Exposure in Juice (APPLE Juice) Act
(We made up the GAME Act)
Scientists Furious with AFA: Scientists have an awful tendency to overuse complex, confusing, or otherwise indecipherable acronyms in their work. Thankfully, a plucky group of, uh, scientists, is here to try and keep them in line. Read on...
Beethoven Manuscript
Ludwig van Beethoven’s handwritten manuscript for the fourth movement of his String Quartet in B-flat Major was owned by a Czech family. However, the Nazis seized it along with the family’s other belongings in World War II. The manuscript eventually ended up in a museum in the Czech city of Brno, where it has been stored for more than 80 years. Now, thanks to a new restitution law in the Czech Republic, the museum will return Beethoven’s fourth movement to the heirs of that family, the Pescheks.
Shock Results
Whilst there have been a handful of shock results at this year's football World Cup, the team at OGN Towers have kicked around a few other remarkable results from previous World Cups and think these three need to be considered as amongst the most surprising of all time:
Italy 0 - 1 North Korea (1966)
East Germany 1 - 0 West Germany (1974)
Spain 0 - 1 Northern Ireland (1982)
dearMoon
A London photographer has beaten more than a million rivals to clinch a place on the first civilian trip to the moon. Rhiannon Adam, 37, who was born in Ireland and is based in Hackney, is among eight artists and creatives picked by Japanese billionaire entrepreneur and art collector Yusaku Maezawa to be part of the journey. Ms Adam described the trip, set to see a civilian crew orbit the moon for around seven days before returning to Earth, as “like an impossible dream coming true”. The trip, called dearMoon, is expected to take place next year aboard Starship, a rocket being developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
'Astounding' Analysis
While northern Greenland may be a polar desert today, two million years ago it hosted a diverse range of plant and animal life. Using the oldest DNA ever analyzed, a team of scientists discovered that a number of animals, including mastodons, reindeer, geese and hares, used to live in the area, as well as a range of tree species. “No one would have predicted an ecosystem like this. Some species you find further south in Greenland, but a number you don’t find in the Arctic at all,” says Eske Willerslev, a paleogeneticist at the University of Cambridge. “It’s an ecosystem with no analog in the present day.” Ross MacPhee, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History says “It’s a tour de force. Simply astounding.”
US Battery Security
The US Department of Energy announced this week that it’s giving a $2.5 billion loan to Ultium Cells, a joint venture between the automaker GM and the battery company LG Energy Solution, to help build electric vehicle battery facilities in Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Together, the plants are expected to create or support more than 11,000 jobs and help the US meet growing demand for zero-emission vehicles, without relying on components built overseas. According to an industry analysis, the US market for EVs is expected to grow from $28 billion in 2021 to $137 billion in 2028.
"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
Albert Camus
On this Day
17 December 1892: The first issue of Vogue was published; initially a weekly high-society journal, it's now become a hugely influential American fashion and lifestyle magazine.
According to Oxford University researchers, ending fossil fuel use by 2050 will save the world at least $12 trillion. Read on...
Mood Booster
Study by BBC Earth and California University shows that simply by watching nature documentaries it makes you happier.